Review: An Auspicious Beginning for a New Paranormal World
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 5, 2012
An easy read for a full length novel,Crescent Boundbrings the readers to a world of witches (the term is used for both sexes) wherein the motto is a variation of medical doctors Hippocratic Oath of "Do No Harm."An interesting world at the least, author Karli Rush has all natural-born witches below the age of 18 straddle two worlds - the mundane (human) and the witches (paranormal). It is a world where witches attend drag races, go to nightclubs and very much at home with the technology from the iPod to the internet. They even attend their high school prom. These things are all done so that the witches can survive/live with the mundane without being noticed as different.After their graduation from high school, they attend Arcane University where they learn the art of witchcraft.Written with a Young Adult voice, I am unsure if I would recommend this for young adults because there are actually a lot of sex scenes. Though they are not graphic and very far from being classified as erotica, still it is hard for me to say that the book is appropriate for tweens and 13-year-olds. That said, I will say that this is PG 15.I thoroughly enjoyed the book and really liked Alyssa and Marc, the two protagonists in the story. I even like their friends. And most of all, I am so happy on how the author presented the adults. In fact, the author did more than just make the characters likeable. She developed all of them enough to be three-dimensional.So, why am I giving the book only THREE STARS? There are several reasons:--- Like the characters, the book straddled the "young adult" and the "erotica" genre. There are enough sex scenes in the book to toe the line but since they are not graphic, a reader can turn a blind eye. I don't mind sex scenes. I have reviewed many sexy and erotica books. What I don't like is the author seem to be pandering to two different reader groups. The book would have been enjoyable without the sex scenes. Everything could have been implied and it will get the same effect. I feel as if there is a word count that the author had to reach and the sex scenes provided an easy solution. For that, I took out one star.--- Grammatical and spelling errors. As someone here already pointed out, living in a texting world, we already have to live with lots of grammatical and spelling errors. But, when I am reading a book, I want it to be follow the standard grammatical and spelling rules. Usually, I will gloss over them if there were only one or two, but there were enough errors for me to get distracted and re-read some passages. For that, I took away one star.--- The last one, not enough to for me to take away a star but enough for me to mention here. This is a ***SPOILER*** so please stop here if you don't want to know.InCrescent Bound, it was mentioned that Arcane University, the school of witchcraft in Wyoming was established in 1392. But, it was not until 1492 that Columbus arrived in America. Yes, the Vikings came to today's Canadian province of Newfoundland during the 10th century, but it was not written anywhere that they actually crossed the North American mainland and reached Wyoming. And of course, the Eskimos who are Asian descent went to today's Alaska much earlier than that.I only mentioned it because there is a big European influence in the storyline. And I would have taken it as part of artistic license, but the author was very descriptive of all the fashion labels (I have a feeling that Karli Rush is a fashionista), that having Arcane University established even before the Europeans reached Wyoming is worth a mention in this review.