GPChlorine

A Perfect Conclusion

Revisado: 10-09-23

As others have said, you need to read Spring's Arcana first. The story has a lot of depth, yet it's handled perfectly, never bogging down in details in building this world. And the performance was perfection. The characters are real, never two-dimensional, and never handled through exposition. Saintcrow implies enough for the reader to infer the rest. It's a fantastic world. I hope it's a world that the author might return to one day.

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Not Worth Suspending Disbelief

Revisado: 05-27-23

The book is well-written. That said, the premise is ridiculous and the continuous death and mayhem and abuse just made the weakness of the plot more evident. The idea of a future world where one country has turned into a combination of Roman Empire culture with the worst of Spartan warrior extremism is not a bad one. However, the casual, wholesale and accepted murder of hundreds of elite student warriors is too much. No society can be built and last on this base. Many of the students were from families high in the social structure, which families would not, I’m sure, want all their heirs wiped out at the whim of a few sadists.

I couldn’t finish the book (I made it almost 2/3 of the way), so maybe there’s a good explanation for all of it, but it reached a point where I just didn’t care enough any more to find out.

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They should have staked this book

Revisado: 10-28-22

This book feels like an inexperienced teen's twist on a certain teenage vampire slayer. That could work, but the author has basically thrown in every trope she could find, as well as being unable to keep anything straight. It's a short story that was obviously written over a long period of time, then never reviewed or edited for consistency. If you know the tropes of bad fiction and Wattpad, you won't need this SPOILER warning.

The protagonist is 17 and attending college; it's possible, it is California, but that little factoid is dropped and never followed up.

The protagonist's family moved from the UK to Los Angeles to battle vampires while the protagonist was a child. At different points in the story, the house where they live changes from a basic suburban home to a near mansion that's hundreds of years old--and where the protagonist's family has lived all that time--and even has a stable.

Slayers are born genetically superior, and normally only marry other slayers to continue the slayer line. There are only five slayer families in LA, so the inbreeding would make ancient Egyptian pharaohs envious.

There is a non-slayer friend who's totally goth--it is LA--but his name is Jim Bob.

Underage protagonist regularly goes clubbing with Jim Bob and other friends who don't know about the slaying.

A century-old vampire with a soul (well, the book calls it his humanity) falls in love with the underage, generations younger protagonist. But, he's super hot, and pedophilia and age of consent be damned, the protagonist wants him to be her boyfriend.

Time is mentioned in 24-hour clock time. Other Britishisms pop up, but there was so much worse that I didn't bother keeping track of them.

The slayer family which has trained for generations, somehow manages to get innocents killed by a severe inability to plan a team fight, and nearly dies themselves in this mess.

I got this on sale. I almost stopped 30 minutes in, but I hate listened just to see how bad it was going to get. It got that bad.

I wanted to give the narrator two stars, because at least she spoke clearly, enunciating well, but her accents were terrible, and she sounds like a forty-year old, not a teenage girl.

Don't waste your money.

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Lots of Spoilers; Lots of Disappointment

Revisado: 02-09-20

For 85% of the book I was with the protagonist. Appreciated her attitude and her willingness to help others. But, then, the author decided that the actual basis of the story involved updating the old horrifying romance trope of being raped but the guy was hot and it turned out okay because the heroine got totally into him which made the terror and abuse just water under the bridge.

This is definitely a YA novel, and I'm very upset that young people may be reading it and getting the wrong ideas about relationships and what is acceptable and what is not.

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Not Understanding All the Praise

Revisado: 08-23-19

I listen to audiobooks on my daily driving commute, so I go through two to three books a month. I listen to YA often. When this book popped up with tons of praise I bought it. I never finished it. The idea was good. The protagonist was not. She's a princess, but she behaves like a modern rich teen girl. A princess would have been educated and trained to never behave in the ways she does regularly. Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but I'm a huge European history buff, which this book is based on, and I could not suspend my disbelief. I can buy into a world with magic. I can buy into bad guys with deadly, horrible behavior. I can't buy into a princess who acts like she should be at the mall.

SPOILER: Also, a main plot point is that an imposter is accepted by the rulers of the kingdom she is marrying into immediately upon her arrival, and the princess is forced to go into hiding. Really? They never requested a portrait of the princess? What?! No physical description ever was given? The imposter doesn't not resemble the princess beyond being another white, teenaged girl.

Anyway, if you can ignore these complaints, enjoy the book.

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BUY THIS BOOK!

Revisado: 11-08-18

There was nothing in this book that was perfect. Beautifully written. Beautifully narrated. It was too short. If there are sequels, I will be first in line to preorder.

It's loosely based on old Norse sagas, with similar themes of the outsider(s) coming in to save a town, in hopes of glory and gold. This time, though, it's four young women from varied backgrounds, all of whom are wonderfully individualized, and interesting.

It's a wonderful world, and there are so many more opportunities in these characters and the setting to explore.

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So Many Typos; So Much Enunciation

Revisado: 10-30-18

The story basis is great. I love urban fantasy and the parts I heard sounded good. Unfortunately, the result is weak. There are a lot of typos in the book. One that kept coming up was a spell that would stop your enemy attacking for half a second. Half a second? That doesn't sound like much. Much later on, the spell is actually used and then it lasts for half a minute. Names were confused a few times.

The heroine is supposed to be in her mid-20s and a serious fighter/assassin. Those fight scenes were the only good parts of the book, because then she didn't talk. Emotionally she came across as a middle schooler going through puberty, with lots of repetitive whining and screaming and tantrums over things that an adult would suck up and deal with.

The narrator was okay, but she put way too much emphasis on enunciating clearly. That's not a good choice when narrating a book. People don't talk like that, unless they're giving a lecture and trying to be completely, lingually clear on a given point.

Obviously, these books are popular enough, and everyone has their comfort food reads. My comfort food reads are probably not yours.

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Good female narrator; male narrator, ugh

Revisado: 01-27-18

What did you like best about Vampire Girl? What did you like least?

The story was fun. I wanted something that didn't require much in the way of brain cell engagement, so it was a good choice. The writing was good enough that it was easy to overlook the cliched storylines.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Never made it to the end. I'm planning to finish it by reading the ebook, which I purchased in conjunction with the audiobook.

Did Laurel Schroeder and Joel Froomkin do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Laurel Schroeder was very good, at least a 4 star performance. Then Joel Froomkin's voice came on and it was so, so bad. Annoying tone, weirdly accented, highly unpleasant.

Was Vampire Girl worth the listening time?

Depends on the listener. I can't give a wholehearted yea or nay.

Any additional comments?

I might have purchased additional books in the series, but Froomkin's voice has helped me decide that I won't. I'm going to make a point to never buy a book that he narrates. However, I will be looking forward to having narration done on any other books by Laurel Schroeder.

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Sword and Sorcery at Its Best

Revisado: 10-03-17

Sword and sorcery, demons, dragons, assassins, blood sacrifice, all the usual trappings, but told in a realistic, natural way that makes it all seem normal. I fell into the story quickly, easily, able to suspend disbelief.

Unusually, the male narrator does a good job with women's voices, not making them simpering or nasally, just softer, not easy with his natural bass baritone. The only reason I didn't give it five stars was because when he was not voicing a character, he tended to talk low, and I had to adjust the volume.

There are short flashbacks, brief retellings of legends, the main narration in third person, and short first person parts from a separate character by a different narrator, all woven together into a beautiful brocade of a tale.

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Mysteries Too Simple

Revisado: 02-24-17

What disappointed you about Dreamer's Pool?

There were multiple mysteries, yet none were that mysterious. I was looking forward to peeling the layers of the stories, but there weren't any.

Would you ever listen to anything by Juliet Marillier again?

I doubt it. The characters seemed pretty standard, just with a fantasy setting. Wrongfully imprisoned woman pushing for truth against evil leader. Physically giant man who speaks little but seems to have a good heart and a deep hurt. Privileged prince trying to be a good ruler. You can use stock characters, but you need to do something different with them.

Did the narrators do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Not really. The multiple narrators didn't add to the story. And, please, look up how to pronounce words and names you don't know. Lughnasadh is not pronounced lug nuh sad. There was also no coordination between the narrators as to the pronouncing of names.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Dreamer's Pool?

I didn't finish the book. I figured out the main mystery and guess most of the others less than a third of the way through. A waste of a credit.

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esto le resultó útil a 7 personas