Publisher - Entangled Publishing
Publication Date - 6th December 2011
Genre - Urban Fantasy
Source - Received from publisher for review
Rating - 2 out of 5: It was ok.
Book Info - Twenty-three-year-old Emma Jane Hellsbane just found out she’s not human - or, at least, not only human. She’s half angel, too, and now Heaven’s got a job for her: round up all the Fallen angels and their red-skinned, horned devil-demon minions and boot their butts back into the abyss. Only problem? The demons and their Fallen masters fight back… and they don’t fight fair.
Luckily for Emma, she can put a stop to the constant threat of having her head hacked off if she figures out which Fallen angel is her father—and then kill him before he kills her. Of course, in the meantime, she’ll have to avoid accidentally seducing her angelic mentor, help an old friend conquer his own Fallen sperm donor, and basically save the world from a cataclysmic divine smack down.
No one said being Heaven’s bounty hunter would be easy. But with a name like Hellsbane, Emma Jane was born for the job.
My Thoughts - I had very high hopes for this book. I had read some good reviews for it and I thought the premise sounded very good, but unfortunately I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
Emma is a likeable heroine who is thrown in at the deep end one day when an old friend turns up on her doorstep and she finds out that she is in fact half-human, half-angel. Since making this discovery, Emma has been continually chased by Fallen Angels and their demon henchmen and she copes with all this with her snarky and laid-back attitude to life. Emma's is a fun voice to read and her light-hearted commentary on the events around her made the book easy to read.
However, the story doesn't flow very well and I found it difficult to follow at times. For example, her old friend Tommy is also a nephilim and he is showing her the ropes of her new life. They are just friends who haven't seen each other since high school. Then all of a sudden a couple of weeks have passed and they seem to be more than friends, although this wasn't made very clear. An emotional intimacy was hinted at that made me think there was more between them than friendship, but there was no mention of any physical intimacy. And then, in the blink of an eye, Tommy was out of the story. This whole section was just very disjointed, left me feeling slightly confused and really distracted from my enjoyment of the story.
The other part of the story that I didn't particularly enjoy was the relationship between Emma and Eli. Eli is an angel who is tasked with looking after nephilim as they search for the Fallen angels. They seem to be attracted to each other, but Eli makes it known that he is able to influence other people's feelings and Emma is aware of him doing this to her at times. As a result of this, it's difficult to know how much of the attraction she feels for him is real and how much is forced on her by Eli. The whole situation just left me feeling uncomfortable.
Summary - A great idea for a novel that is written with a fresh, fun voice. However, the story does not flow well and the relationships between the characters are all very confusing. I did not enjoy it enough to feel that I would like to read the next book in the series.
Other reviews of this book:
Bending the Spine / Reading Reality / The Page Turner
2 comments:
Hmm, well it sounded like it had promise but I'm so sick of reading books that seem lazily thrown together. I want things to make sense!
I'm sorry this book wasn't for you, I think it's always very difficult when when exepct something for a book and finally we don't have it.
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