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birdloveranne's review against another edition
3.0
I listened to 6 chapters. The story was kind of dark and depressing. I skipped and listened to the last two chapters. (There was no way to change the playback speed). Overall, I am sure it was a great story, at least going by other reviews. This was the first of this series that I tried.
ofearna's review against another edition
3.0
This whole series seems to be romance authors jumping on the Paranormal bus...
zeezeemama11's review against another edition
2.0
I've been testing out a lot of Marjorie Liu's works of late. I'm torn on this one. I can definitely see how the author has grown since 2005. The main character's meshed too quickly for me. Seriously you've known the person a day! Then you break out the L word in less than 48 hours, eye roll. The story its self and individual character development were good. I didn't feel as if I was reading about cardboard wikipedia outlines of people. I liked the fact I didn't guess the ending but that being said where I thought it was going was much better than the actual ending. It had such a possibility of being a head turner. Nice, quick, no brainer read. I will dub this airplane material because if I lost the book I wouldn't be terribly sad. If you've never read Marjorie Liu's stuff before don't start here she has been working on the Monstress series which is phenomenal. Dive in there first that is 5 star writing.
firecat's review against another edition
3.0
This book is the second of the multi-author Crimson City series created by Liz Maverick. I listened to the unabridged audiobook, narrated by Rebecca Rogers.
In this urban paranormal romance, vampires and werewolves are barely tolerated second-class citizens in a city run by humans. They are negotiating an alliance, but it's difficult since they hate each other so much. A young werewolf -- the granddaughter of the Grand Dame Alpha, the leader of the werewolves -- and an outcast vampire executioner-for-hire are assigned to solve a series of vampire murders. They fall in love, which is forbidden by all the norms of both of their clans.
This is the first paranormal romance I've read (except for the Anita Blake series), and the first book by Liu. So I'm not sure how many of its quirks are quirks of the genre itself, vs. quirks of this author. I found it odd that the vampires heat up bags of blood in the microwave and buy sunblock at the local drugstore when they want to go out during the daytime. And that the werewolves obligingly chain themselves to the bedposts during the full moon so they won't rampage through the city killing everything in sight. But these oddities didn't stop me from finding the book entertaining.
I like that money and class are part of the story, although I didn't think it was adequately explained why the vampire protagonist was poor. (In other words, I suspected him of being poor so the reader would like him.)
I was worried that I would find the romantic relationship awful, but I didn't - the characters are well matched and they treat each other as equals for the most part. I have a bit of an aversion to romances that turn around "We met each other 24 hours ago, but we are in True Love and Will Always Be Together No Matter What." But that's probably just how the genre works.
There's a subtle undercurrent of gender-play in the book, not only with the main protagonists (who are somewhat gender-reversed - she is more kickass and he is more gentle) but also with some other characters. It is nice to have a female protagonist who wears striped tights and has pink hair, instead of the traditional beautiful leggy blonde with boobs out to there.
The final third of the book gets a little crazy with plotting and characterization goes a bit off. (I gather from other Liu reviews here that she does tend to have crazy plotting, and that probably wouldn't have bothered me so much but the first two thirds of the book didn't feel that way to me.) I could have done without the Friendly Demon Ex Machina who suddenly shows up and happens to be able to get the protagonists into a completely secure building and have them invisible into the bargain. She speaks in dialect and that makes her feel like something of a racial stereotype or cultural appropriation to me, although it's certainly possible that the author did her research and I'm the one who is ignorant. I also didn't like the too-sudden transformation of the Psycho Bitch From Hell side character into a Devoted Mother. But otherwise I found the ending generally satisfying.
In this urban paranormal romance, vampires and werewolves are barely tolerated second-class citizens in a city run by humans. They are negotiating an alliance, but it's difficult since they hate each other so much. A young werewolf -- the granddaughter of the Grand Dame Alpha, the leader of the werewolves -- and an outcast vampire executioner-for-hire are assigned to solve a series of vampire murders. They fall in love, which is forbidden by all the norms of both of their clans.
This is the first paranormal romance I've read (except for the Anita Blake series), and the first book by Liu. So I'm not sure how many of its quirks are quirks of the genre itself, vs. quirks of this author. I found it odd that the vampires heat up bags of blood in the microwave and buy sunblock at the local drugstore when they want to go out during the daytime. And that the werewolves obligingly chain themselves to the bedposts during the full moon so they won't rampage through the city killing everything in sight. But these oddities didn't stop me from finding the book entertaining.
I like that money and class are part of the story, although I didn't think it was adequately explained why the vampire protagonist was poor. (In other words, I suspected him of being poor so the reader would like him.)
I was worried that I would find the romantic relationship awful, but I didn't - the characters are well matched and they treat each other as equals for the most part. I have a bit of an aversion to romances that turn around "We met each other 24 hours ago, but we are in True Love and Will Always Be Together No Matter What." But that's probably just how the genre works.
There's a subtle undercurrent of gender-play in the book, not only with the main protagonists (who are somewhat gender-reversed - she is more kickass and he is more gentle) but also with some other characters. It is nice to have a female protagonist who wears striped tights and has pink hair, instead of the traditional beautiful leggy blonde with boobs out to there.
The final third of the book gets a little crazy with plotting and characterization goes a bit off. (I gather from other Liu reviews here that she does tend to have crazy plotting, and that probably wouldn't have bothered me so much but the first two thirds of the book didn't feel that way to me.) I could have done without the Friendly Demon Ex Machina who suddenly shows up and happens to be able to get the protagonists into a completely secure building and have them invisible into the bargain. She speaks in dialect and that makes her feel like something of a racial stereotype or cultural appropriation to me, although it's certainly possible that the author did her research and I'm the one who is ignorant. I also didn't like the too-sudden transformation of the Psycho Bitch From Hell side character into a Devoted Mother. But otherwise I found the ending generally satisfying.
lauriereadslohf's review
4.0
I realized about 20 pages in that this book is #2 in a series. After I shook off the confusion, I began to fall into the story which is a very kick-butt, action driven paranormal world ALA Buffy the Vampire Slayer except this time the slayer is male and a vampire. He's called "The Punisher" because that's pretty much what he does. He punishes wayward vamps, and kills them when necessary too. Though werewolves and vampires despise each other in this universe they must form a tentative agreement in order to avoid extinction. Keeli is a werewolf and reluctantly joins forces with Michael. She's dismayed and horrified once she realizes she's also attracted to him.
I enjoyed this one pretty much from beginning to end without ever experiencing an overwhelming urge to put it down to pick up something better. The author has a knack for creating an action packed book with equally well developed characters. The love story is believable but isn't the driving force of the novel. The two main characters both have a lot of crap to overcome and from the look of things a lot of crap to overcome in future books as well. I'm looking forward to the next in this series and may even search out book 1 even though it was written by another author.
I enjoyed this one pretty much from beginning to end without ever experiencing an overwhelming urge to put it down to pick up something better. The author has a knack for creating an action packed book with equally well developed characters. The love story is believable but isn't the driving force of the novel. The two main characters both have a lot of crap to overcome and from the look of things a lot of crap to overcome in future books as well. I'm looking forward to the next in this series and may even search out book 1 even though it was written by another author.
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