Helpful Score: 1
NOT impressed. I give Deidre Knight kudos for coming up with an intriguing premise, but she utterly fails at execution. The plot lacked a finished quality. There is a lot of agonizing and pontification (one presumes to catch people up on what has transpired in the previous book) but then suddenly whatever was agonized over is inexplicably over. For instance, the author spends a couple of chapters showing us how Aristos has spent 4 months trying to find his best friend, River, who is trapped in a dagger form somewhere out to sea. The author makes it clear he and the rest of the Spartans have no idea where River is nor where to look. At the end of the next chapter Aristos suddenly shows up out of nowhere to try to take River (in dagger form) away from Emma who, though not knowing this guy from Adam, just goes along with things. I feel like a step was missed--like how the hell Aristos knew where River was. Even a couple of sentences showing Aristos recognizing the dagger as he flew over Emma in hawk form or maybe sensing the disturbance of the demonic battle that introduced Emma to River would have made this scene flow better for me. Instead its just jarring. I felt that most of the scenes didn't flow very well into each other.
But my biggest pet peeve with this novel is how everyone talks like sullen ten year olds. The Spartans bicker amongst each other by calling each other by the feminine form of their names (like calling River Kassandros, Kassandra) or taunting each other in a neener neener voice. Seriously, for 2500 + year olds, the Spartans have a rather limited and juvenile vocabulary. Ares, a GOD, doesn't fare much better. He's like a cartoon villain--all pompous airs, evil exposition, and leaving everything up to inept minions. But the heroine of the story, Emma, is by far the worse offender. It's like Knight took every stereotype there is for a plucky romance novel heroine and put them in Emma. She is a complete nitwit who shows she means business when she starts calling people "Bub" or "Pal." (I probably missed a "Buster" in there somewhere.) She says such intelligent things like, "Duh!" and "No flipping way!" It's amusing to me that Emma is mentioned as liking the tv show Lost because she annoys me as much as Shannon did from the first season. She runs around freaking out and saying the most inane things. I really can't stand her or this story.
It's really too bad as I liked the ancient Greek concept. But the author needs to learn how to better distinguish her characterization and work on making her scenes flow more fluidly.
But my biggest pet peeve with this novel is how everyone talks like sullen ten year olds. The Spartans bicker amongst each other by calling each other by the feminine form of their names (like calling River Kassandros, Kassandra) or taunting each other in a neener neener voice. Seriously, for 2500 + year olds, the Spartans have a rather limited and juvenile vocabulary. Ares, a GOD, doesn't fare much better. He's like a cartoon villain--all pompous airs, evil exposition, and leaving everything up to inept minions. But the heroine of the story, Emma, is by far the worse offender. It's like Knight took every stereotype there is for a plucky romance novel heroine and put them in Emma. She is a complete nitwit who shows she means business when she starts calling people "Bub" or "Pal." (I probably missed a "Buster" in there somewhere.) She says such intelligent things like, "Duh!" and "No flipping way!" It's amusing to me that Emma is mentioned as liking the tv show Lost because she annoys me as much as Shannon did from the first season. She runs around freaking out and saying the most inane things. I really can't stand her or this story.
It's really too bad as I liked the ancient Greek concept. But the author needs to learn how to better distinguish her characterization and work on making her scenes flow more fluidly.
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