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A review by dtaylorbooks
Chaos Rises by Pippa DaCosta
2.0
There was a lot going on in CHAOS RISES that happened prior to the start of this story that isn’t fleshed out too great. A lot to do with The Institute and how it created Gem and Del to be these creatures that killed demons but they escaped. It’s always this looming Big Bad that’s haunting them on top of the Big Bad of the moment that the current story is dealing with. Plus the whole Fall. The veil breached six months prior? The supernatural world bled through to the living one and demons are living among people, concentrated in areas called the nw-zones that people avoid. It was annoying because the book kept talking at me as if these things were things I already knew so it was short on context and it only proved to confuse me.
I’m not sure how I felt about the characters either. They were all pretty crappy and that was continually kind of batted off as them being demons and demons weren’t trustworthy and lied all the time, but it still made them crappy characters. Gem is half demon who’s always struggling to control the demon half of her. But she sells out everyone who gets close to her if she thinks it’ll benefit her in the end, namely to find her brother. It got old when she did it for, like, the third time. She loves her brother and will do literally anything to find him after he’s gone missing, but anything means screwing everyone over. So not too great of a character to follow.
I did like her honesty, though. A moment happens toward the end of the book where Gem allows her demon to surface and she basically revels in the power. She likes it and she’s not all that apologetic about it either. I could really appreciate that.
I didn’t really care for the book. It needed another copy edit. Not the worst I’ve seen, by far. But there were enough missing punctuation and run-on sentences that they stuck with me. The story was just okay. I found myself bored with it pretty early on. Add in the backstory that’s mentioned but not really developed, leaving a gaping hole of context, and the crappy characters doing crappy things (and not just Gem, pretty much every character was out for themselves and worked to screw everyone over to the point where I couldn’t connect with any of them) and there just wasn’t a whole lot for me to like. I won’t be reading on in the series.
2
I’m not sure how I felt about the characters either. They were all pretty crappy and that was continually kind of batted off as them being demons and demons weren’t trustworthy and lied all the time, but it still made them crappy characters. Gem is half demon who’s always struggling to control the demon half of her. But she sells out everyone who gets close to her if she thinks it’ll benefit her in the end, namely to find her brother. It got old when she did it for, like, the third time. She loves her brother and will do literally anything to find him after he’s gone missing, but anything means screwing everyone over. So not too great of a character to follow.
I did like her honesty, though. A moment happens toward the end of the book where Gem allows her demon to surface and she basically revels in the power. She likes it and she’s not all that apologetic about it either. I could really appreciate that.
I didn’t really care for the book. It needed another copy edit. Not the worst I’ve seen, by far. But there were enough missing punctuation and run-on sentences that they stuck with me. The story was just okay. I found myself bored with it pretty early on. Add in the backstory that’s mentioned but not really developed, leaving a gaping hole of context, and the crappy characters doing crappy things (and not just Gem, pretty much every character was out for themselves and worked to screw everyone over to the point where I couldn’t connect with any of them) and there just wasn’t a whole lot for me to like. I won’t be reading on in the series.
2