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silverflight8) wrote2009-12-26 01:38 pm
silverflight8) wrote2009-12-26 01:38 pm
Entry tags:
Aah, vampires
It's definitely a saturated, overflowing genre: supernatural vampires and urban fantasy. It's also composed largely of terrible books aimed squarely at teenage girls. Occasionally, though, you come across the really good ones. That would be Jennifer Rardin's books about Jaz Parks.
I've posted the review (or rather, will post them: I'm behind already) at community.livejournal.com/bookish, but really, it deserves a look-over.
I took shameless advantage of both my Christmas holiday and also of the fact the library had the first five books shelved right there in front of me.
So, the books. They were fast reads. The action moves very, very quickly (which is occasionally a little confusing), but it backs off, too, letting the reader see the interplay between characters. Plus, everything was narrated by Jaz, who has an acerbic (but hilarious) sense of humor. She has the most amusing voices in her head--my favorite being her Granny May, who is (at any time) playing bridge with random historical figures or hanging up laundry.
Nice, too, that all of the characters on the "good side" so to speak are round. They all have their problems, their flaws, their aversions and fears. Vayl, the vampire, has a phobia of snakes. And the reason for his turning [into a vampire] are completely understandable. Jaz's problems with getting close to people are reasonable, considering what happened to her crew of Helsingers (vampire-killers, if you don't know the reference--thanks, Google).
What was nice was the fact that the locations kept changing (Miami, Iran, Greece, Scotland). Moreover, the cast of characters switched and moved; the only two that were always in the picture were Jaz and Vayl. And, hey, the covers are amazing. Why are the good covers given only to chick-lit and supernatural (ie, why is sci-fi, romance, and fantasy always slighted?) But I digress.
The metaphors sometimes made me squirm. They just seemed a little inappropriate--nothing actually wrong with them, just wildly out of context and thus very odd. The other thing that made me kind of crazy were the made-up names. I do it myself (which might explain why I hate it), but it got to the point that I wished that Rardin would stop making new names for things. They were the made-up high-fantasy style of names, and it drove me crazy.
Other than that, though, I loved the books. They're still sitting next to my table, waiting for the second re-read.
I've posted the review (or rather, will post them: I'm behind already) at community.livejournal.com/bookish, but really, it deserves a look-over.
I took shameless advantage of both my Christmas holiday and also of the fact the library had the first five books shelved right there in front of me.
So, the books. They were fast reads. The action moves very, very quickly (which is occasionally a little confusing), but it backs off, too, letting the reader see the interplay between characters. Plus, everything was narrated by Jaz, who has an acerbic (but hilarious) sense of humor. She has the most amusing voices in her head--my favorite being her Granny May, who is (at any time) playing bridge with random historical figures or hanging up laundry.
Nice, too, that all of the characters on the "good side" so to speak are round. They all have their problems, their flaws, their aversions and fears. Vayl, the vampire, has a phobia of snakes. And the reason for his turning [into a vampire] are completely understandable. Jaz's problems with getting close to people are reasonable, considering what happened to her crew of Helsingers (vampire-killers, if you don't know the reference--thanks, Google).
What was nice was the fact that the locations kept changing (Miami, Iran, Greece, Scotland). Moreover, the cast of characters switched and moved; the only two that were always in the picture were Jaz and Vayl. And, hey, the covers are amazing. Why are the good covers given only to chick-lit and supernatural (ie, why is sci-fi, romance, and fantasy always slighted?) But I digress.
The metaphors sometimes made me squirm. They just seemed a little inappropriate--nothing actually wrong with them, just wildly out of context and thus very odd. The other thing that made me kind of crazy were the made-up names. I do it myself (which might explain why I hate it), but it got to the point that I wished that Rardin would stop making new names for things. They were the made-up high-fantasy style of names, and it drove me crazy.
Other than that, though, I loved the books. They're still sitting next to my table, waiting for the second re-read.