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The Better Part Of Darkness (2009)

by Kelly Gay(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1439109656 (ISBN13: 9781439109656)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Pocket Books

series

Charlie Madigan

review 1: 2.5, maybe.in 'better part of darkness', Gay creates a particularly fascinating world. earth hangs in the middle of things, with recently discovered gates to hellish Charybdon and ethereal Elysia allowing an influx of otherworldly beings. though the people name the newcomers by terms out of Earth myths and legends, these sirens and imps and jiin aren't earthlings at all. calling these other races "aliens" and "offworlders" sets the tone for this book to be a lot different than the now-overly-familiar "vampires have finally made themselves known as real" setup for a UF story, and the resultant tone balancing between SF and UF hits a speculative fiction sweet spot that i'm really into. unfortunately, the excellent worldbuilding is the best part of 'darkness', which ultim... moreately falls flat due to a one-dimensional main character - charlie is a pretty stereotypical chosen-one sort of badass, leveling up continuously without needing to develop any of her newfound powers, shooting bad guys down all dirty harry at any opportunity. the plot is a jumbled mix that keeps putting any newfound major plot in the back seat as soon as the most recent subplot rears its head to take over, so it doesn't really know if it wants to be about a supernatural drug killing local teens, a woman trying to figure out her newfound magic powers, or a child abduction rescue mision. without a compelling plot building and driving toward the end, or a compelling heroine to really root for, it was too easy to put down even at critically climactic moments.
review 2: This was a round up to 4 stars read for me. Very good world building and many interesting characters (although the female MC was annoying at times, which is a downer). Even though I liked the plot I skimmed through some of the twists in the second half. The story was just taking too long to get to the important stuff. Still, I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series and I would definitely recommend The Better Part of Darkness. less

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