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A review by ravencrantz
Seven Kinds of Hell by Dana Cameron
2.0
Another book from my NetGalley queue finished! This was slightly better than most, but given my track record, that's not saying much. The premise was great, and it started and ended with a lot of action, but the middle parts were lacking and the characters and plot were hard to follow.
There was a lot of history in this book, and I mean a lot. I can appreciate it and the time and research that must have gone into it, but even with one of the few history subjects I'm interested in, I was bored. I found myself skimming a lot of the info dumps, and still being able to follow a lot of what was going on. I feel like a lot of the history dumps could have been condensed to make for easier reading that didn't seem like I was reading a scholarly text.
I wasn't a fan of how the secret shapeshifter, "Fangborn", society was supposedly integrated with humans. Or the fact that they just called humans "normals". I know I poke fun at the silly terms authors come up with for humans in fantasy books, but at least be more creative than that! I mean, technically, to a Fangborn, the shapeshifters are the normal ones so this only makes sense from a human perspective. Also the werewolves calling their forms "skinself" and "furself", while more creative than "normals", was just as aggravating and kind of weird to read.
I didn't connect to any of the characters, and the only thing I liked about our main character, Zoe, was how she grew to accept both parts of herself, wolf and human. I didn't like how confusing it was who was who, and how one moment a person is trying to kill Zoe, and the next they're helping her. I appreciate the idea that this seemingly perfect secret society isn't so perfect after all, but the execution was mediocre, especially after having to trudge through the whole book to learn something I had already suspected.
This is definitely one of those books I would choose to rewrite if given the chance. It has a lot of potential to be great, but so many things kept falling flat. It would have worked really well as a standalone, but there was a hasty set up for sequels, which I'm not interested in. I do have to applaud accurate depictions of Boston, even if they were few and fleeting. The last Boston based book I read was a major let down in that regard. So there is one good thing about this book.
There was a lot of history in this book, and I mean a lot. I can appreciate it and the time and research that must have gone into it, but even with one of the few history subjects I'm interested in, I was bored. I found myself skimming a lot of the info dumps, and still being able to follow a lot of what was going on. I feel like a lot of the history dumps could have been condensed to make for easier reading that didn't seem like I was reading a scholarly text.
I wasn't a fan of how the secret shapeshifter, "Fangborn", society was supposedly integrated with humans. Or the fact that they just called humans "normals". I know I poke fun at the silly terms authors come up with for humans in fantasy books, but at least be more creative than that! I mean, technically, to a Fangborn, the shapeshifters are the normal ones so this only makes sense from a human perspective. Also the werewolves calling their forms "skinself" and "furself", while more creative than "normals", was just as aggravating and kind of weird to read.
I didn't connect to any of the characters, and the only thing I liked about our main character, Zoe, was how she grew to accept both parts of herself, wolf and human. I didn't like how confusing it was who was who, and how one moment a person is trying to kill Zoe, and the next they're helping her. I appreciate the idea that this seemingly perfect secret society isn't so perfect after all, but the execution was mediocre, especially after having to trudge through the whole book to learn something I had already suspected.
This is definitely one of those books I would choose to rewrite if given the chance. It has a lot of potential to be great, but so many things kept falling flat. It would have worked really well as a standalone, but there was a hasty set up for sequels, which I'm not interested in. I do have to applaud accurate depictions of Boston, even if they were few and fleeting. The last Boston based book I read was a major let down in that regard. So there is one good thing about this book.