Tagged: rye

Amplified by Alexia Purdy

Amplified by Alexia Purdy(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Who wants to be the prey in a world full of hunters?

In the aftermath of the end of her world, April Tate decides that it’s high time to leave the city that never sleeps, Las Vegas. After learning the origins of a Zompire Plague remedy, she risks her life to steal the antidote, makes the decision to separate from Jeremy for a while, and joins a small band of new and old comrades on a trip to the Pacific Coast. There they search out a legendary hive of vampires who are more than just wild, blood drinking creatures, they could be the very people she needs to help her.

On a mission to save the last of humanity, April will use the antidote to save some from eternal damnation, but will her decision bring hope for the future or create an ever bigger, unforeseen devastation?

[Full disclosure: Alexia Purdy provided me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.]

I never quite know what to expect from Alexia Purdy but it’s usually good.  Amplified was no exception.  It was amazing!

April is a very changed person.  She’s found the best friend she thought was dead, is blood-bonded to Christian (her former enemy) and is determined to find the cure for the vampire plague that’s devastated her entire world.  Looking back on who she was in the first book, April has changed quite a bit.  She has to learn to let go of her mother, who committed suicide and she must do the same with her little brother because he wants to stay in the underground human city.  It’s time for her to grow up and move out and a lot of the book focuses on that as she journeys to find her way in a world that has been turned upside down.

The plot was very fast-paced, more so than the first two books in the series.  You have April seeking a cure at Christian’s old colony and then her travelling elsewhere.  There’s danger around every corner with Ferals and other nasty things lurking about.  Alexia Purdy rarely lets the pace drop and when she does it’s only so you can catch your breath before she throws the next plot twist at you.  It’s very intense and I honestly couldn’t put my Kindle down until I finished.

I liked how April’s world expanded throughout the novel.  We get to travel to different places and see how badly they were hit by the plague.  We get to see other parties vying for a cure and still others trying to suppress a cure at all costs.  There are some very important moral questions brought up and I like how at the end there’s still some ambiguity surrounding whether or not to release a cure into the world.  Have we seen the last of some of these important questions?  Absolutely not!  There’s still a long way to go and I know April will rise to face any challenges that come her way.

A kick-butt protagonist, excellent world-building, a fast-paced plot and some very interesting moral dilemmas make Amplified my favourite book in the Reign of Blood series so far.  I can’t wait for book 4!

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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Disarming by Alexia Purdy

Disarming by Alexia Purdy(Cover picture courtesy of Kristina’s Books & More.)

The world has changed. One must adapt to survive or hold on to the crumbling shards of humanity.

April continues to hold her fragile world together, but the ties that hold her family together are quickly unraveling. Rumors of a massive human underground settlement draw her to the shadows of the city once more in search of other survivors more like her, even with the hybrid vampires opposing her every move.

The darkness hides secrets along with the continued threat the Feral Vampires create, but a greater evil hides within the city. Something tells April that the humans will be less than welcoming of her, and that’s if she can find them before the Vampires do. Joining sides with the enemy might be the only choice she has left.

[Full disclosure: Alexia Purdy provided me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.]

And April’s back, this time with more romance, more blood and more excitement than the first book!

Remember how the only thing I really had to criticize in Reign of Blood was the unrealistic dialogue?  Well, that’s mostly resolved in Disarming, thank goodness.  We get a lot more character interaction so good dialogue is essential and although it’s far from perfect, it’s so much better.  As for the plot, it’s just as fast-paced as ever.  We start out with April and the lovesick Rye trying to solve the mystery of a large colony of humans still living in the city and once we learn the truth of their colony everything spirals out of control.

I don’t think I’m spoiling too much when I say that yes, there’s a love triangle in Disarming.  Is it annoying?  No.  Is it believable and does it develop organically?  Absolutely!  I love that huge twist Alexia Purdy used the love triangle to create because heaven forbid love triangles have a purpose in the plot other than to create needless drama.  Just when you think everything will develop perfectly between April and Rye despite April’s reluctance, an old friend from the first book pops up and we have ourselves the first good love triangle in a long time.

April and Rye are still awesome characters and I have to say that April really did a lot more maturing in Disarming.  She was already mature, but she becomes even more like an adult in this book because so much happens to her and her poor little brother.  Some of the choices April has to make in the last part of the book show how much she’s changed and they definitely make me eager for the third book, Amplified.

Aside from the crazy fast plot, my favourite element of the book is the actual vampires.  You have your feral vampires, your traditional sane vampires, humans and then there are hybrids like April.  I don’t want to give too much away, but you’ll discover a terrifying new type of vampire by the end of the book.  It just goes to show that not everything is as it seems and like all species, vampires also evolve as time goes on.  Truly, even if you aren’t a big vampire fan you’ll love Disarming.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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Reign of Blood by Alexia Purdy

Reign of Blood by Alexia Purdy(Cover picture courtesy of Alexia Purdy’s Blog.)

“Never tease anything that wants to eat you. My name is April Tate and my blood is the new gold. Vampires and hybrids have overrun my world, once vibrant with life, but now a graveyard of death shrouded in shadows. I fight to survive; I fight for my mother and brother. The journey is full of turns that I am quite unprepared for. And I’m just hoping to make it to the next Vegas sunrise…”

In a post-apocalyptic world, a viral epidemic has wiped out most of the earth’s population, leaving behind few humans but untold numbers of mutated vampires. April is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the remains of Las Vegas one year after the outbreak. She has become a ferocious vampire killer and after her family is abducted, she goes searching for them. What she finds is a new breed of vampire, unlike any she has seen before. Unsure of whom she can trust, she discovers that her view of the world is not as black and white as she once thought, and she’s willing to bend the rules to rescue her family. But in trying to save them, she may only succeed in bringing her fragile world crashing down around her.

[Full disclosure: I was sent a free ebook by Alexia Purdy in exchange for an honest review.]

With the vampire over-saturation of only a couple of years ago, it’s difficult to write about vampires.  What’s even harder in general is reading about vampires as I love vampires that are portrayed as stone cold killing machines.  Most YA vampires at not like that at all.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by Alexia Purdy’s vampires.  There are rabids, which are stone cold killing machines with few emotions or thoughts and then there are vampires as we’ve come to know them: sophisticated, intelligent and strong, but still undeniably human.  Both types of vampires drink blood, but with humans in short supply how they adapt is fascinating.  The thinking vampires also have a few more traits I found interesting but won’t really get into because they’re spoilers.

What I liked the most about Reign of Blood was April herself.  In the beginning, she sees the world in black and white: humans good, vampires evil.  Simple, right?  Obviously by the end this viewpoint has changed drastically but I love how she changes over a longer period of time.  April doesn’t wake up one day and think “Hey, vampires are okay”.  No, she gradually comes to befriend some of them and learns that maybe she isn’t entirely innocent herself in this world.

Characters like Blake and Rye were interesting and just when I was getting ready to cringe (two males, one female = love triangle), Alexia Purdy spared me.  She even sort of inverted the love triangle trope by the end, but I’m not going to get into that.  Either way, Reign of Blood was action-packed but still slow enough that character development and world-building were present.  My only complaint about the book is that the dialogue can be quite stiff at times.  I don’t know any seventeen-year-old, let alone one that lives with only her mother and baby brother with no human contact, that speaks like that.  But the dialogue problem was minor compared to the world-building, character development and pacing.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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