Review: action packed fantasy.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 23, 2013
Werewolves Be Damned:  A Magic and Mayhem Novel.  Stacey KennedyStacey seems to be quite a prolific author having several books to her name but I've not read any so far, so was interested to review this one. With vampires, witches, werewolves and the romance element it ticks all my favourite boxes.I found it quite hard to get into at first, there was the action packed prologue that introduced us to Nexi and her need for vengeance - I worked out the connection later but at first reading this then going onto the section where she is in the Otherworld I just found it confusing. Once I placed who was what and how they fit in the story I enjoyed it more, but there were so many different characters for what's quite a short novel that it was a lot of information over a small space of time.Nexi was quite a difficult character for me to like, she clearly had strong morals which suited me but she was quite selfish at times, going her own way despite advice from and the danger to others. Kyden was a great character and the sexual spark between them was good. I do like some sexual tension - its more interesting when there's that combined with some personal friction between the characters and Stacey does that well here. There did - as I've said before - seem to be a huge number of characters for a shorter length book. I found that quite difficult to manage and remember just who was who. Nexi seems to take to her training incredibly quickly - one minute she's human and then just one month later she's taking out werewolves.....I'd have had more belief if a longer time had passed, similarly the way the top vampire, werewolf and guardian defer to her in the final adventure - some of these characters were hundreds of years old and though fantasy means suspending belief that was a step too far for me.The story itself was interesting and allowed for several action packed moments. It was well written and all lose ends tied up - I hate to get to the end of a book and wonder "...but what happened to/when..."  For me it was difficult to accept that Nexi could become a leader when for me she hadn't yet had the experience to merit it. If she'd had been part of the action, but organised by more senior character I'd have accepted her role so much better - clearly she was a bit of a renegade and she'd have argued and sometimes gone her own way, but I think it would have been a better fit for me.Overall there were parts I enjoyed - the developing romance between her and Kyden  was good, with some fairly heated moments and the basic premise was sound but I struggled too much with the way Nexi developed from a mundane human to a person with super strength and more and more magical powers just when they were needed. In a longer novel and over an extended time span it could have worked but covering the few weeks it did it wasn't believable enough for me.Its priced at 3.79 for 529kb  on kindle, I'm guessing around 120-150 pages, I don't have that info.Stars: three stars, it had potential but didn't cut it for me to be more than just OK.