Review: I need more from this series
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 28, 2014
If this was book 3 of the series I would have rated it five stars.  Except this is book 7, not book 3.  The story itself feels like an episode on the SyFy channel.  Overall it will probably have an impact down the road but right now it didn't do much for me.  I found myself skimming through a lot of pages.  The book starts out well enough and as you would expect.  Some conflict with Arys family.  That lasts for about a 1/3 of the book and is resolved when the real story starts.  The main story of this book is pretty much the after effect of book 3.Parts of the story don't make sense to me which may have to do with the fact that Arys and Alexa make eye rolling, are you serious, decisions that keep making things worse.  It's not limited to those two.  Arys brother Jenner is right up there too.  In the beginning there is an assault by a bunch of vampires.  It's too dangerous for Alexa so she has to leave, but everybody else that was suppose to leave stays behind because it's okay for them.  Alexa can face off with fallen demon Queen's but no named vamps are a danger.  Seriously?  I thought she was supposed to be a force.What bothered me about this book is the lack of progress in the overall plot.  There are questions still left unanswered or plot points that have been long ignored.  What is a hound of God?  Right now its Alexa's job title.  By now we should know what that means.  All we get are hints that its something special.  Why does she still have Shya's brand?  By now the brand should have been resolved and moved on to something more.  Maybe she ends up with a different one but one would think that being indebted to a demon would be high priority to remove.  Alexa is unconcerned with it.  This book series feels like a tv series.  Lots of filler with only touching on what's important.For me there is to much character repetition.  Alexa and Arys are okay together but they don't click like some novel couples do.  I keep hoping they will turn into one of the fated couples that I enjoy really reading about but they haven't.  The love triangle's with Shaz and Kale and a growing number of men remind me too much of when the Anita Blake novels went bad.  Willow isn't really in this book but he makes an appearence.  He's way too helpful and shady.  Fallon shows up as well and that's the same old same old.  He tells Alexa how much he hates her.  She responds with the same.  Blah blah blah with hate and threats that don't mean anything.  Fallon is probably going to be in love with her but he had to fake it while she was bound to Shya or something like that.To me it feels like the author drags things out too much.  Uses the same formula with the same plot devices over and over again.  Instead of progressing through them.  It seems like so long ago we learned that Arys will turn Alexa.  Well if you reveal it in book 2 or 3 but plan on doing it in book 12, what's the point in revealing it?The actual story ends at 70% and there is 30% epilogue.  The conflict with the books villain  does get resolved toward the end but its hastily thrown in and takes less than a chapter to finish.  The last chunk of the book is back in Edmonton with Alexa going through some filler and set up for the next book.  Overall it felt like a few separate ideas were mashed together.On the plus side the author does give some answers.  Which is the only thing in the book that really means anything at all.  The rest of it has no real impact that would require this book to be read.  Alexa speaks with an ancient vampire (not really a spoiler since it is obvious in the book) who helps point her in the right direction.  It's the best part of the book.  It does look like the author might, and I use the world reluctantly, be ready to really bring things to a climactic conclusion in the next book.  With the pace the author uses that could be drawn out over the next two or three books.