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A review by elliefufu
Embers by Laura Bickle
3.0
Embers, Anya Kalinczyk Book #1 by Laura Bickle
Grade: C
“Your best bet is to keep this idiot from waking up Sirrush up. If Sirrush shows up to the party, there’s no bouncer in the world big or bad enough to keep him off the dance floor.”
Anya Kalinczyk spends her days as an arson investigator for the Detroit Fire Department and her nights using her special gifts as a Lantern, a very rare type of medium, helping people get rid of very powerful, angry spirits. As a Lantern she has the ability to absorb the spirit into her body and destroy it but she only uses her ability on ghosts and phantoms that are harming people. Between a spike in unfriendly spirit activity, trying to stop an arsonist who is proving very difficult to stop and nightmares involving an ancient spirit Anya is fighting not only for herself but for the entire city of Detroit.
Anya and her Lantern abilities are so rare that she believes that she is the only person who possesses them which makes her a very in demand woman. She sometimes works with a group called the DAGR, a group made up of ghost hunters and some have special abilities, and is only called in on their most difficult cases, usually when everything else has failed. It’s while helping DARG with a very nasty spirit that she discovers a little girl in an old soda machine. The young girl begins to haunt her dreams telling Anya that “Sirrush is coming.” On further investigation Anya discovers Sirrush is an ancient dragon that is believed to be sleeping under Detroit and someone is trying to wake him up.
As a huge fan of urban fantasy I could not wait to read this book but I found myself sadly pretty disappointed. Anya has lost her mother at a young age and believes the fire that killed her mother was her fault. This cause Anya to hole most people at arms length and tries not to get close to anyone, especially in the romantic department. This comes into play later in the story as Anya finds herself in a love triangle.
This is one of the major problems I had with the story because I lost a lot of respect for Anya. Anya has two men that are trying to woo her but neither knows of the other. When one of the men gets hurt and goes into a coma, Anya acts like it’s the end of the world and wants to be with him but while he is in the coma she goes off and has sex with the other man. To me this is very wrong and I got pretty upset. I found myself really upset at the end with how she brushes off her sexual relationship with one man as the other comes out of his coma. I couldn’t get on bored with this plot line and it made me not like Anya at all.
Anya does have a best friend/pet, a salamander named Sparky. Sparky is a fire elemental given to Anya by her mother before she died and he acts as a guard dog to Anya. Sparky can take form as a dog-like creature, is invisible to everyone buy Anya, loves electricity and spends most of his time in the form of a salamander on a necklace that Anya always wears. Sparky provided lots of laughs in a very, very dark book and is one of the best companions that I have ever read about.
I felt that this book was very difficult to read and I struggled to finish it. After I lost respect for Anya I kinda checked out to be honest. I felt that as soon as things got really good for a few pages the next three pages would be awful. I am going to read the next book in the series and I’m really hoping that I enjoy it more then this one. The idea for this book is wonderful and I really want it to get better because new and fresh ideas in urban fantasy is getting harder and harder to find.
Grade: C
“Your best bet is to keep this idiot from waking up Sirrush up. If Sirrush shows up to the party, there’s no bouncer in the world big or bad enough to keep him off the dance floor.”
Anya Kalinczyk spends her days as an arson investigator for the Detroit Fire Department and her nights using her special gifts as a Lantern, a very rare type of medium, helping people get rid of very powerful, angry spirits. As a Lantern she has the ability to absorb the spirit into her body and destroy it but she only uses her ability on ghosts and phantoms that are harming people. Between a spike in unfriendly spirit activity, trying to stop an arsonist who is proving very difficult to stop and nightmares involving an ancient spirit Anya is fighting not only for herself but for the entire city of Detroit.
Anya and her Lantern abilities are so rare that she believes that she is the only person who possesses them which makes her a very in demand woman. She sometimes works with a group called the DAGR, a group made up of ghost hunters and some have special abilities, and is only called in on their most difficult cases, usually when everything else has failed. It’s while helping DARG with a very nasty spirit that she discovers a little girl in an old soda machine. The young girl begins to haunt her dreams telling Anya that “Sirrush is coming.” On further investigation Anya discovers Sirrush is an ancient dragon that is believed to be sleeping under Detroit and someone is trying to wake him up.
As a huge fan of urban fantasy I could not wait to read this book but I found myself sadly pretty disappointed. Anya has lost her mother at a young age and believes the fire that killed her mother was her fault. This cause Anya to hole most people at arms length and tries not to get close to anyone, especially in the romantic department. This comes into play later in the story as Anya finds herself in a love triangle.
This is one of the major problems I had with the story because I lost a lot of respect for Anya. Anya has two men that are trying to woo her but neither knows of the other. When one of the men gets hurt and goes into a coma, Anya acts like it’s the end of the world and wants to be with him but while he is in the coma she goes off and has sex with the other man. To me this is very wrong and I got pretty upset. I found myself really upset at the end with how she brushes off her sexual relationship with one man as the other comes out of his coma. I couldn’t get on bored with this plot line and it made me not like Anya at all.
Anya does have a best friend/pet, a salamander named Sparky. Sparky is a fire elemental given to Anya by her mother before she died and he acts as a guard dog to Anya. Sparky can take form as a dog-like creature, is invisible to everyone buy Anya, loves electricity and spends most of his time in the form of a salamander on a necklace that Anya always wears. Sparky provided lots of laughs in a very, very dark book and is one of the best companions that I have ever read about.
I felt that this book was very difficult to read and I struggled to finish it. After I lost respect for Anya I kinda checked out to be honest. I felt that as soon as things got really good for a few pages the next three pages would be awful. I am going to read the next book in the series and I’m really hoping that I enjoy it more then this one. The idea for this book is wonderful and I really want it to get better because new and fresh ideas in urban fantasy is getting harder and harder to find.