Review: Somehow veered way off track - contains mild spoilers
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2012
I'm chuckling as I write this review because I like to chime in on whether you can pick up a series from the latest book or if you should start at the beginning, but either way, I don't think it matters here.  You'll be lost no matter what.  For some reason, after reading the 6th installment, Blood Queen, it really felt like the end of the series and I have to say I wouldn't have been disppointed if it was.  This 7th book was so confusing to me and I couldn't keep track of all the old characters, nevermind all the new ones that were also introduced.Since Lissa was named Queen of Le-Ath Veronis and picked up 13 lovers/mates, this installment focuses on Lissa's interactions with each of them and how they're all working together to build the queen's new world.  Although the concept could have been interesting, there were simply too many people to keep track of.... we're talking over thirty people at this point, perhaps even 40 if you count all the kids too, and I've read every installment and couldn't keep track of half of them.  This series started off so wonderfully and it was emotional but easy to follow as we watched Lissa deal with betrayals while she grows more and more powerful.  Now, she's hit a point where's she's just too powerful, add to that time jumping and world jumping, a mate who has the same name as a planet, people with multiple names, pregnancies and children left and right, and people coming back from the dead, and it's simply too much.  I was very unhappy to see one of my favorite characters do something I didn't see coming a mile away, but I guess someone had to continue the theme of betraying Lissa.  I also don't like how some early character favorites now devolved to nothing but doting or harping doormats.  By spreading the characters so thin, I've found myself not really caring for any of them and I'm curious how the author plans to pull this all together.The secret ingredient to a good book for me is getting me completely invested in the characters and rooting for favorites, but the author has now made this virtually impossible.  Although they're all great characters, this author needs to seriously clean house, and unfortunately that sounds impossible to do since apparently they can just be brought back.  Not sure what happened here, but this is nothing like the series I started, reading five books in a row because I couldn't get enough.  It's a shame because the author is a talented storyteller but she's overcomplicated the story while diminishing any romance or suspense.