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A review by paulabrandon
Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia
2.0
I'm not sure what this was doing in my book collection, or what made me pick it up. Today's young adult supernatural romance isn't really my bag, and I haven't read any of the Beautiful Creatures books. I must have picked it up nice and cheap somewhere. Anyway, despite being linked to an existing series, this was the start of a new series, and I figured the book would catch me up along the way.
Wrong!
This one drops the reader straight into its existing world, referencing characters, events, powers and processes as if the reader understands what they all mean. I was a bit lost. But I'm nothing if not determined! I saw that the movie version of Beautiful Creatures was available to watch on Netflix for free. I could cheat and watch the movie to see if it gave me a heads up! (I wasn't prepared to read four whole books in a genre I'm not a fan of.)
And I'll go off on a tangent here. The movie Beautiful Creatures was just...there. It was two hours of nothing. Insta-love, no real plot, no suspense, no surprises, no action...what a bore! How did it get wonderful actors like Viola Davis, Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons to sign up to such tedious nothingness? Was the book as boring as the movie? The main character of this book, Ridley Duchannes, was in the movie, played by Emmy Rossum. Another good actress. She stole the show with the whole 15 minutes of screen time she got.
Anyway, I assumed that most of the events that triggered this book were in the Beautiful Creatures books. Some. But not all. No, there's actually a prequel novella to this book that details the card game Ridley Duchannes plays with Lennox Gates that sees her owe him two "markers". Essentially, favours, but of the deadly supernatural kind. I did not bother to read this prequel, because the authors expect me to pay over $5 for a 46 page novella.
Novella? 46 pages is a short story. And I'm not paying $5 for a short story!
So with a little bit of background, I plugged along with this book. Ridley tags along with her quarter Incubus boyfriend Link to New York so he can pursue his dreams of being a drummer in a band. Except that Ridley has kind of set it all up, as she "owes" Lennox Gates a drummer as part of that card game. She doesn't realise that Lennox owes debts to Abraham Ravenwood (a villain from the Beautiful Creatures books), who wants revenge for Link and Ridley's part in killing him.
This was reasonably written, but the dialogue was so "trendy" it made my teeth hurt. I read some reviews after I finished the book, and a lot of people were upset that Ridley had changed from a kick-ass heroine in the previous books, to yet another girl in a YA supernatural romance trapped in a love triangle and pining over boys. And yes, there was a lot of that here, but Ridley's internal struggle to rely less on powers that allow her to have mortals do whatever she wants was mildly interesting to me.
Ultimately, not a lot really happens. I managed to follow most of what was going on, but really, if you haven't read the Beautiful Creatures books, don't read this. It doesn't catch you up on anything and assumes you've read the other books and novellas/short stories. More annoyingly, this ends on a "to be continued" cliffhanger. But it didn't bother me as much as it would in other books I read - I wasn't invested enough in what went on here to care much what happens next!
Wrong!
This one drops the reader straight into its existing world, referencing characters, events, powers and processes as if the reader understands what they all mean. I was a bit lost. But I'm nothing if not determined! I saw that the movie version of Beautiful Creatures was available to watch on Netflix for free. I could cheat and watch the movie to see if it gave me a heads up! (I wasn't prepared to read four whole books in a genre I'm not a fan of.)
And I'll go off on a tangent here. The movie Beautiful Creatures was just...there. It was two hours of nothing. Insta-love, no real plot, no suspense, no surprises, no action...what a bore! How did it get wonderful actors like Viola Davis, Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons to sign up to such tedious nothingness? Was the book as boring as the movie? The main character of this book, Ridley Duchannes, was in the movie, played by Emmy Rossum. Another good actress. She stole the show with the whole 15 minutes of screen time she got.
Anyway, I assumed that most of the events that triggered this book were in the Beautiful Creatures books. Some. But not all. No, there's actually a prequel novella to this book that details the card game Ridley Duchannes plays with Lennox Gates that sees her owe him two "markers". Essentially, favours, but of the deadly supernatural kind. I did not bother to read this prequel, because the authors expect me to pay over $5 for a 46 page novella.
Novella? 46 pages is a short story. And I'm not paying $5 for a short story!
So with a little bit of background, I plugged along with this book. Ridley tags along with her quarter Incubus boyfriend Link to New York so he can pursue his dreams of being a drummer in a band. Except that Ridley has kind of set it all up, as she "owes" Lennox Gates a drummer as part of that card game. She doesn't realise that Lennox owes debts to Abraham Ravenwood (a villain from the Beautiful Creatures books), who wants revenge for Link and Ridley's part in killing him.
This was reasonably written, but the dialogue was so "trendy" it made my teeth hurt. I read some reviews after I finished the book, and a lot of people were upset that Ridley had changed from a kick-ass heroine in the previous books, to yet another girl in a YA supernatural romance trapped in a love triangle and pining over boys. And yes, there was a lot of that here, but Ridley's internal struggle to rely less on powers that allow her to have mortals do whatever she wants was mildly interesting to me.
Ultimately, not a lot really happens. I managed to follow most of what was going on, but really, if you haven't read the Beautiful Creatures books, don't read this. It doesn't catch you up on anything and assumes you've read the other books and novellas/short stories. More annoyingly, this ends on a "to be continued" cliffhanger. But it didn't bother me as much as it would in other books I read - I wasn't invested enough in what went on here to care much what happens next!