So glad the next book is available. I knew this is where the book was headed, so exactly what I needed right now. Who will she pick I the end? It’s a hard choice, I dunno. NEXT BOOK....

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

 

I started this series a little late. I picked up book one last year just before the third book came out. Then several people read it and talked about a cliffhanger at the end of it, so I decided not to get in any kind of hurry to get through this series. I wanted to be caught up about the time book four came out. Well, book four is expected to come out in May (though no title or cover yet, so hmmm??). I thought it was time to start working my way towards that goal.

 

I’m not a huge fan of YA, but I seem to do better with dystopian YA series. I think it is because they are outside of the school settings. Plus, the teenagers are forced to grow up a little quicker than they would if they were just “normal” teenagers. Could also be that the YAs that I’ve tried have come highly recommended, like this series. Plus, I love Kresley Cole. I listen to both her Immortals After Dark series and her Game Maker series.

 

If you’re not familiar with this series, it starts off “normal” in book one. Then there is The Flash that changes everything. The climate isn’t the same and plants don’t want to grow. There are now “bagmen” who are like zombies. Lastly, our main character, Evie, has changed. She now has powers. She’s not the only one. There are different “cards”, others players in this game who all represent different tarot cards. Evie is the Empress. They will all have to fight and kill each other until there is one left standing. This isn’t like The Hunger Games, more like The Highlander, “there can be only one”. This “game” has been played several times in the past. Only a few select cards have memory of the past games.

 

In this story, Evie, has a lot going on. Not only is she still trying to figure out who is friend and who is foe, she also has some romance going on. Jackson Deveaux, a Cajun boy that she’s known she before The Flash. While he is a “normal” he has deemed himself her protector and pushes himself into this game that he really has no part in. Then there is Death, one of the players in the game who does remember the past games. He also has a quite the love/hate relationship with Evie. She has betrayed him in past games. But, she is also the only woman that he can touch without killing.

 

A lot happens on their journey in this story. This story is also pretty gruesome, especially for a YA story, much darker than either of Kresley Cole’s adult series that I’ve read. Evie and her group have to fight with a group of cannibals and some of the things that these cannibals have done are very much cringe worthy, even for a horror reader like myself.

 

There is also a sex scene in this story. There was very close to a second one. This is something that I’ve read in some YA series, but it is generally missing in most. I will commend Ms. Cole for pushing the importance of contraception even during this time where things like condoms would be hard to come by. In adult stories, I’m a little indifferent to whether or not they are mentioned, but I do think it is important for books that are targeting a group of people who are just starting to go down the road of exploring this part of their life.

 

I’ve really enjoyed this series so far. I almost didn’t pick it up because my pickiness with YA series. I’m really glad that it came so highly recommended by several of my friends. This is not a standard YA series. It is a lot darker than I expected. It is a very complex world with extremely well developed characters. They all have very hard choices to make to survive this new world that they live in. You can bet that I will be picking up the next book very soon.

 

Narration

This is the first series that I’ve listened to with Emma Galvin. I think she has done a great job with the narration of this series so far. There are several different characters that she has had to voice in some pretty tough situations and I thought she did a flawless job. The scene in the pantry of the cannibals in one that stands out with me. One with a guy named Tad who had been in the pantry for a while. That scene is very moving.

I don’t get shocked by books often but when I do…..



I throw my kindle really hard……..on a soft surface so I don’t break it.


I wasn’t expecting that thing that shall remain unsaid due to spoilers to happen. What a shocker! I finished this a few days ago and I’m still shocked.

”Sooo…anybody else have a sense of impending doom?”

Endless Knight didn't work for a lot of people but I loved it (maybe a little too much because now I’m in a book slump). I did think that it was a little odd that this was classified as YA. Some of the scenes were a little too explicit for YA.

In this book you get to finally meet some of those elusive characters that are talked about so much. I thought I would hate them, but this one particular character has ended up being my favorite. Oh and call me heartless, but I no longer care about the other MC. Dee-ve-oh is so annoying to me now! I hope he goes back to Cajun Town and stays there.

Betrayal would have been a better title for this book.

”I’d seen Survivor alliances tighter than mine”.

”Arcana rule number one: trust no one.”

I thought Evangeline grew a lot as a character but she still had her moments….

”How hard could it be to boil bathwater? I’d watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie once”.

I thought this was the best out of all 3 books. Kresley Cole, thanks for the reminder that the 2nd book of a series doesn’t always have to suck.

Still a really good read but not as good as the first book in my opinion. It was interesting seeing a new side of Eve but we didnt really get to experience much of that side as she spent most of the time mooning over one boy or another, then becoming other peoples prisoner. Personally i dont give much of a rat's ass what Aric think's Evie owns him, he (view spoiler) someone else in my books, Yea that bitch was Evil but no way should Evie have to make up for her actions nor should she be forced into doing something because of a guilty conscious. She should be free to make her choices in her own time, not pressured or threatened, and while Jack is also quite a big douche i still prefer him over Aric who's even more douche. O.o anyways off that annoying subject, the rest of the characters were great, it was nice exploring more of they grey side of peoples personality, as I'm a big believe in not everything is black and white, and this book explored this quite well. the world was also interesting, we got to meet the cannibals up close and personal, which while not exactly nice i was intrigued, plus they were pretty nasty > overall this book wasnt as horror filled as the first one.
I think that somewhat sums up everything, sorry for the random rambling and jumping from one subject to another with my terrible use of grammar, I'm watching Hero's at the same time, so I'm distracted.

I struggled to get to the halfway point. Why? Same reason as before. Issues.

 

Things that still bothered me from the first book - H1 attending school armed with a flask of booze and a knife. Emmm. Right. Should have commented about that in the first book but...

 

So this book... the h and her band of miscreants run into a few other Arcana who'd just had a run-in with Death (and as a Pratchett fan, I twitch every time the brat formerly known as Arik gets called - or calls himself - that) They manage to get past that group unscathed, run a long time, run into a somewhat two-faced other Arcana, get caught by cannibals lead by yet another Arcana. She manages to get them out of it whereupon the two-faced one aids in her capture by Death. It was around here that I finally gave up. I really did not want to spend 150+ pages with a h who apparently sees the good in everyone (read - TSTL...and a Sue) and the millennia old man-child with his millennia old grudge against a previous Empress.

 

Now, whether I read book 3 or not, I don't know. I guess it depends on how inspired I feel after an upcoming vacation (and the reading of a library book)