Eyes of the Seer by Peter Dawes

Eyes of the Seer by Peter Dawes(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

It all started with a murder. Two victims lay dead at the hands of Peter Dawes, but what laid in wait for him was not the sound of sirens or the banging of a gavel. It would turn a doctor into a killer and a man into a monster.

Follow Peter as he exchanges his blood-stained clothing for tailored suits, his scalpel for fine-crafted daggers, and reinvents himself as the newest vampire-child in a coven of decadent sophisticates. He even takes on the name ‘Flynn’ – a child of red – in honor of his new-found devilish side, and to remove one of the last tethers to his human past.

For four years, Flynn embodies every bit the bloody immortal he was sired to become. Under the reign of his maker, Sabrina, he establishes a reputation as the most feared assassin to ever terrorize the covens of Philadelphia. But the surefooted-steps and quick hands that make him a virtuoso when it comes to killing humans and vampires alike are a mark of the mortal destiny which haunts him even beyond death. And despite his efforts, Peter’s humanity is not as dead as some would prefer.

On the verge of completing their vie for power, Sabrina’s ‘dark-killer’ will suddenly find himself at odds over his devotion to his mistress when an impish sorceress named Monica awakens the hidden powers he was destined to possess. In this world of macabre and shrewdly practical immortal beings, will Flynn’s supernatural gifts be used to orchestrate the wicked deeds of his maker? Or can the cold-blooded nature of a vampire be warmed by the compassion of a Seer?

EYES OF THE SEER is a gripping tale conspicuously authored by Peter Dawes – years later, he’s decided to put the story of his life to paper, albeit listed as ‘fiction’. (Vampires can’t really claim to exist, after all. It would ruin the whole gig.)

[Full disclosure: I received a free paperback copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.]

I’ll admit it: I like vampires.  Not the wimpy sparkly ones of Twilight, but the cold-blooded killers that are as ruthless as they are beautiful that you find in many movies and other books.  So when I was contacted about reading Eyes of the Seer, I knew I was in for a treat.  I was not disappointed.

Flynn/Peter is a complicated character.  He just killed his fiancee and her lover and then is suddenly turned into a vampire.  Not only that, his maker seems to think he has a higher purpose and is determined to make him into a vampire super-assassin.  But is everything as it seems?  Of course not and that’s what makes Flynn’s journey from mild-mannered but slightly morose doctor to a ruthless killer to something else (I’m not going to spoil it for you).  It’s fascinating as Flynn struggles to find his true self and it’s not at all simple, so you’ll be in for an emotional roller coaster.  There are times when I hated Flynn and times when I loved him, but by the end I was satisfied as to how Peter Dawes developed his character.  It felt like a believable transition.

The best part about this book is that although it is quite character-driven, it is short and has a very fast plot.  Like I said, it’s not a simple plot so you’re in for one heck of a ride as you try to guess what will happen next.  Some of the twists and turns are predictable while most are not.  Flynn has a long road to go down in only five years and he’s constantly adapting to the latest developments, including the appearance of the mysterious and beguiling Monica.  He has to make some pretty tough choices and he is constantly fighting a battle with his two sides (the good side and the ruthless vampire side); sometimes one side beats the other, but the beaten side never stays down for long.  It definitely keeps you guessing.

The writing was excellent.  Peter Dawes has a very concise writing style, but also a very beautiful one.  He can describe things in perfect detail without going too far overboard and boring readers.  It’s a tough balancing act, but he’s able to keep up the suspense during the many fight scenes while at the same time giving readers a good picture of what’s going on.  Not many authors can do that, so I was very impressed.

Finally, the world-building was actually pretty good.  It wasn’t the “oh wow” level but it was pretty darn close.  Just when you think that you know everything there is to know about vampires in Dawes’ world, he throws you for a loop.  For one, there are other supernatural beings out there that are just as nasty (if not more) than vampires.  Flynn has created himself a few enemies, but because of his unique nature, a few friends to compensate for the enemies.  I can’t really go into detail without spoiling some of the good surprises, but I will reiterate my point: this book keeps you guessing.

You really can’t ask for more than that in a vampire book.  You have a believable vampire mythology, an interesting if not entirely sympathetic main character, awesome writing and lots of plot twists.  The book ends on such a cliffhanger that you’ll be like me, though: begging for the next book.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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The Rebel Trap by Lance Erlick

The Rebel Trap by Lance Erlick(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Voices in sixteen-year-old Annabelle Scott’s head aren’t God or signs she’s going mad—yet. Despite being a Mech Warrior recruit, she rebels against her female-dominated régime by not only refusing to kill Morgan, a handsome boy she’s attracted to, but also helping him escape.

Annabelle’s commander gives her auditory implants and contact cameras for an undercover assignment to investigate her corrupt police captain. Morgan hacks the implants to plead for her help in freeing his brother. As a pawn in a bigger game, she wants to help Morgan yet needs to discover the link between an attempted assassination of her adoptive mom, her police captain, and the geek institute that holds Morgan’s brother. Can she do so without falling into a trap that could destroy her family and get her killed?

[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook in conjunction with the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]

The Rebel Trap is the sequel to The Rebel Within but is actually the third in chronological order in Lance Erlick’s rebel series.  (Although within the book universe it’s actually book #2.)  Thankfully for me, you don’t have to read the first installment about Annabelle to understand this book.  It seems that the whole series is quite self-contained so that you can start at the end like I did or start at the beginning.

What I really liked about the book was the characters.  Of course your impressions of many of them are biased because you’re seeing them largely through Annabelle, but I like how Lance Erlick gave us insights into people around the main character, including her sister Janine and her adoptive mother.  But of course Annabelle was my favourite character.  She’s tough and determined to succeed in life but there’s a slight hitch when she gets auditory implants and contacts that allow her commander to see and hear everything she does for a mission.  There’s a lack of privacy and then there’s having your boss see and hear everything you do.

Still, she finds a rather interesting way around it as Morgan constantly hounds her to help him rescue his little brother.  And that really showcases the complexity of Annabelle: she wants to help Morgan’s little brother because she knows imprisoning young boys and men for their gender is wrong but at the same time she needs to root out the corruption taking hold in her society.  Did I mention that she’s also caught in a little power war between the commander of the Mech Corps and the commander of the police?  Like all teenagers, Annabelle does angst a fair bit, but unlike some her angst is completely deserved at this point so it’s not actually annoying for the reader.

The only thing I didn’t really like about this book was the repetitiveness of the plot.  It seemed to follow a pattern: Sam would tell Annabelle not to do something, she’d do it, Sam would be happy because she discovered new evidence against Commander Voss and Scarlatti.  This was sort of understandable the first few times because Annabelle was figuring things out and really blundering through the whole ‘subtle’ part of the missions, but it got kind of annoying after the fourth or fifth time.  Unfortunately, this constant repetition made the plot kind of predictable.  I knew how it was going to end and I saw pretty much all of the twists and turns because of course everything Annabelle tries to do as an intern cop is made to trip her up.

Still, despite my dislike of the whole repetitiveness of the thing, the plot was at least reasonably fast-paced.  It was slow enough for Lance Erlick to develop his characters properly but not so slow as to bog the reader down.  Not all of the characters’ motivations are clear in the beginning (although you can probably guess if you try hard enough) so it does keep Annabelle and the readers on their toes until about the middle of the novel where the motives become clearer.

The characters really are the strength of The Rebel Trap, though, so even if the plot was totally awful (which it really isn’t) I would definitely recommend this book.  They’re ambiguous enough to be real but not so ambiguous that you feel like their actions come from nowhere.  It’s a delicate balance and Lance Erlick does it well.  So if you’re into dystopias with flipped societies (women are superior in this one as opposed to men), then I would recommend The Rebel Trap to you.

I give this book 3.5/5 stars.

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The Best and Worst of November 2014

November went by in a blur for me, to be honest.  Between not having internet for half of it and not having water for the past day and a half currently, I’m really quite sick of rural life.  Still, it makes me appreciate all the more the fact I’m moving to a real-life city in the summer.  So overall, not a bad month but not a great month.

In November, despite spotty posting, I managed to get 6,022 views including a total of 3,875 unique views.  That’s fewer views than October, but I can’t really complain because of the aforementioned spotty posting.  Hopefully the internet I pay through the nose for will be slightly more consistent in the future.

So what were my best posts this month?

1.  Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal

2.  How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour

3.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

4.  Best Seller by Martha Reynolds

5.  The Mad Reviewer is Open to Review Requests (Temporarily)

That’s actually a pretty respectable list, with two new posts finally making it.  My review of Best Seller by Martha Reynolds is still going very strong and I’m glad that the author is still promoting it.  It makes me far more likely to review books by authors in the future when they promote the heck out of my reviews, even mediocre ones.  As for the last item on my list, I’m quite happy with the response I’ve had to my call for submissions.  I’ve got 14 locked in right now and I’ve reviewed four of them; so far, so good.

And what were the worst posts this month?

1.  A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

2.  Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess by Carolyn Meyer

3.  Guest Posting Today

4.  My Rating System

5.  “Game of Thrones man hatred” and More Weird Search Terms

The only surprise there is that one of my weird search term posts finally made the list of the worst in terms of views.  That’s shocking, actually.  As for the rest, I can’t really complain.  They’re either old articles or announcements or books that aren’t necessarily the most popular at the moment.  Next month that list will totally change, just like every other list of the worst articles/reviews.

Well, that was how my November went.  How was yours?  Did you watch that heartbreaking mid-season finale of The Walking Dead last night?

Discussion: NetGalley

For those of you that don’t know, NetGalley is a site where publishers and authors put ebooks (usually ARCs, but they don’t have to be) to be requested by reviewers.  Us reviewers fill out a profile containing our blogging information like our statistics and what we review and then we request these books.  Sometimes you get accepted, sometimes you don’t.  Since I hit 1,000 followers I don’t usually get turned down, but then again I’m very picky about what I request and I read their criteria for reviewers.

I’ve always found NetGalley’s user interface clean, simple and easy to use.  Edelweiss was an absolute nightmare when I tried to sign up after using NetGalley for so long.  Seriously people, how do you use that site with tiny writing, no logical order and pretty much zero instructions?  Unless they’ve vastly improved it, I doubt I will ever use my Edelweiss profile.  NetGalley is enough for me at this point.

But what I want to know now is this: If you’re a reviewer, do you use NetGalley?  What are your experiences like on there?  If you don’t use NetGalley, why not?

And, if you’re an author or a publishing professional, are your books on NetGalley?  Why or why not?  If so, what are your experiences on it like?

Under My Skin by Shawntelle Madison

Under My Skin by Shawntelle Madison(Cover picture courtesy of NetGalley.)

Everyone wants to either be a member of the Guild or work for them. Little does the populace know that the Guild hides sinister secrets…

For Tate Sullivan, life in her small, coastal town is far from glamorous. The affluent lives of the Guild members and their servants isn’t something she has ever wanted. But all sixteen year-olds must take a simple test, and Tate’s result thrusts her into the Guild’s world, one where they hide horrible plans for those they select. Tate must fight the relentless General Dagon for control of her mind, body, and soul to keep the one precious thing she has always taken for granted: herself.

Her only ally is the same handsome boy she is pitted against in General Dagon’s deadly game. Quinn desires nothing more than to end the life of General Dagon who has taken over Tate’s mind. While romance blooms between Tate and Quinn, General Dagon plots to eventually take over Tate’s body, and love might end before it even begins.

[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

Okay, so the blurb gives away the fact that Tate has to fight off General Dagon, who is trying to stay immortal by taking over the minds (and thus the bodies) of young people.  But don’t let the blurb fool you: this book is so much more complex.

I absolutely loved the world-building in Under My Skin.  It combines all of the good elements of YA (a very emotional/personal journey, mature but not overly dry themes) and leaves out all of the trendy terrible elements (a love triangle, a useless best friend, an inability to lie on the part of the main character).  While the science of the mind-transfer is left out in the beginning for obvious reasons, I was very happy that as Tate kept fighting for her life, more of it was revealed.  I like the idea of their whole dystopian world, that the mysterious Guild pays off families to unknowingly sell their children into slavery.  The Guild is pretty exclusive and although some of the rich merchant families are aware of what’s happening, they want in on it too for the chance at immortality.  It’s kind of a sick cycle when you think about it.

I love Tate almost as much as I hate her name.  She’s not a very strong character in the beginning, however.  She’s very self-conscious of the scar she has from the doctor fixing her cleft palate as a baby and that makes her have very low self-esteem.  It’s one of the vulnerabilities General Dagon exploits as he fights to control her body and I love the whole self-esteem journey she goes through.  And my favourite part is that it’s at an organic pace.  She doesn’t just suddenly gain the willpower to fight him; she fights a little bit in the beginning and her determination grows as her self-esteem does.  Whether or not it’s enough to actually beat the ruthless Dagon is another question, however.

The plot is actually quite fast-paced considering that this is largely a character-driven novel.  There’s of course the conflict with a society that steals the bodies of teenagers but the conflict is largely between Dagon and Tate.  Yes, there is some romance, but it’s not the forefront of the novel all of the time.  I’ve read so many books with contrived romance lately, that I really couldn’t stand it if Shawntelle Madison did the same thing.  Thank goodness she didn’t!  Instead, the focus is actually the main character and her struggle for her life.  As it should be.

Although the plot ends on a pretty big cliffhanger, I was still quite satisfied with where Shawntelle Madison chose to leave off.  It fulfilled the main conflict of the story but also introduced the secondary conflict as the centerpiece for the next book in the Immortality Strain series.  I can’t wait for the second book!

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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