Review: Kiss of the Butterfly
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 3, 2012
The story revolves around Steven, a university student who with the help of Professor Slatina, receives a scholarship from the Balkan Ethnography Trust so that he can get inside of war-torn Yugoslavia to finish his research for his dissertation. Professor Slatina, however, has Steven researching vampire lore, but there is more to it than what Professor Slatina is willing to admit to Steven. Steven's research not only puts himself but other people in danger. The government doesn't want him uncovering certain truths.I have to admit that I dreaded writing this review. It's not that I hated the book, not at all, but it was very difficult for me to get into the story. I'd say I was probably half way through the book before it really became interesting. Under normal circumstances, I probably would have given up on trying to read it, if I hadn't agreed to review it.The factual information that was woven into the story, I enjoyed that to some extent. For some reason though, I felt like I was reading a history book. There are a lot of hard to pronounce names (though granted, there was a small guide at the front of the book that helped with that) and a lot of historical dates offered up. I had a hard time following along at time.Now, as I've said before, I'm no expert on punctuation and such, but I've read quite a lot in the last few years to feel as though there were quite a few errors in this book. Part of the reason I felt it was hard to get through the book was because of the way it was written. For example, instead of a character's unspoken thoughts being italicized, they had quotes around them as if they were spoken out loud. Occasionally there was a change in scene but no obvious break to let the reader know of the change, which would throw me off. And although this may seem odd to mention, colons were used way more in this book than I've ever seen used in one book before, and I don't believe it was always used correctly.Having said all that, I do feel that Mr. Lyon has a great way with words. For me though, I suppose that there was just too much, and it interrupted the flow of the story. But I was rather fascinated by the vampire lore, and I really enjoyed the cast of characters that Steven met along the way.**Complimentary copy provided by author/publisher for an honest review.**