Review: Enjoyable but something was missing...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 12, 2011
Thank-you kindly to author, Katherine Pine for giving me the opportunity to read and review After Eden.The main protagonist Devi, is a young girl who has lived through a number of tragedies, the death of her father and the abduction of her twin brother, Kai. She is a loner and has few friends so spends a lot of time in her favorite book store, it is here she meets the new owner, Oz who is quick to smile, witty and good-looking in a rock-band emo sort of way.(POSSIBLE SPOILER)Devi was born without a spirit but with a beautiful soul, her twin on the other hand has the opposite and had a spirit which didn't belong in the human world so had been summoned and abducted by an Angel.As the story unfolds, it is a quest to protect Devi's spirit from the evil and to try and work out where and why her brother had been abducted.I really enjoyed Devi and Oz as characters, they complimented each other well; I was fascinated by Oz, his history and his curse, I really wanted to know more; he was quite sweet with Devi and I loved the way he was portrayed. The angel/demon mythology and the biblical undertones were quite unique and I really felt for Devi and the dread and fear she must have felt for her brother.The plot itself is rather slow at times but improved toward the end of the book, the world building was interesting but I felt there were a few unnecessary parts which didn't belong at all, one in particular (Devi's BF's revenge on her ex) was immature and didn't quite fit the story so I found myself skimming. I felt a sense of something missing. It just didn't grab me. I want to know how it all unfolds, but there was no sense of frustration, excitement or awe.There were a number of spelling errors and a bit of repetition that lend itself to the writing feeling just a tad bit amateur, although it wasn't a distraction from the story which gives credit to the world building and the character developmentThe secondary characters are well-rounded, I was intrigued by Forneus, the Devil but I wasn't quite sure where his loyalties lay; I wasn't so fond of Kim for a best friend & would have liked to have learnt more of Devi's relationship with her mother. There is a lot of room to grow and I feel that Pine gave us a good foundation for the beginning of a series.After Eden has a few scenes containing graphic violence, which I didn't mind but others reading YA may.