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A review by laertes
Autumn Rose by Abigail Gibbs
3.0
Autumn Rose is the second book in Abigail Gibbs’ The Dark Heroine series. I read the first book – The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire – last year, and enjoyed it for the most part, so I was interested to see how the series progressed. Initially, it defied my expectations. I was expecting it to pick up more or less where the previous book left off, given that we met Autumn Rose at the end, but it doesn’t. Instead, it moves back in time to the moment of Violet Lee’s kidnapping, and relates Autumn Rose’s story from this point.
Given that we’ve already met Autumn, some aspects of her story don’t come as a surprise. We know she’s the first heroine, Sagean and a seer, but it was interesting to see the development of events we’re already familiar with from her perspective. It’s not completely devoid of revelations, though. We learn a lot more about the Extermino and the relationship between them, the Pierre clan of slayers, and Violet’s father. We also discover that Autumn’s own life isn’t as charmed as it might first appear – her school days are troubled, her relationship with her parents strained and somewhat cold, she suffers from depression and is borderline suicidal. Against this backdrop, the arrival of Prince Fallon and her developing relationship with him, and the ultimate revelation of her purpose in the Prophecy of the Heroines, stand out as bright sparks in the darkness. Autumn at the end of this book isn’t the Autumn we meet at the beginning, and I enjoyed seeing how she became the character we meet at the end of The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire. We see Violet Lee’s progression from human to heroine up close and personal, and now we experience the same thing with Autumn. By the end of Autumn Rose, we’re up to date with both Autumn and Violet, and ready for the third heroine.
Another thing I particularly enjoyed was that Autumn Rose takes events to a place just beyond the conclusion of The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire. We reunite with Violet soon after she has become a vampire, and it appears that things aren’t going too well – seemingly uncomfortable in her new life, she is refusing to drink blood. Kaspar also seems to have reverted to a personality akin to that he possessed before he fell in love, which seems at odds with where we left him.
My biggest problem with this book is the grammar, and I hate being a pedant so it truly pains me to say that. It’s actually testament to how much of an issue it becomes that I’ve brought it up at all. At one point, we find Eaglen “sat at” a table in the library, rather than sitting, and that grated on me. Abigail Gibbs is, or was at the time, a student of English at the University of Oxford, so you’d think she might be able to do a better job. People spin a lot, too, or rather “span”. I span, he span, it span, we span. I think maybe “spun” would be more elegant, not to mention grammatically correct. Or “turned” even. It’s used so often that it becomes intensely irritating – almost as irritating as “cummerband” from The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire (it was actually hard to type that, because Word wanted to auto-correct to “cummerbund” more times than I care to count). I can only assume, based on what I’ve read, that everyone’s spinning pretty much all of the time, and that’s a visual I could have done without. There are other words, Abigail! Most distracting of all, though, is the emphasis on how exactly people are sitting. It actually gets to the point where it takes away from the plot, because your brain’s trying to work out the latest bit of contortionism (not all of them make sense, in terms of elbow, hand, knee and thigh positions), which Gibbs has taken the trouble to describe at length and in far more detail than is really necessary. It’s odd to contrast the often clumsy writing with the decent story hiding underneath it. I do wonder how it ever got to publication in its current state – and I’m reading the finished version, not an ARC.
There’s a good series in the making here, if you can overlook the clunky grammar and distractingly detailed posture descriptions. Autumn and Violet are well drawn and mostly convincing, and the world-building is strong. According to Abigail Gibbs’ website, the third in the series was supposed to appear in 2015. It hasn’t, as far as I’m aware, so perhaps it’s stalled for the moment. I’ll give the third book a try, if and when it appears, because it seems like it’s at an interesting point now. I hope, if it does, that Gibbs gets back to the point of the series because I’ve actually more or less forgotten what that was supposed to be – the significance of the Prophecy of the Heroines plays much less a part in Autumn Rose than it did in The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire. Something about an interdimensional war? It’d be nice to tie that back in, because without it the whole thing becomes pretty pointless. I hope, as well, that the writing might have become more assured. I’m intrigued to see what the future holds for this series.
Visit my blog for more reviews: http://scheherazadereads.blogspot.co.uk/
Given that we’ve already met Autumn, some aspects of her story don’t come as a surprise. We know she’s the first heroine, Sagean and a seer, but it was interesting to see the development of events we’re already familiar with from her perspective. It’s not completely devoid of revelations, though. We learn a lot more about the Extermino and the relationship between them, the Pierre clan of slayers, and Violet’s father. We also discover that Autumn’s own life isn’t as charmed as it might first appear – her school days are troubled, her relationship with her parents strained and somewhat cold, she suffers from depression and is borderline suicidal. Against this backdrop, the arrival of Prince Fallon and her developing relationship with him, and the ultimate revelation of her purpose in the Prophecy of the Heroines, stand out as bright sparks in the darkness. Autumn at the end of this book isn’t the Autumn we meet at the beginning, and I enjoyed seeing how she became the character we meet at the end of The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire. We see Violet Lee’s progression from human to heroine up close and personal, and now we experience the same thing with Autumn. By the end of Autumn Rose, we’re up to date with both Autumn and Violet, and ready for the third heroine.
Another thing I particularly enjoyed was that Autumn Rose takes events to a place just beyond the conclusion of The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire. We reunite with Violet soon after she has become a vampire, and it appears that things aren’t going too well – seemingly uncomfortable in her new life, she is refusing to drink blood. Kaspar also seems to have reverted to a personality akin to that he possessed before he fell in love, which seems at odds with where we left him.
My biggest problem with this book is the grammar, and I hate being a pedant so it truly pains me to say that. It’s actually testament to how much of an issue it becomes that I’ve brought it up at all. At one point, we find Eaglen “sat at” a table in the library, rather than sitting, and that grated on me. Abigail Gibbs is, or was at the time, a student of English at the University of Oxford, so you’d think she might be able to do a better job. People spin a lot, too, or rather “span”. I span, he span, it span, we span. I think maybe “spun” would be more elegant, not to mention grammatically correct. Or “turned” even. It’s used so often that it becomes intensely irritating – almost as irritating as “cummerband” from The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire (it was actually hard to type that, because Word wanted to auto-correct to “cummerbund” more times than I care to count). I can only assume, based on what I’ve read, that everyone’s spinning pretty much all of the time, and that’s a visual I could have done without. There are other words, Abigail! Most distracting of all, though, is the emphasis on how exactly people are sitting. It actually gets to the point where it takes away from the plot, because your brain’s trying to work out the latest bit of contortionism (not all of them make sense, in terms of elbow, hand, knee and thigh positions), which Gibbs has taken the trouble to describe at length and in far more detail than is really necessary. It’s odd to contrast the often clumsy writing with the decent story hiding underneath it. I do wonder how it ever got to publication in its current state – and I’m reading the finished version, not an ARC.
There’s a good series in the making here, if you can overlook the clunky grammar and distractingly detailed posture descriptions. Autumn and Violet are well drawn and mostly convincing, and the world-building is strong. According to Abigail Gibbs’ website, the third in the series was supposed to appear in 2015. It hasn’t, as far as I’m aware, so perhaps it’s stalled for the moment. I’ll give the third book a try, if and when it appears, because it seems like it’s at an interesting point now. I hope, if it does, that Gibbs gets back to the point of the series because I’ve actually more or less forgotten what that was supposed to be – the significance of the Prophecy of the Heroines plays much less a part in Autumn Rose than it did in The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire. Something about an interdimensional war? It’d be nice to tie that back in, because without it the whole thing becomes pretty pointless. I hope, as well, that the writing might have become more assured. I’m intrigued to see what the future holds for this series.
Visit my blog for more reviews: http://scheherazadereads.blogspot.co.uk/