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A review by kblincoln
Seven Kinds of Hell by Dana Cameron
4.0
I bought this UF on a whim as it was on sale. I'd never really heard of it, but I'm game for different permutations of contemporary settings and vampires/werewolves.
This one, while excitingly action-packed, set in various European cities, and solidly grounded in archeological Greek vases, buckles, sherds, etc, wasn't to my own personal taste. It's solid writing, but I'm a character-focused reader. If you don't make me fall in love with your main character and give them a cast of sidekicks for me also to love, then chances are I won't stick with your story past the first book.
That's the case here. Zoe runs around from city to city, attack to attack, and at first, I thought her unrequited love friend Sean would be her main sidekick, but then his mind gets more or less vamp-lobotomized and he becomes an uninteresting blank. She acquires two fangborn followers, the STeubens, loses them, acquires two more fangborn followers, encounters an enemy-turned-possible helper Adrian, encounters lost love who helps her...loses him...and then (you can see where this is going). No one stuck around enough to actually have a relationship with Zoe that made me want to keep skin in the game. There's so much happening (not to mention multiple bad guy groups hard to keep track of) I never settled into Zoe's heart long enough to care.
Still, if action is your thing, and interesting contemporary vampire/werewolves, this would be fun. The archeological bits were definitely the best part of this and very interesting. There's a bit of steam here, but not too explicit, and definitely didn't satisfy my romance novel hunger. It's mostly after-the-fact stuff.
I think this first book was just a tad too ambitious and needed to linger longer on the main character and some relationships in order for me to move forward.
This one, while excitingly action-packed, set in various European cities, and solidly grounded in archeological Greek vases, buckles, sherds, etc, wasn't to my own personal taste. It's solid writing, but I'm a character-focused reader. If you don't make me fall in love with your main character and give them a cast of sidekicks for me also to love, then chances are I won't stick with your story past the first book.
That's the case here. Zoe runs around from city to city, attack to attack, and at first, I thought her unrequited love friend Sean would be her main sidekick, but then his mind gets more or less vamp-lobotomized and he becomes an uninteresting blank. She acquires two fangborn followers, the STeubens, loses them, acquires two more fangborn followers, encounters an enemy-turned-possible helper Adrian, encounters lost love who helps her...loses him...and then (you can see where this is going). No one stuck around enough to actually have a relationship with Zoe that made me want to keep skin in the game. There's so much happening (not to mention multiple bad guy groups hard to keep track of) I never settled into Zoe's heart long enough to care.
Still, if action is your thing, and interesting contemporary vampire/werewolves, this would be fun. The archeological bits were definitely the best part of this and very interesting. There's a bit of steam here, but not too explicit, and definitely didn't satisfy my romance novel hunger. It's mostly after-the-fact stuff.
I think this first book was just a tad too ambitious and needed to linger longer on the main character and some relationships in order for me to move forward.