Aria Naveed is a mercenary and a pretty good one; but one
with a secret. She’s a pyrokinetic, when she gets angry, things burn. This
makes her very deadly – but very much in demand
But when her investigation into the death of murdered
child uncovers a complicated plot that could bring the vampire Coven and
shapeshifter pack to open warfare, she finds her secret perilously close to be
revealed
And an intriguing stranger is ready to recruit her – but
even with her long dead family involved, she’s unsure about exactly what it is
he wants her to join
I was immensely frustrated by the writing in this book.
It is so terribly overwritten and full of redundancy and repetition that it
made it a bit of a slog to read. Descriptions maundered on for far too long,
dialogue was just a bit too long winded to be taken seriously, everything was
drawn out and repeated over and over in an attempt to establish setting and theme
while failing to do either. Like the opening scene of the book is Ari being
upset about a dead child – but she maunders on for so long, repeating herself
in the most melodramatic way that any actual emotional impact the scene could
have is just rather lost.
Or there’s how she describes Mike, her colleague at the
mercenary agency, is no longer in peak shape for active duty:
“Did he seriously think he was up for this? I mean he was great and all but he’d been playing desk duty ever since the day he hired me. And in those two years, Mike had visibly grown soft in the most literal way. A good twenty pounds of softness if you asked me. He was nowhere near the shape he needed to be in to hunt down murderous vampires. At best he’d slow me down, at worst, he’d get both of us killed. Having Mike along was a liability and he knew it.”
Just look at the redundancy in that paragraph! The point
was made by “the day he hired me” but we have to revisit it in 5 more sentences
each saying exactly the same thing. Or there’s this on how vampires don’t like
sunlight:
“The draperies though, I assumed were either new or had been relined to block out the sun during daylight hours. Vampires were not impervious to the sun but neither did they particularly care for it. It had something to do with their chemical makeup and the reaction sunlight caused. There was a reason that legend said vampires couldn’t go out in the sun they were almost right on that point. The truth of the matter though is that if exposed to the sun for a long enough length of time, their bodies experienced something like an allergic reaction. The effects varied based on a vampire’s age, the newer vampires were able to withstand the sun’s harsh rays for a longer length of time since their bodies contained more moisture. If they were less than five hundred years old, they could typically withstand sun exposure for anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour as long as it wasn’t direct. Any old and the vampire’s skin would begin to wither and if they were out for more than a minute or two, they would die. It had something to do with the lack of water contained in their bodies after the change and the sun basically causing extreme dehydration. I’d seen a vampire die from sun exposure before. Several years ago when I was visiting Seattle, Washington the local Coven decided to make a demonstration. I wasn’t sure what the crime had been but the coven tied a vampire to a post in the middle of Pike Street Market with silver chains and left him for dead. When dawn came and the sun began to rise the vampire’s skin began to boil and blister. Within minutes his body had withered to a dry husk. Within an hour, he has deteriorated further and nothing but ash remained. It was a ghastly sight and the stench of the burned, rotting flesh was one I’d never forget.”
Good gods WHY?! Even aside from the fact the mere
description of the draperies being lined in the very first sentence gave us ALL
the information we needed to know, this vast dump makes no sense (even ignoring
the sentence that suggests the author doesn’t know what “not impervious” actually
means). Is the vulnerability an allergic reaction, chemical make up or
dehydration? If the latter how do they “blister and boil”. If allergic, how do
they turn to dust. If burning how come they smell rotten? Don’t try to EXPLAIN
a supernatural element if you don’t actually have an explanation and are just
throwing word salad around (also, Seattle is in Washington there’s no need to
specify).
This is how the whole book is written – the same thought
will be reworded 4 or 5 times to hammer home points that really don’t need
hammering home.
The worst part of this is that it’s not actually a very
long book and so much of it is spent on redundancy that there’s a sore lacking
in development. A character dies, for example, and clearly this is supposed to
be a devastating loss to Ari but we’ve had very little development of this
character and of his relationship to Air.
Similarly, one of the characters she begins to form a
connection with seems to turn on her – but it happened pretty soon after she
met him, there hasn’t been a whole lot of work in making that connection real
and tangible. Even Ari’s relationship with her mother, which becomes especially
relevant, is shallow and completely fails to deliver any emotional impact
There are also lots of things hinted at that haven’t
really been expanded on. When the supernatural was revealed to the world (how? Why?)
society and civilisation seemed to collapse. Now one thing that was really well
done was presenting all these little hints to the dystopian world without
overwhelming it (such as treating pain killers as a huge luxury) but there’s no
real indication WHY society collapsed. Another example is where Ari‘s father
decided to train her how to fight as soon as he learned she was a psychic, even
criticising her for having long hair that was a liability in combat. But there’s
no connection as to why learning she was a psychic drove him to train her in
battle – no indication she would be attacked or that her attackers couldn’t
simply be burned to death or even if fighting techniques were a way to focus
and control her powers. It’s like someone saying they realised they had a
legendary talent for bass so their dad taught them the intricacies of fly
fishing; it’s just presented as an obvious thing when the connection completely
eludes me. Or there’s her panicky claustrophobia which, again, begs for some
explanation or development (though “tragic past” is stamped large all over her).
Sadly, I can’t say I’m a big fan of the plot. Again, I
have to emphasise that this isn’t a very long book so there’s not a lot of
space. So when a substantial chunk of the book is given over to a very shallow
love triangle, complete with her having lots of sexy thoughts about James and
falling in insta-lust with Inarus, all in the middle of trying to solve the murder
of a child and stop a war was pretty frustrating. It had no real compelling
To finish that off, the actual mystery wasn’t that
mysterious (you want your organisation to sound like something a character
would want to join? Don’t call it PsyShade. Seriously. Evil Geniuses United or
Bad Guys Social Club would be more subtle). Most of it was predictable and Ari
solved what she did simply because the Coven (vampires) and Pack
(shapeshifters) were apparently so gung-ho for war (or written as lacking logic
simply because it makes Ari look better) that they missed the blatant attempt
to drive them both into a mutually destructive battle. The actual big bad that
is behind it all appears briefly but, again, isn’t really developed – and the
book ends without really addressing anything. The murder isn’t solve, some
monsters that attacked Ari are never really explained, the defeat of the
enemies is more of a twist you’d normally find in the middle of the book. This
is didn’t feel like a cliffhanger set up for book 2 – it felt like book 1
simply hadn’t been finished.
In terms of diversity our protagonist is Aria Naveed, a
WOC (mentioned tangentially and with no sense of culture or experience though
also free from stereotype). She’s obviously powerful and independent with your
standard tragic past, dangerous woo-woo and super skill in weapons. She manages
to avoids a lot of tropes about sexual purity or rage for no reason – there’s
really nothing wrong with her. I can’t champion her particularly because I can’t
think of any moments that made her especially compelling either.
We have some other women around the side in the pack (and
Melody the harpy who is kind of fun) but not a lot of development – but that
applies to all the characters but Ari, James and Inarus. So the same applies to
POC, some members of the pack we meet are definitely POC but don’t have huge
roles
There is a poke at the idea of shapeshifters being super
protective of women and how sexist and silly that is, but at the same time
there’s no explanation as to why. I don’t see why, especially since these
shapeshifters seem to have at least some female warriors, as well as physical
super strength, they’d develop this paternalistic attitude.
More intriguing elements are some very brief poking at
the idea of people, especially poor people, doing what they can when society collapse
and a nice moment when Ari hears that an alcoholic werewolf is being forcibly
entered into rehab and is uncomfortable – naturally wanting him free from
addiction but not at all on side with it being done without his consent.
There are no LGBT characters in this book. There are also
so dubious comparisons made between an anti-supernatural organisations and real
world hate groups. There’s a world of difference between hating creatures that
kill and eat people and hating POC.
I will say the world setting is somewhat interesting if
not original (I have to say there were a few turns of phrase – like being a
werewolf being caused by “lyc-V”, or the way the larger wereanimal pack is
divided into individual clans by species which I have seen in other books, but
that could simply be because of the amount of this genre I’ve read) it has a
lot of elements that could make for a fascinating story. We have the vampires
and wereanimals on the brink of war. A human society that has been virtually
destroyed by the revelation of the supernatural has so much depth to explore.
An organisation of humans trying to fight back the supernatural and restore
humanity to prominence – or at least to holding their own, could have so much
nuance as people fight to find the balance between hate group and
self-preservation. The psykers being caught in the middle – purely human but
with supernatural abilities, would be perfectly placed to have so much conflict
and confusion. Drop a lot of politics between the different factions on the
edge of war and throw in some fun extra creatures like the Harpy Melody and her
wonderful quirks and there’s a lot of potential here.
This book could have been amazing, it has all the
elements necessary to make it an excellent book and the foundation of a really
compelling series. The main character is decent, the world setting rich and an
excellent backdrop to tell a whole array of stories all with some epic meta.
But it is completely destroyed by its terrible, repetitive writing. The plot is
murdered by being simplistic and under developed, the characters and their relationships
are too rushed and nothing actually goes anywhere. It’s a real shame.
