A good series, but a little long
In honor of Halloween, I decided to dust off an old witch series and do a review of the entire series. There are 15 books in the Sweep series by Cate Tiernan. I started reading the Sweep series probably about 6 or 7 years ago (before my blog) when my Borders was going out of business. They had the first three bind up volumes for next to nothing so I grabbed books #1-9 (there are 3 books in each bind up) for I think $5-6 total. Once I started reading I really got into the witchy atmosphere and elemental vibe of the magic in Sweep, so I went back to Borders and grabbed the rest of the books that were out. Books 10-15 I had to get individual novels because their bind up wasn't out yet, and consequently my series doesn't match, which makes me kind of mad.<br /><br />The Sweep series started out really strong. I read the first 4 books in no time at all and I couldn't get enough of them. I read them all back to back, which I find myself doing more and more when I have a bind up. I will read the whole massive tome as if it were one super long story. Morgan, Cal, and Hunter completely drew me in. I think the first 4 or so books were close to 4.5 or 5 star reads for me, but then as I hit book 5 and beyond, I started to lose interest.<br /><br />The characters started to annoy me in rotation, and the plots started to drag on. I think this was a case of the series going on too long for my liking. The later books started focusing more on side characters, and that didn't really do anything for me. Especially since we were right in the middle of the overall story arc, so the side stories (books 11, 14) were distractors from me and I would have preferred them to come after the series was done, or put in as novellas. Looking back on my notes from books 11-14 they all centered around the same thing- not enough Morgan and Hunter. Here is my snippet of what I thought of book 13 when I was reading it.<br /><br />  &#34;This book was a side storyline from the main characters, and personally I don't enjoy those as much. Morgan and Hunter were barely in the book at all. Alisa was the focus of this installment and we got to learn about her family. It was a good story but with only two books left in the series I had hoped to have more about Morgan and Hunter.&#34;<br /><br />In book 14 we finally got back to the main storyline and I liked that more. It dealt with a growing discontentment with the council, which was something that I was waiting for the entire series. It was the one plotline that I was hoping would turn up more and a main reason I stuck with the series. My sticking point with the series, other than the side plots that were literally full books long, were the fact that Morgan and Hunter have not really developed as a couple. They started out with a lot of character growth but for the past 3 or 4 books they have kind of been stuck in the same place.<br /><br />Overall Series: this series is very long and it has a lot of highs and lows. Some of the books are really great, and others were a total snoozefest for me. The magic and the council elements were really well done and they were the highlight. Read the Sweep series if you love all things wiccan and witches and cann't get enough books about them. You can probably get some pretty good reals on the bindups. But in my opinion this series was only average overall, and got worse as it went on. It picked up at the very end (books 14 and 15), but it took too long to get there.<br /><br />*Disclaimer- I bought these books from Borders (remember borders??) And I am not compensated for my thoughts.
Rating: 3 stars