Review: A Blood Seduction by Pamela Palmer

A Blood Seduction (Vamp City, #1) by Pamela Palmer

Release Date: May 29, 2012

Publisher: Avon
Author Information: Website / Blog / Twitter

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance

Available Formats: Paperback and eBook
Buy the Book: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million

Take me down to Vampire City...

Vampires live only for lust and pleasure in the eternal twilight of Vamp City. But the city's magic is dying. The only person who can restore it? A beautiful woman from the mortal world...one who knows nothing of the power she wields.

Quinn Lennox is searching for a missing friend when she stumbles into a dark otherworld that only she can see—and finds herself at the mercy of Arturo Mazza, a dangerously handsome vampire whose wicked kiss will save her, enslave her, bewitch her, and betray her. What Arturo can't do is forget about her—any more than Quinn can control her own feelings for him. Neither one can let desire get in the way of their mission—his to save his people, hers to save herself. But there is no escape from desire in a city built for seduction, where passion flows hot and blood-red.

Welcome to Vamp City...

Review:

[sigh] I had such high hopes for this book. With world building comparable to Ilona Andrew’s On the Edge series, I was immediately taken in with the idea of a vampire city overlaying the ‘real world’ of Washington, D.C. The vampires that live in this parallel world, Washington, V.C. (Vamp City- I kid you not), are complete monsters, where in addition to thriving on human blood, they also enjoying feeding off the fear and pain of humans. Humans are beaten, whipped, tortured, and enslaved, all to satisfy the desires and bloodlust of their master vampires. There are no sparkly, loving vampires here! I loved the rough, gritty feel to the world and all its occupants, but the book still ended up falling flat for me. The fault lies in the characters.

The main character, Quinn, has some magic in her blood, enabling her to see into V.C. When a friend goes missing, she accidently stumbles into the vampires’ world and meets Arturo. This is when everything hits the fan. Quinn ran me through an emotional gamut. She would be terrified of Arturo one minute, then desire him, and then hate him, all within a couple of paragraphs. Her emotions and feelings toward Arturo would shift so quickly that it was impossible for me to keep up with them. She would be scared witless but still crave him. I thought emotions like fear, hate, and desire in a relationship were mutually exclusive (unless someone is an extreme masochist, which Quinn is not). Even at the end of the book, her feelings were still ambiguous, where I was unsure if she trusted him and how much she liked him.

Another thing about Quinn is she is weak, both physically and emotionally. Arturo told her not to trust him, that his allegiance was to his vampire master, Cristoff, first and foremost. However, she would believe him when he was lying to her, expect something from him, and then cry when he betrayed her. This happened over and over again. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. She also couldn’t fight to save her life. I kept expecting her to pull out some big guns and show the vampires who was really boss, but she spent most of the time cowering in fear. It is hard for me to get behind a character like that. It also gives me a newfound respect for other characters like Kate Daniels or Mercy Thompson, who always stay strong and fierce, regardless of what is being thrown at them.

Arturo is a whole other type of monster (literally). He lies and betrays Quinn so much throughout this book that I had to keep asking myself, Is this guy really Quinn’s love interest? I still question whether he actually cares for her. There were a few snippets in the book where the reader knew what he was thinking and begins understand why he did what he did, and just when I think he is about to redeem himself in some grand gesture, he goes and demolishes any progress he made. I am all for the dangerous bad boys or the dark, broody types, but when a guy shows how much he ‘cares’ for you by turning you over to his master who he knows is going to torture you, I quickly fall off that guy’s bandwagon. No, thank you, sir. Even at the end, after he helped Quinn escape, he says that he will kidnap her again at a more convenient time and once again give her to his master (who has threatened to cut off appendages next time he finds her). Hmmm, I think this guy does not understand one crucial thing….

Dear Arturo, that is not the way you care for a lady. Allow me to help you out here. A real woman would prefer chocolates or flowers, maybe even candlelit dinners and long walks on the beach for the more romantically inclined, not torture and pain and death. Most women do not find physical and mental torment romantic. Just some advice you should take note of.  From a concerned bystander, Bri.

Overall, the world was intriguing and I loved Palmer’s take on vampires, but the characters were lacking. I found Arturo and Quinn’s relationship to be extraordinarily unhealthy and disturbing, making it hard to really appreciate what this book had to offer story-wise and romantically. I may try out the next book in the series, but I am going to be hoping it turns out better than A Blood Seduction. 

A Small Escape

Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck

Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck

Release Date: January 1, 2011

Publisher: Sterling

Author Information: Website / Blog / Twitter
Genre: Paranormal, Romance, Mythology 

Available Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook

My Shelf: Borrowed

Buy the Book: Amazon

The last thing Kelsey Hayes thought she’d be doing this summer was trying to break a 300-year-old Indian curse. With a mysterious white tiger named Ren. Halfway around the world.

But that’s exactly what happened.

Face-to-face with dark forces, spell- binding magic, and mystical worlds where nothing is what it seems, Kelsey risks everything to piece together an ancient prophecy that could break the curse forever.

Tiger’s Curse is the exciting first volume in an epic fantasy-romance that will leave you breathless and yearning for more.

Review:

As much as I hate to admit it, the main thing that drew me to this book was the cover. I read the synopsis and it seemed interesting, but the cover art and detail were what finalized the purchase. I try to stay true to the saying “Never judge a book by its cover,” but this is one of the few instances where I was shallow. All the different hues of blue are beautiful and I love the texture!

As far as the plot and premise of the book are concerned, I appreciated the originality of the story (it is like Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones go to India). I have never read a book that deals with Indian religion and/or mythology, so it was definitely something different for me. I have to say with all the books dealing with vampires, werewolves, faeries, nephilim/fallen angels, etc. nowadays, this book was a refreshing read. Colleen Houck does a good job weaving in elements of Indian mythology and shaping a story around an Indian curse and tigers.

Houck also did an okay job with the characters. They are not the greatest characters ever and most of them just had mundane and generic personalities that can be found in almost any other book. I have to say I did not particularly care for Ren or Kelsey, and I was worried about how much I would like the story when I did not care for the main characters. But then you meet Kishan, Ren’s brother. Oh man, Kishan. Why are you a minor character? WHY? He is the reason why Houck did an ‘okay’ job with the characters. Kishan, being the bad boy he is and stirring up trouble, salvaged this book. Lots of people go on about Ren and how great he is, but he cannot hold a candle to Kishan. Kishan has the real personality of the two. Ren was described as being perfect and the only thing that could get under his skin was Kelsey, but that does not make him ‘real.’ People are not perfect and everyone has flaws. While some people liked Ren for that reason, it was the same reason why I did not like him. Kishan is the one that actually seemed to have faults and regrets from the past, which is what makes a good character and enables a reader to connect to him. And boy, did I connect (hello, sir).

The things that really took away from this book was the childish writing and plot/character inconsistencies. I am sorry, but this book honestly could have been written by a ten year old. The dialogue was weak, and in some cases it seemed like Houck just looked up a word in the thesaurus and picked one that seemed most SAT-esque. And the details….oh, the details.

I thought I had a little bit of OCD because my drawers were also meticulously tidy. My socks were all rolled in balls, arranged from the front of the drawer to the back. I usually grabbed the front ones and worked my way to the back. White socks were lined up on the right, black ones in the middle, and colored ones on the left.

I picked up the first one. The label read “Hot Dog Buns.” I hauled it over to the hot dog stand, then went back to get another box. It said “Neon Necklaces.” I took that one to the memorabilia stand.

Not. Necessary. Details like this do not help the story progress in the least, and they just frustrated me. It was another reason I thought the writing was childish and left a lot to be desired.

Another thing that really annoyed me was Phet. I did not dislike the character, but his way of speaking just really irked me.

“At the present, you must respite. Important sunrise is tomorrow. Phet must pray in the dark hours, and you necessity sleep. Embark on tomorrow your traverse. It’s hard as difficult. In first light, Phet assist you in the company of tiger. Durga’s secret to unveil. Now go drowse.”

 Really? For a man who is obviously not fluent in English, he certainly uses some big words, no? One would think that if he knew words like this, grammar would be a cinch. This REALLY got on my nerves. In Houck’s defense, Phet was not around for very long. However, coupled with her immature writing style, Phet’s speaking abilities were just….UGH (insert shudder here).

Another thing that really grated on me was plot holes and inconsistencies. Kelsey decides she is going to go to India randomly to take care of a tiger, and her foster parents do not even blink an eye. There was also the time she was able to get a passport in an hour and there were no security problems for bringing a tiger along on a private airplane. There were many moments like this in the story where things just went by a little too smoothly to be believable. These moments were not terribly important to the overall plot, but they distracted from the book itself and made Houck’s writing seem even worse than it actually is (or is it just naturally that bad?). It displayed one of the weaker points of her writing abilities. The inconsistencies just continue from there. Ren is a gentleman stuck in the past, where he cannot kiss Kelsey without asking for her permission and is very behind on current dating practices and culture references (he does not even know about Shakespeare). So how, pray tell, is he able to make jokes about wet t-shirts? How does he even know about wet t-shirts? Maybe this kind of knowledge is just innate in a man, or maybe there were wet t-shirts in India 300 years ago. Sorry, but I find it very unbelievable and unrealistic.

And then there was the beginning and ending of the story. The first 100 pages of the story were really not needed. It was supposed to be an introduction to Ren and Kelsey, but it served almost no purpose besides making the book longer than it should have been. And the ending, WTF? Kelsey decides that Ren is too perfect for her, so she leaves? “I am sorry, Ren. I love you, but I must leave you for you are too amazing.” Seriously? If it wasn’t the end of the book, I would have hurled it at the wall, pretty cover and all. Not to mention the bickering that went on for 50 pages or so when she decides she wants to split from Ren and he gets angry about it. Here are the two main characters on a life and death quest, and while running from danger, they are yelling insults at one another. In some cases, it can be comedic (like in an Indiana Jones movie), but in this case, it was just SUPER ANNOYING.

Overall, the novel had a very original story and plot (and pretty cover), but poor writing and inconsistencies really dragged it down. I respect the fact that Houck tried to make a story based on Indian mythology, but when compared to other books dealing with mythology, such as Percy Jackson and the Olympians, she is a little out of her league.  I will try reading the next book in the series, but my expectations are going to be much lower.

A Small Escape