Whenever a book fails this completely too capture my interest I'm compelled to explain why. I want to say that I'm usually a fan of Liu's work--I enjoy the Dirk and Steele books very much. But this book was something I just couldn't get into.
The premise is pretty cleaver. Maxine Kiss is a demon hunter. The only family she has ever known are the tatoos on her body which come to life and help her fight at sunset. Maxine has a lover named Grant who actually intrigued me at first. He runs a homeless shelter, he used to be a preist, and he has the power to alter people's personalities through music. This all seems really fantastic. Oh, how I wanted to like this book.
This book almost read like a sequel to a book that never existed. It starts out with a prologue--Maxine is a child with her mom, and they go into a zombie bar and...weird stuff happens. I was still trying to wrap my mind around zombies and demons and how everything in this world works when the story picked up with Maxine as an adult. There is no pause to explain who she is or what she actually does. We meet Grant, who seems to have an elaborate back story that isn't told (at least not right away). There are also the residents of the homeless shelter and of course the tatoos to be introduced. It's a lot all at once. I understand wanting to jump right into plot and not get too bogged down in world building, but as a reader I require at least fragments of explanation that I can reasonably peice together. Say, what are demons in this universe, and what are zombies? Where does Maxine come from and how exactly does she go about her calling? Who is Grant, why are they together, where do his powers come from? I feel like this story needed a prequel or an origin story to answer the question of who are these people and why should I care. The style reflects this lack of useful information. There are a lot of abrupt statements and sentence fragments.
Fantasy readers are used to dealing with questions that go unanswered for most of the book, and yes part of the fun is figuring it all out. But this has it's limits. I didn't finish this book because I didn't feel attached to the characters at all. I don't plan on continuing with the series.
The premise is pretty cleaver. Maxine Kiss is a demon hunter. The only family she has ever known are the tatoos on her body which come to life and help her fight at sunset. Maxine has a lover named Grant who actually intrigued me at first. He runs a homeless shelter, he used to be a preist, and he has the power to alter people's personalities through music. This all seems really fantastic. Oh, how I wanted to like this book.
This book almost read like a sequel to a book that never existed. It starts out with a prologue--Maxine is a child with her mom, and they go into a zombie bar and...weird stuff happens. I was still trying to wrap my mind around zombies and demons and how everything in this world works when the story picked up with Maxine as an adult. There is no pause to explain who she is or what she actually does. We meet Grant, who seems to have an elaborate back story that isn't told (at least not right away). There are also the residents of the homeless shelter and of course the tatoos to be introduced. It's a lot all at once. I understand wanting to jump right into plot and not get too bogged down in world building, but as a reader I require at least fragments of explanation that I can reasonably peice together. Say, what are demons in this universe, and what are zombies? Where does Maxine come from and how exactly does she go about her calling? Who is Grant, why are they together, where do his powers come from? I feel like this story needed a prequel or an origin story to answer the question of who are these people and why should I care. The style reflects this lack of useful information. There are a lot of abrupt statements and sentence fragments.
Fantasy readers are used to dealing with questions that go unanswered for most of the book, and yes part of the fun is figuring it all out. But this has it's limits. I didn't finish this book because I didn't feel attached to the characters at all. I don't plan on continuing with the series.
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