4 posts tagged “c e murphy”
actually got this one a while ago, but didn't get around to it until.. last weekend, actually. i would be posting thoughts of these much more regularly if firefox wasn't such a bitch with the spacing, which i still have no idea how to fix. and IE freezes and crashes often for the home desktop, so i'm typing both of these at school. anyway.
the conclusion left me floundering a bit. i personally liked eliseo daisani, and thought that he didn't become quite as personified as i expected it to get in this installation. i mean sure, great secret revealed and all, but i want to KNOW him, as a character. it's just a bit of a shame that we never really get to it.
still love janx, still pretty hot for alban, i guess. margrit isn't coming through as strong as she did in the previous installations, however, though i suspect that's more events getting out of her hands than her actually becoming weaker. that little episode with the "heart of the earth" was kind of random, and at the end of the day nothing really was explained by it. but i guess that's fine, if we are to know that there will be future installations, just simply that this is on halt so she can write the walker papers from here on for a bit. the random introduction of the daughters was.. well.. random. you don't really get to see it coming, and it doesn't, until about 3/4 into the book, and by then you're like what? NOW? but i guess it's fine. again, need more personification. such a wide host of characters and no time in getting to know them, it seems.
so it seems like a lot of characters can actually come back from the dead ;) again, i wonder at chelsea huo's real identity. i wonder at the real origin of vampires. many, many things left unanswered, but that leaves me in more hope than ever that there will be a next installation, rather than having this be the final volume. that said, i guess there's nothing much i can do but wait from here on.
just got this in the mail not very long ago, so it wasn't exactly my fault that i didn't get around to this for such a long time, but.. it works out for me, since the next one isn't going to be another couple of months, and now i won't have to wait nearly as long. so yes, i did enjoy this one, and it didn't disappoint when compared with where the first book left off, which is nice. it's not very often that a book doesn't disappoint when i've already set my expectations.
anyway, the cover still doesn't quite match with the description of margrit, but it doesn't matter much to me. the way it left off seemed to me like their relationship would have a rocky start at the beginning of the next book again, and now that she half agrees with her friend cole, who's going to be the champion of the old races? after all, what made her special was that she refused to distinguish between the races and humans--if she loses that, she's no longer the heroine that's made all the readers cheer for her. i don't think i entirely got what made alban that scary, which sort of made her reaction to him a little over the top.
as it is now, the next book is out in a month. it shouldn't hurt too much to wait for that one, and i wonder if that's the conclusion of the series. i would certainly hate for it to be, because i'm finding i like interspecies mixes in fantasy--not too much as to border on bestiality, but it seems nice for two different beings to come together and understand each other. i know margrit is meant to make differences in janx and daisani's perspectives too, and can't wait till that happens.
P.S. - is it just me, or does anyone else keep thinking of the spring water brand when they read the name daisani? i do wonder at all their histories though, and how daisani came to be. curious stuff. a minor note though: there were a lot of spelling, sometimes grammar, errors throughout the book. i can't help but think that the editor wasn't as awake as she should have been, or maybe that before the editor combed through this there were even more errors, hence why she missed some of these really obvious ones. i understand we're all human, but word processors do have a spell check option..
the title made everyone who saw it laugh at me while i read it, even as the cover strictly suggested something sexual. i went into it actually expecting to like it, and as a result have no idea how i feel about this, ultimately. i normally like ms. murphy's writing.. it may be her different style, or it may be the way she chose to portray belinda/beatrice that really doesn't warrant a lot of sympathy. it may be that i've never felt duty as an emotion that ruled over love, and it may also be that the love she illustrates between javier and beatrice is not done so convincingly enough. i can't say why it is that i wasn't completely in love with this book. numerous reasons, i suspect, but all of which sound insignificant when stated. but ultimately, i feel that her duty sounded like too insignificant a thing (maybe it wasn't portrayed the way it could've been) to override her emotions for javier, if love is what it is. i also don't like that she was portrayed so weak physically throughout--is there no other way to perform subterfuge besides sneaking around and sleeping around? i wonder at marius's reappearance again, just as i wonder about javier and belinda's meeting again.
on the other hand, my curiosity is well and truly piqued. the thing about dragons wasn't very subtle, and i could see it coming a mile away, but i still cannot possibly guess at the motivation behind robert drake's actions. why can't she know? if she'd known then she wouldn't be driving blind half the time, and i wouldn't be sitting there wondering what the hell is going on. and, of course, the story would have more of a drive behind it, rather than feeling like belinda had no clue what the hell she was supposed to do. javier at times was also portrayed as being childish and as a result sort of.. not ever in control of the events that happen around him. how he's supposed to look like he's manipulating people around him is beyond me. i think out of the bunch, the one that garners the most sympathy from me has to be marius, and even him i found repulsive at times. i just wasn't sure how to judge something like that, because i'm of two minds about it myself. i hope this book only sets the characters up for a future rendezvous after some serious growth in all their characters, because otherwise, i can't imagine bulling through another maze of confusing plots with crap characters to try to sympathize with. sorry, but that's the blunt of it.
i kind of went into this without any expectations, and was in return highly rewarded for it. not that the character was particularly refreshing at first glance, but she seems to be able to make the wittiest remarks in the most screwed up situations, and the plot isn't your conventional paranormal lit cookie cutter either. my only complaint would be that throughout her showdowns with opponents, it did seem like all these big shots budged for her only because she was pissed off, and it seemed a bit.. too convenient for our heroine? that is not to say i don't think she encountered strong obstacles, but maybe a more logical resolution to a situation besides the heroine being constantly pissed off and mowing down people easily would be a refreshing alternative. although i can definitely see there being improvement in the next book, and i really can't wait! now i'll definitely have to pick up her walkers papers series to fill up the time gap in the release schedule..
