Ok, So What Had Happened Was: Lenah Beaudonte has an awesome name and, yeah, she was once a vampire. After several hundred years of numbness and madness induced by her vampirism, something and someone is responsible for her awakening as a human in present time. Her cluelessness and exuberant response to touch and life is of her most endearing traits, and the friends she makes are still memorable to me. But, her idyllic life couldn’t last, as her sins and responsibilities return to her unbidden but in full force. Now, with questions and the return of someone she once loved, she must face an even more powerful source of evil and make things right once and for all, no matter the sacrifice. (Although, I disagree with those darn sacrifices.)
In Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel, I fell in love with Lenah and her capacity for enjoying life and the treasures returned to her as her humanity returned. It was lovely and beautiful, the way these moments were written, and so were the characters that were included in this rediscovering of beauty in living. With Stolen Nights by Rebecca Maizel, I wanted the same. I wanted to feel the same about Lenah and be as absorbed in the mysteries of her, the plot, and the new characters incorporated as well as old friends reintroduced. I don’t know if it was Lenah’s desperation for her old companion that had me cringing or that my expectations got the better of me again.
This book overall isn’t an awful read; there’s a still glimmer of all those things I loved in the last book. I still love those glimpses into Lenah’s past, and the linking of the then and now. However. This story is already fading for me; I barely remember the events of the plot, AND THAT TICKS ME OFF. Because I’d been holding a torch for Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel for a year plus, with a fair memory of what had gone down, and not two weeks later I’m already struggling with giving you the deets about Stolen Nights by Rebecca Maizel. All I remember is the villain wracked me with snickers, Justin actually BOTHERED me (the horror!), and, one of the two strongest lures of this book, Rhode becomes tangible and I fell for him a bit more than I anticipated… Okay, A LOT MORE.
Lenah’s old world charm and subtle difference in texture in her dialogue makes her charming and interesting. But eventually that stopped being enough; I lost interest in her. The other main pull for this story, instead, is the spotlight on Vicken’s character, an old comrade from Lenah’s dark and twisted past. Without his mercilessness and evil inclinations, his wit, strength, and charm not only added a significant lightness at the right times but gave me a character I could attach affections to in spite of the events of the last book.
Despite the nice points to the sequel, though, I had a notably difficult time GETTING INTO the book. I took FOREVER to get to the end, and I was definitely relieved to be done with it once I DID finish. WHICH SUCKS. I wanted to savor and ended up speeding through what I could justify to myself. I hardly enjoyed this book at all. I’m a college student, bro, and I DON’T NEED THIS, wasted time and tarnished expectations.
As a fan of the first book, I am (DUH) disappointed. Not enough to totally write off this series, not enough to fight with myself over the best form of torture for Maizel, but definitely enough so that I feel no burning anxiety over the third book (THIRD BOOK—what the hades?!) and so I won’t be tripping over my own toes to get my hands on it.
I received an ARC of this title from St. Martin's Griffin via Netgalley.
2 comments:
Post a Comment