Strange Angels: Defiance by Lili St. Crow
Dec. 2nd, 2011 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Dru Andersen is not afraid of the dark. But she should be.
Dru knows that The Real World – peopled with ghosts, suckers and zombies – is a frightening place. She’s ready to kill first and ask questions later, so it is going to take her a while to work out just who she can trust.
Segej, the deadly nosferat, has kidnapped Dru’s best friend Graves and she must go on a dangerous mission to get him back. But the Order – the vampire-fighting training school – says it will take years to train her. And her mentor, the seductive but dangerous Christophe, doesn’t seem very interested in rescuing Graves.
Time is running out, and Dru is finished with listening to the Order and finished with listening to Christophe. From here on she’s going to face the kind of vampires on her own terms.
Graves has been kidnapped by the deadly nosferat Segej and Anna the traitorous svetocha has disappeared with her entourage. Dru’s finally allowed to hunt for nosferatu and she’s improved in her training with malaika but she still hasn’t Bloomed into a full svetocha herself and as such, cannot access or fully control her own powers.
Discovering that the Council isn’t trying to find Graves, Dru decides to take matters into her own hands. Fed up with the Council and its restrictions, she looks for him herself but finds that there are people within the Council who she can’t trust, traitors who are willing to betray her to Segej …
This is fourth in Lili St Crow’s Strange Crows series. I hadn’t read books 2 and 3 and you probably need to so as to get the most out of this as there’s been a lot of development, which get cross-referred to in DEFIANCE and inform the character and plot developments in this book.
Saying that, my main problem with the book is that despite the fight scenes (which are tightly written) and assassination attempts, not a lot actually happens. It’s a slim novel and most of it involves Dru wondering where Graves is, asking the Council for updates, missing Graves and sneaking out to run with the wulfen. She doesn’t actually decide to go looking for him herself until the final quarter and when she does, it’s all rushed and consists of her walking straight into a trap, which I found a little tedious.
The relationship with Christophe didn’t grab me but mainly because I’m not into love triangles. Dru is finding herself more attracted to him (which conflicts with her feelings for Graves), but he isn’t honest with her and she feels that he’s deliberately holding things back from her. I did like the fact that she finds him attractive but not enough to overpower her reason, which is refreshing for this type of fiction.
I still like Dru’s first person voice and her hankering for the Blooming to happen, but her current body insecurity left me sighing (I admit to laughing at her insistence on calling her breasts “chesticles”).
Mostly this book didn’t work for me mainly because I haven’t read books 2 and 3 but also because there isn’t a huge amount happening here and what does happen takes a long time to get going.
The Verdict:
I didn’t enjoy the 4th in Lili St Crow’s STRANGE ANGELS series mainly because I hadn’t read books 2 and 3 but also because there isn’t a huge amount happening here and what does happen takes a long time to get going. I did like the fact that Dru doesn’t fall into the normal clichés for girls in the middle of a love triangle, but the lack of action and the fact that once Dru Blooms she has the potential to be a giant Mary Sue prevented me from connecting with it.
Thanks to Quercus for the free copy of this book.
Dru knows that The Real World – peopled with ghosts, suckers and zombies – is a frightening place. She’s ready to kill first and ask questions later, so it is going to take her a while to work out just who she can trust.
Segej, the deadly nosferat, has kidnapped Dru’s best friend Graves and she must go on a dangerous mission to get him back. But the Order – the vampire-fighting training school – says it will take years to train her. And her mentor, the seductive but dangerous Christophe, doesn’t seem very interested in rescuing Graves.
Time is running out, and Dru is finished with listening to the Order and finished with listening to Christophe. From here on she’s going to face the kind of vampires on her own terms.
Graves has been kidnapped by the deadly nosferat Segej and Anna the traitorous svetocha has disappeared with her entourage. Dru’s finally allowed to hunt for nosferatu and she’s improved in her training with malaika but she still hasn’t Bloomed into a full svetocha herself and as such, cannot access or fully control her own powers.
Discovering that the Council isn’t trying to find Graves, Dru decides to take matters into her own hands. Fed up with the Council and its restrictions, she looks for him herself but finds that there are people within the Council who she can’t trust, traitors who are willing to betray her to Segej …
This is fourth in Lili St Crow’s Strange Crows series. I hadn’t read books 2 and 3 and you probably need to so as to get the most out of this as there’s been a lot of development, which get cross-referred to in DEFIANCE and inform the character and plot developments in this book.
Saying that, my main problem with the book is that despite the fight scenes (which are tightly written) and assassination attempts, not a lot actually happens. It’s a slim novel and most of it involves Dru wondering where Graves is, asking the Council for updates, missing Graves and sneaking out to run with the wulfen. She doesn’t actually decide to go looking for him herself until the final quarter and when she does, it’s all rushed and consists of her walking straight into a trap, which I found a little tedious.
The relationship with Christophe didn’t grab me but mainly because I’m not into love triangles. Dru is finding herself more attracted to him (which conflicts with her feelings for Graves), but he isn’t honest with her and she feels that he’s deliberately holding things back from her. I did like the fact that she finds him attractive but not enough to overpower her reason, which is refreshing for this type of fiction.
I still like Dru’s first person voice and her hankering for the Blooming to happen, but her current body insecurity left me sighing (I admit to laughing at her insistence on calling her breasts “chesticles”).
Mostly this book didn’t work for me mainly because I haven’t read books 2 and 3 but also because there isn’t a huge amount happening here and what does happen takes a long time to get going.
The Verdict:
I didn’t enjoy the 4th in Lili St Crow’s STRANGE ANGELS series mainly because I hadn’t read books 2 and 3 but also because there isn’t a huge amount happening here and what does happen takes a long time to get going. I did like the fact that Dru doesn’t fall into the normal clichés for girls in the middle of a love triangle, but the lack of action and the fact that once Dru Blooms she has the potential to be a giant Mary Sue prevented me from connecting with it.
Thanks to Quercus for the free copy of this book.
