Review: The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks

On Brent Weeks, you sneaky bastard. After about two years of waiting for the sequel to The Black Prism, I was expecting another fiasco like with Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Trilogy. Despite my misgivings, The Blinding Knife was the kind of wonderful book I hate reviewing because the bad parts sound worse after standing in awe of such a fantastic fantasy writer.

For those that haven't read the first book, I'll just gloss over the facts so I don't reveal too much of the spoilers. The Blinding Knife is the second book in the Lightbringer series (which i can only pray is just a trilogy) taking place in a land ruled by 7 different "satrapies" and a culture dominated by people called "Drafters". Drafters can control different colors in the light spectrum to create things: anything from tools to weapons and everything in between. Because of the strain such power puts on a person, Drafters have a fairly short shelf life depending on how frequently they draft and how powerful they are. When drafters "break the halo" they go mad.

The main characters of the story are Gavin Guile, the spiritual leader of the government that controls the drafters, and his bastard son Kip, a powerful, but self deprecating child. There are many other characters introduced throughout the story, which I'll get to later, but for the most part, Gavin and Kip are the ones to look out for. While Gavin is going about his business trying to save the world and working through some serious issues, Kip is learning to control his colors and working to become a Blackguard (elite drafters who protect Gavin and other high ranking members of the government.)

My favorite thing about Kip is that he is the perfect anti-hero. Even though he is immensely powerful, a quick witted smartass, and always does his best to save the day, he is so self deprecating I'm always surprised he doesn't start cutting himself halfway through a conversation with his fellow classmates. A lot of this has to do with his backstory: his mother was an emotionally abusive drug addict and his father is the most powerful and influential drafter in the world. It's enough to give anyone a complex, but no matter what Kip accomplishes, he always finds a way to show a way that he failed, making him such a flawed character that I can't help but  want to give him a hug and a cookie before telling him to go watch cartoons while the adults are busy.

On the flip side, Gavin is less likable in my opinion. Gavin is the Prism, the most powerful drafter in the world and the spiritual leader of Brent Weeks story. Gavin is not limited by the limitations of other drafters. While Gavin presents a cocky, self assured attitude, he has so many secrets that he always give off an air that he is misunderstood. There were so many times in the books that Gavin could have done something to fix his situation but doesn't and waxes at length about how misunderstood he is and how he wishes things were different.

As far as the writing goes, I have little in the way of complaint except for the speeches Gavin gives realism vs. believability, and the character shifts. First off were the long speeches Gavin gives about various things and indeed, some of them are given by other characters. Whole pages are filled up with exposition where Gavin or someone else will tell exactly how things go in paragraphs so long, even I feel winded reading them. While some of it was very important to the storyline, it just felt overdone to me (a little like Professor Binns in Harry Potter, the History of Magic teacher who puts people into comas just by talking.)

One of my issues I actually brought up on Brent Weeks twitter page, but here's just one example. Kip, who is kind of a country boy, is going out to a naval war and describing ships in great detail, everything to the terminology for parts of the boat to the different names for them. Later on, another character who has been trained in battle for years, goes on to say that she can't name any of the different sized ships. While naming the ships was realistic, it wasn't believable that Kip knew the smallest of minute details about every type of ship on the seas but his friends look at them and just say boat.

I've raged about shifting character views too much, but Brent Weeks almost seemed to have that under control in the first book. While there were about four characters in the last book, all of whom were given rich detail, this time Weeks did something new. Inter-spaced in the chapters are small chapters going into other characters lives. These chapters hardly lasted longer than a page or two, and while one or two of them was important, for the most part they seemed random and unhelpful to the actual plot. While I wouldn't be surprised if they show up to be important later on, I don't see them being all that memorable in two years when the next book coming up. To me they were kind of like a friend asking if you remember that one guy who worked at dairy queen two years ago.

For the most part, though, The Blinding Knife was an excellent book. While I was reading it I found myself setting it down after a few pages, just to make sure that I wouldn't finish it too soon, and I can't wait for the third book, The Blood Mirror.

On Writing: Believability Vs. Realism

Over the last few weeks I've read a surprising amount of short stories by people who are looking to get into writing. The common factor among most, if not all of them, was the fight for realism. For many writers, there is a fight to make what they write the perfect mixture of believability and realism, because let’s be honest, even in fantasy, there's only so much disbelief you can suspend before it becomes too much.

Suspension of disbelief is like filling a cup: the more you fill it, the less it can hold. It's also true that as we get older, the cup gets smaller because when we are younger, we have a greater capacity for make believe. When we get older, we need more facts to show how things work: we want to know that magic works because people who can use it are fundamentally different than us, and that monsters aren't around anymore because people out there hunt them.

Realism and believability are intricately connected, they both affect one another. Just for an example, a friend of mine told me about a Civil War story he is planning. In the story, a Russian soldier is introduced, and I had to stop him right at that point and ask him if there were really Russian soldiers in the United States during the Civil War. While he assured me that there were, and I believe him since he is a big American history enthusiast as far as wars are concerned, the fact that I had to stop him to find out make it less believable, and can hamper a story in the long run. Realism, on its own, can hold a story back, because just like a joke with a ten dollar word attached to it, it's not a funny if you have to look it up.

One of the reasons that science fiction has risen so high in popularity is its attachment to believability. While most of the things that are involved may never happen, they still are attached to something that is true technologically. We may never create something that can transport someone over a long distance instantaneously, but the fact that we see the machine and the people working it, makes it entertaining. Fantasy, on the other hand, tries to add realism to a subject to create a better image of what we will never see outside of CGI and magic tricks.

The best stories merge the two, creating a perfect blend of the realistic and believable imagery that we can wrap our minds around, and entice readers to want to read more about their world where anything can happen.

Double Feature: Devil in the Dollhouse and Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey

After reading Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews, I was beginning to think that my bad luck with picking out books was finally behind me.At the same time, I figured it would be in my best interest to pick out an author that I've enjoyed since discovering them, just to be on the safe side.  I'm beginning to think some malevolent force is taunting me now, because even with that choice, I'm beginning to sound cynical even to me.

Richard Kadrey is one of my all time favorite authors of Urban Fantasy (though the top three are still safe and secure) and my favorite as far as unique story-telling. Kadrey has written a number of novels, but the best, in my opinion, has been the Sandman Slim books. In the stories, the main character, James Stark, escapes from a tormented existence in hell to get revenge against the people who sent him there when he was still breathing.

Throughout the novels, we learn more and more about James: his origins, his dreams, his favorite way to kill things that piss him off. My favorite thing about these books is that while they are violent and repulsively destructive, they actually happen for a reason. James doesn't destroy everything just cause it's fun. He does it because the things that make the world go round keep crapping on him and he just wants to get by with his clothes unsoiled.

 What I love about Richards writing is that he is a master at imagery, and he uses it for purely destructive reasons. With a lot of books, writers try to give you a good description of things that are happening. Kadrey takes it one step further by giving some of the most mind destroying images you can possibly imagine and forcing you mind to go right to them. Early on in the book, Stark is giving his lackeys a description of what he wants hell to look like, based off the movie "Metropolis". As he's telling them about this movie, he goes one step further by telling them the buildings look like "dragons fucking a spaceship," and as awful as that image is, it's the first thing that popped into my head. My own personal feelings about cussing in books is that it should only be done to enhance a situation. James Stark cussing is like listening to two Germans having an argument about about soccer: it all may sound harsh, and I certainly couldn't understand any of it, but they don't mean anything bad about it.

Devil in the Dollhouse is a short story by Kadrey, taking place in between books three and four. Stuck in Hell by Lucifer and forced to take over, Stark does his best to get by, but is forced to take up a job that even Lucifer didn't want completed. As short as the story actually is, I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but I thought it was really well written, and gave me a nice taste of the Sandman Slim world while I was waiting to read the fourth book. I wish I had enjoyed it a little bit more, because Devil Said Bang was definitely lacking.

Devil Said Bang starts up where Aloha From Hell, the third book left off, and had a good running start. Stuck as Lucifer in Hell, Stark is forced to go through some meaningless work as a glorified politician, trying to get Hell back in working order after the fight between the forces of Heaven and Hell laid it to waste. Stark is just trying to get everything in working order so that he can go back to earth to get his life back in order.

The book was great for a good half of it. My eReader (yes I use one. Bookstores aren't open 24 hours like gas stations and when I have an itch, I scratch it) says the book is 231 pages long. On page 96, the story takes a trip from "I love this book so much I want to frame it," to almost tossing a $200 piece of metal out my window and into the rain.

The first half of the book is almost entirely Stark trying to find his way out of hell, and eventually getting his wish, but as soon as it happens, there is a gigantic gap the size of an aircraft carrier to drive through where not only is Stark back in L.A., but he's also mysteriously in the middle of a job where ten different people are being talked about that I've never even heard about. People he knew before he went down to Hell are interacting as if he was out for a smoke, though over three months have passed since he was gone.

And I looked, there's no temporal dissidence (the space that exists between when an event happens and when the author writes it). It's almost as if these are two different stories, in which someone cut the end of one book and the beginning of another and tried to glue them together before anyone noticed. Think the beginning of The Goonies when the kids knock over the naked statue and glued it back on upside down. I felt like someone was pissing in my face.

Now I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt, so I'm sure in the next few days I'll start looking for a hard copy of this book, but in the meantime, this is just bad work on the part of the publisher if this is some kind of mistake, and an awful job by Kadrey if he meant for his book to be like this. There are no reunion between friends. There's no explanation to who the people are in the story, some of them very old characters, and a few I never even heard about being treated as if they were there the whole time and I was too stupid to notice. What's even worse is that I looked ahead in the book, pages 161-231 are complete copies of pages 96-160, meaning while I was charged for 231 pages, I only got 160 pages worth of a story, and even that wasn't enough to be a cohesive whole.

I will look into this further, and do a completely different review if it comes out that there was some kind of mistake, but in the meantime, I really have to say, Devil Said Bang was a drastic let down. It really makes me wish I had held out for The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks. The book would have been more expensive, and the author isn't exactly my favorite, but at least he is consistent in his writing.

Review: Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews

What is the hardest thing about reviewing a book? When you actually know how to read and spell words, the easiest thing in the world is telling people what you thought about it. The hardest thing to do, in my opinion, is review a book that you like.

I've done bad reviews. Anyone who has read anything I've done here knows that I don't hold back. But when it's a good book I always get this dull look on my face and feel the need to write out in big letters, "THIS BOOK WAS AWESOME!" and not much more than that. On the opposite end of things, when I read a book I hate, I can tell you in what flavor of hate it , anywhere from the "I didn't care for this book, but maybe it's just not for me" category, to,"I wouldn't recommend this to anyone with two brain cells to rub together." That being the case, reviewing Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews is somewhat of a challenge because I love everything about her books. But bear with me, I'll do my best.

I could go on an on about the intricacies of Ilona Andrews books in great detail, but put simply, the women in her novels kick ass. From a femanist perspective, the women of Ilona Andrews take charge in a way that is refreshing and inspiring in a way I don't see in other books with female protagonists, but still retain their female perspectives. The reason why, is that the women in her books aren't just protagonists, they are heroes.

Gunmetal Magic takes place in the same literary world as her other books about a character named Kate Daniels. In this world, magic returned to the world and caused a semi-apocalypse. Sky-scrapers fell, worn down by magical forces while forests grew. Technology began fading, monsters began appearing, and people began changing. Shapeshifters and Vampires became prominent focal points of society, as well as magicians and necromancers (specifically people who can control vampires with their will).

After a while, magic and technology began fighting for control, making it that sometimes technology works fine and sometimes it shuts off and world starts a never ending battle to survive with magical forces. Kate Daniels, the main character of many of Andrew's books taking place in a post-shift Atlanta, Georgia, was a mercenary with strange powers, a mysterious past, and a sword that can cut through undead like a hot knife through...well...undead. She has a connection to the Pack, the local group of shape shifters living under the rule of the beast lord, Curran, and over the stories, develops a more romantic entanglement.

One of my favorite things about the characters in the Kate Daniels books is that while the men are all masculine and dominant, the women have no problems going toe to toe with them and even coming out on top. This was true of the original series, and is no different in the spin-off book, Gunmetal Magic.

The main character in Gunmetal Magic, is Andrea Nash. Andrea started out in the second or third book of the original series as a close friend and colleague of Kate's, working for The Order of Merciful Aid, a form of law enforcement in the series dealing with specifically magical issues. Andrea came off as a gun nut and a blond bombshell all mixed into one, and I loved as the character filled out of the series and was given a more prominent roll.

Andrea is secretly a beastkin. In the series, humans who develop Lycanthropy, otherwise called Lyc-V, become shape shifters. On the other side of things, animals can also develop the virus and change into humans. It's been a while since I first read about them in the story, but for the most part, these kinds of shape shifters are almost always killed on sight. This gave Andrea an interesting plot because not only does she avoid the Pack, but the Order didn't know about her either because they frown on non-humans to the point of bigotry.

In the story of Gunmetal Magic, Andrea is finding her way in the world after being outed as a shape shifter and losing her job for the Order. She now works for her friend, Kate, as a kind of private investigator, and is coming to terms with being who she is. During the course of the story, Andrea is given a job by the Pack to investigate the murder of four shape shifters working for her ex-lover, Raphael.


The books is a lot of fun to read. It sounds silly saying it, but while there were a lot of serious things take place, the characters get breaks to be frivolous and even kind of funny (the scene with Andrea getting revenge on Raphael was particularly hilarious, as well as watching Raphael getting territorial.) The fight scenes were well done and interesting and everyone just meshed well together.

Now comes the inevitable slide down to what I didn't like about this book. While it was well written and the characters are unique and fit together so well, there are points in the book that are harder to follow, especially if someone were a first time reader. Characters and events were brought up in the story, but not given greater detail, which was the same problem I had with The Spirit War. If you are starting fresh on this book, you probably wouldn't know who many of the characters are, and Andrews doesn't go into great detail about who they are or what happened that she is bringing up. I find this is harder on the plot because I keep feeling the need to go back through previous books and read about what she is talking about.

The only other thing I didn't get was the continuity issue she had at one point, and I know it's just me nit-picking, but continuity should never be optional in the editing process. When Andrea goes to interview a possible suspect in the murders, there is a big sign at the front desk saying "Happy Birthday Boss". When Andrea asks how old the boss is, the secretary says 48. When she actually gets introduced to the boss later on in the story, she describes him as being in his late thirties. As far as errors go, it's small, but a small error in The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks gave away the plot twist in the first quarter of the book by saying the wrong name, and a single decimal point mistake can kill a person.

All in all, Gunmetal Magic was a wonderful read that I would recommend to anyone already into the series, but for people who are interested in getting into it, you should definitely start with Magic Bites, the first book in the series. It's an equally great read, and much less confusing that way.

Review: Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

There's a good reason why I've mostly been sticking to Urban Fantasy for my reviews rather than hard Traditional Fantasy. Urban fantasy gives you a world we are familiar with, and people who can live right next door to us and not even know it. Traditional fantasy is harder to read because despite the wonder and splendor of the imagination, fantasy presents you with a world that is fundamentally wrong. It gives you a world where up is down, left is right, and things aren't always the way we expect, and that means that with each new world you visit, you have to let go of what you know to be true and accept what the author is telling you as fact.

One of the hardest books I ever had to get into was Alan Campbell's Scar Night. In it, a city was suspended over an abyss by chain links the size of houses. It was hard to imagine a city held over an abyss: where were the chains suported from? Above them or to the side? was there land somewhere for it to be attached to? why did people stay in a place where they could constantly live in fear of falling to their deaths?  All of these questions came up, and it made the city of Deepgate harder to picture and therefore harder to accept as a place.

But I'm getting away from my point. I decided that I needed a little excursion to a new fantasy realm, and Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence looked like just the book I needed. Prince of Thorns is the first book by Mark Lawrence and sets the stage for a series in which the main character, Prince Jorg Ancrath kills just about anyone who gets within ten feet of him. Yes it seems catty of me to say it that way, so I should make an exception to that...he only does it on days that end in "y".

Jorg Ancrath is the Prince of Ancrath, a territory set in a world that might be ours hundreds of years after a nuclear war or might not be, I'm not quite sure (magic is involved a lot, but the name Plato gets thrown around a lot, as well as recognizable races like asian and norse.) When he was nine he watched his mother and younger brother get brutally murdered while he was secured in a brush of hook briars that almost bled him dry. When he got better he somehow became a sadistic, murderous deviant, set a bunch of prisoners free, and somehow became their leader. At the age of thirteen he returns to his homeland to get his birthright at whatever cost because he's determined that hes going to be king.

If my thought process seems a bit jumbled, I assure you its for a good reason: Prince of Thorns was one of the hardest books I've ever had to read. I had to force myself to take time to read it. It's not that it's a bad book. Unclean Spirits was a bad book and I got through that in three days. No, Prince of Thorns was like the Saw movies. For the first Saw movie, it was an intriguing concept and though it was gross and kind of disturbing, we all got through it. After that, we all knew what we were getting into and what to expect, a lot of blood and torture and sadism. The first twenty pages or so of Prince of Thorns was like the first Saw movie, a murderous thirteen year old killing men because he's the leader of a group of bandits because daddy didn't punish the man who killed his mommy. After that it made me increadibly uncomfortable reading it for more than ten or fifteen pages because it was like watching the last few Saw movies: I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.

If you have read any of my reviews before now, you've seen me use the term "literary manslaughter" before: the creation of a unique and interesting character just for the sake of murdering him to advance the plot. I am not a fan of that. Mark Lawrence takes that one step further and I never thought I'd use a term like Literary Genocide, but times change and needs must. Mark Lawrence seems to revel in the creation of characters for young Jorg to murder in just about every chapter to the point it almost seems like a fetish. Many chapters even begin with an excpert describing his "brothers", the bandits who work with him, many of whom don't last more than a few pages after being introduced. What's worse is that Jorg seems to have an inner monologue running in the most schizophrenic of ways where he debates the fact that he WANTS to murder people for little more than they displease him.

I could understand, and even respect this about Jorg if he were doing this all for a reason, but Jorg seems to have no real plan other than to be King, and no path to doing it. The entire book was a mix of my two least favorite cliche's: the unrepentant killer, and the aimless wanderer. The book starts with him razing a village to the ground, then wandering slowly back home, killing some people along the way because he can, getting home, killing people for no reason, leaving home to earn his inheritance, killing even MORE people, returning home, leaving home, and finally trying to get revenge for his murdered mother. There was almost no point to the entire first half of the book other than exemplifying that old bumper sticker: join the army, meet interesting people, then kill them.

I suppose I shouldn't call Jorg unrepentant, though: about halfway through the book, he realizes why he's been doing the things he's been doing and decides to actually do what the book says he was trying to do: avenge his mother and become king. I actually started actively hating this book at this point, because not only did it make Jorg seem wishy-washy and inconsistent, he still does the wrong thing constantly, time after time. He is the man who knows the right thing to do at every turn, and decides to do the wrong thing every time, it's just that he now knows that he;s the one deciding, not someone else for him.

I'd like to say that Prince of Thorns was a good book, worthy of your attention, but all in all, I would only recommend it to people who like a lot of flash and no substance. The characters were uninteresting to the point that even the author didn't think them worthy of life: it almost feels like waiting in line at Starbucks for an hour only to realize once you get in that there's a guillotine waiting for you just inside the door. The plot could have been much more interesting if it hadn't been layered under death and rape that made the Saw movies look like candyland, and the writing was contrived to the point of skipping paragraphs to see if the people would ever get to the point. I wouldn't read Prince of Thorns again unless I want to get angry, and in the words of Jorg Ancrath, "I don't like getting angry. It makes me angry."

First Timer: Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Dragging myself out of the slump that is The Black Sun's Daughter, I decided to do something different and take a look at some older Urban Fantasy for this review. Patricia Briggs is no new face in those circles: she’s done over a dozen books, and has even had her work turned into a graphic novel. Her longest series is referred to simply as the Mercy Thompson Series, and is about a shape shifter who can turn into a coyote and lives in a world that is just coming to terms with the supernatural.
Now I have to say that I was a little skittish about reading another book about female shape shifters. the fact is that shape shifting is a hyper masculine subject, seeing as almost all animal kingdoms are male dominated, and having a kick-ass female character in them goes against the grain pretty hard. Kitty Norville in Carrie Vaughn's books are a great example. the main character Kitty is the pack leader of her group and almost always gets herself into more than she can handle and never shows any signs of alpha mentality. it makes it really hard to follow and even more so, hard to believe. that being the case, I was pleasantly surprised with Moon Called.
The back cover of the book doesn't tell you much about the plot itself, but here's the gist: Mercedes "Mercy" Thompson is a skin walker (a rare breed of shape shifter in the stories cannon who can change instantly into a coyote, is immune to most forms of magic, and is considered a kind of demon hunter) who lives in the Tri-city area, and makes her way as a mechanic. In her world, werewolves, magic and faeries are real, but only the fey have come out to the general public, while some other groups are considering it as well, seeing as modern technology and forensics are making it hard for them to stay hidden. Mercy was raised by werewolves, but was never part of a pack because coyote are considered lesser animals to wolves. Despite this, Mercy's neighbor is a pack leader of the local werewolves and seems to have a things for her...sometimes.
And that's pretty much it.
I'd love to say that there is more to the plot, but for the most part, this book just seemed to be about introducing the different elements of the universe of Mercy Thompson. You get a good look at the werewolf packs in her area, as well as a town in Montana that is all werewolves and their families. You get to see the vampires and their leader in the Tri-city area and their effect on Mercy. But beyond that, the book had a very scattered feel to it, jumping from one place to another with characters making conjectures about what’s going on and being wrong time and time again. There is a major plot point about people being turned into werewolves and being sold, but it’s mostly just to move the story around like a one-sided game of checkers.
All in all it was a very interesting read, and I do plan on reading the second book, though I won't review it. There were only two big points I do want to make about the book though. The first is of course about Literary Manslaughter. One of the characters is introduced early in the book and killed off with almost no point whatsoever. One second he's there giving clues about the plot, the next he's dead and there is literally no point to it whatsoever. It doesn't drive the story any further because there are other events going on at the same time. There was no reason to kill him, and I'm a big fan of not creating characters just to murder them, it just seems very callous to me.
The second part was the last two chapters. almost everything in the story is resolved in the second to last chapter, but in the final part of it, it goes about telling about different things happening one after another, and all of them are completely out of Mercy's perspective: things happening in the wolf pack in Montana, and a story being printed that couldn't have happened for months or even years after the main story. The final chapter is all about Mercy getting back to her life at the garage and going out on a date with a werewolf. There was no point to the entire chapter other than fleshing out a few final details that weren’t all that important to the story to begin with. It reminded me of the Twilight movies where they are doing shopping or talking about dresses: nothing is happening and while it might be realistic, it’s not very interesting.
I would consider recommending to the five people who like Urban Fiction and never read her before, but keep in mind there is more to the story than the first book, and things are bound to get more entertaining.

Double Feature Part 2: Darker Angels by M. L. N. Hanover

Well, I suppose I can only wait so long before I have to write the second part of my double feature out. To be honest I finished Darker Angles last friday, and I've been struggling with what to say about it. So I supposed I should start with a description.

Darker Angels is the second book in the Black Sun's Daughter series by M. L. N. Hanover, preceeded by Unclean Spirits. The books are about Jayn`e Heller, a 23 year old woman with no intrinsic skills that can nonetheless do some interesting things when under stress. She has three male companions, all of which are in love with her but one (thank god, it was beginning to seem a bit self indulgent) and can all do much more than she can.

In this book, Jayn`e is still going through all of her rich dead uncles estates and gets a call from a woman named Karen Black, who is in New Orleans tracking down a killer who is possessed by a demon who uses its host to kill people its host becomes close to.  She knows who the victim will be and needs help, which Jayn`e and her friends are only too happy to help with.

The problem with Darker Angels is that I am so fresh off reading Unclean Spirits that the formula from the last book is still fresh in my mind. Jayn`e will kick something butt at one point but seem mostly inept for most of the book with no special qualities, she will get irritated, quietly, about people pronouncing her name wrong (honestly hon, just introduce yourself first instead of letting people guess), will sleep with someone she shouldn't...again, and try to take on the supernatural baddies too soon and get her butt handed to her. All of these were definitely qualities in the negative catagory, but then it came to me: what do you do when you know a formula by heart?

Well the answer, if you know anything about math, is that you start canceling everything out that you don't need, and plug in the new variables.

Unfortunately, by the time I finished thinking that way, Darker Angels stopped being this irritating story about a woman out of her depth with something supernaturally weird about her, and became a story about a woman doing little to nothing but talking about how weird it is to be rich with three men traveling with her and little to nothing else.

Don't get me wrong, having a rich girl tracking down the possessed isn't the riveting read that most Urban Fantasy novels come up with on the fly, but it does have its rich moments. Mostly I just feel like the guy who's seen a movie too many times in theater and is shouting up at the screen, "Don't go in there, you fool, the killer just went in there!". Because that's the feel that most of the book has. It's secret plot twists are so transparent that they might as well be saran wrap, and I have to wonder if Hanover thought it would be riveting to have everyone make comments about something vague and off topic and not have the reader go "well I'm sure that won't come up again in the next book!"

I could go on about how the characters are flawed individuals and that's what makes them unique and interesting to read about, but honestly there is so little about them given to the reader that I'd be lying. Not much information is given about each character, and that alone makes it hard to believe that they've been living and working together for so long. It's almost like saying you're friends with the bus driver because he comes by your apartment every day and getting upset when he changes routes.

It's hard for me to say bad things about a book, since I love reading so much, but the fact is that the Dark Sun's Daughter is kind of a bad book. I would only recomend it to people who don't have a lot of free time to read, but still want something to waste time while they are waiting for a doctors appointment or have nothing to do for an hour and a half. I certainly wouldn't want to read it for longer than that myself, had I the choice.