Sunday, July 11, 2010

Jessica Andersen "Night Keepers"

Flylady would tell me I'm not behind, just jump in where you are...so here goes.

Night Keepers is the first in a series of books about supernatural warriors pledged to defend the world against the coming 2012 apocalypse. Striking-Jaguar, Strike to you and me, is the next King of the Night Keepers but he's only one of ten warriors left because his father made a serious mistake and most of the Night Keepers were wiped out. He is understandably reluctant to take up the royal mantel given the 13th prophecy that only with the King's sacrifice will the Night Keepers succeed. Anna is our tough-as-nails-but-only-on-the-side-of-good cop whose brother is killed by some crazy cult who keeps talking about the end of the world in 2012 (not the Night Keepers in case you haven't read this sort of book before.)

Really, in a lot of ways this book is surprisingly good. The Mayan backdrop is fascinating, the pacing is mostly not frenetic, the hero and heroine are both decent characters, the sex is well done....BUT the internal logic to this world building is quite extensive and as such I really cared whether the resolution made sense. I can say it didn't outright contradict itself but when you build up the entire book to turn on a whether the hero needs to kill the heroine to save the world, you better have a convincing alternative option. I read the resolution passage three times. Very unsatisfactory.

That said, I'll probably read the second one. I might not finish it, if the pattern is the same, but I'll try it. So while this failure was a deal breaker for this book, there is enough promise in the book that I'll give her a second chance.

Paranormal Romance 2008: 2 of 5 blood sacrifices.

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