It won't be out until 2019 (!), but apparently Boyfriend Dungeon is supposed to be a cross between a dungeon crawler and a dating sim. You can defeat enemies and date your weapon.

 

I've only read a couple articles on it, and none of them have mentioned Soul Eater, but they really should. It's a series (manga, anime) set in a world where two or more people (mostly pairs) team up to collect the souls of evil humans and witches. At least one person in each team has the ability to transform into a weapon that another person in the team uses. The main characters are a girl and her scythe partner.

 

It'll be interesting to see how Boyfriend Dungeon works out. It'd be nice if it were a little further along and actually had a release date.

"The Hunger seethes under my skin, and my chest swells with joy—no, more than joy. It’s a fierce, violent desire that obliterates the other, weaker, emotions. My world focuses to a needle-sharp point: her. Ending her."

Okay, truth be told it took me nearly half a year to get around to this book and I finished it almost 5 days ago and still no review. Usually I try to review a book as soon as I clap that cover shut...or hit the power button on my e-reader (whichever applies) but here I am struggling. So what's the delay you might ask? I couldn't figure out how I felt about this one. So after a whole lot of serious face thinking and a half a box of ice cream sandwiches I came up with this:

As a whole this series is a snarky, well written, uniquely depicted version of Good (depending on the character and circumstance) vs Evil (ditto) YA Urban Paranormal (ever so slight) Romance (there are itty bitty bits of Romance but it's there nonetheless). There are lots of quote worthy material. The characters are so yummy, predicable but yummy, that they are 98% of what makes the book/series worthwhile. The other 2% being their time in Hell and Armand and Jo...did I mention Armand?? {{{semi-swoon}}}...BUT...I did find myself counting pages in the middle. This usually is the kiss of death or maybe a sign that a whole slew of books I have been waiting for patiently (mostly) had just come out and I was itching to drop everything and lock myself in the bedroom with a new one and some Jasmine Dragon Fruit tea and get lost... But I digress..the short of it is that there was a serious lag in the middle that almost caused me to skim. SKIM I say!! It would have been a shame because when it picked up it got good, really good. Anyway, I won't regurgitate the synopsis, but I will tell you a little about the good stuff... the characters and their development.

First there's Jo. She has really grown as a character in this last installment. She finally is complex, fun, snarky, a bit silky shady and I don't want to B!tch slap her...finally! So that's good. I really like her more slippery and dual natured and less conflicted, stuck up and tight assed.

"Our monsters’ souls have whispered secrets to each other all along, and now, for the first time, they can shout; the thin veneer of “good” and “should” has been thoroughly shattered by her descent to the dark side."

She is even giving Meda a run for her deliciously dark(ish) antics.

"She’s insane. I’ve always known it, and I can’t defeat it. My argument fits strict parameters; it’s constrained by logic and reason. Her insanity is boundless."

That's Meda speaking. Meda F'ing Melange being the voice of reason?? Scary right?

Secondly there is Armand. Sweet(ish), beautiful (at times), doting (always lately) while being deviously self serving, minor love interest. You heard right, I said minor..booooo hisssss. Imo there wasn't enough Armand loving (or Chi loving for that matter) but then again Meda isn't known for her capacity for forgiveness...or is she??

Meda is another character that grew in maturity and complexity. Whether she did so out of circumstance or an inevitable natural progression I can't tell but grow she did and it worked really well within the storyline.

Chi didn't change much. He's still the poster boy for of all that is Good and Right and Just in the world. He's loyal and completely, blindly, faithful to his causes and beliefs. He's too moral and good and trusting and thus absolutely impossible for me to relate with. Chi's character is such an impetus for Good he is an obvious necessity in this world where Hell is taking over and both the "good guys" and "bad guys" are playing double/triple agents.

"The world is coming down around our ears and we find humor in the fact that I once (okay, three times) tried to kill one of my best friends. That and the sudden existence of a tiny, glimmering slip of hope. The kind of hope that can save the world."

Yes they are Humanity's last hope. Yes there are TONS of obstacles that must be traversed. There are both inner and regular old outer demons to overcome/slay but in the end they are also the most conflicted, human(ish)ly flawed, best chances the world's got. In the end Meda dishes out some insightful advice, one of them being:

“Jo, you can’t spend your life apologizing for the terrible things you almost did. If I did that, I’d never have time to do anything else.”

So true Meda, so true! I will take that nugget of advice and apply it to my life liberally.

Overall this was a GREAT (saccharine free) ending to an extremely entertaining, uniquely premised, all around awesome series! It contains one of the best kick ass now, no questions later type of heroines I've read to date. The series is definitely worth the time, especially if you can get through the slogging middle bit in this third book.

 

 This is a review for the entire series.

 

The DWMA (Death Weapon Meister Academy) is run by Death and is where Meisters and their Weapons (humans with the ability to turn into weapons) train to collect 99 evil souls and 1 witch's soul to turn their Weapons into Death Scythes, which can be used by Death himself. The story mainly follows Maka and her partner Soul Eater, Black Star and his partner Tsubaki, and Death the Kid (Death's son) and his partners Patty and Liz. But things get complicated when the witch Medusa plans to spread madness throughout the world.

 

The best word I can think of to describe this series is weird. The characters are all pretty strange and the plot gets weirder as the series goes on. But it's a funny weird, although dark at times. But when you have a series with a doctor who loves to experiment on people (and he's a good guy), a witch who's incredibly abusive to her child, main (good) characters who eat souls, characters literally being driven insane, and much more, it's understandable that the series would be on the dark side.

 

I loved most of the characters, with the exception of Black Star who was an incredibly irritating brat who had everyone defending his awfulness. I hated whenever the story switched its focus to him. Luckily, he was the only character I couldn't stand. While there was no romance among the main characters, the story still focused a lot their relationships with one another. They were a team, and it certainly felt like it. And the main protagonist of the story is the female Meister, Maka, which I did not realize until I actually started reading it. Everything I had seen about the series had led me to believe the main character was either her Weapon, Soul Eater (his name is the name of the series after all), or fellow Meister, Death the Kid.

 

The villains introduced later in the series aren't as interesting as the earlier ones, but it's a bit difficult to beat the twistedness that is Medusa. Luckily, she's there quite a bit, and even when she's not, the effects of Medusa's actions are still present.

 

The ending was very open and left a number of things up in the air. And it included some weirdness that truly came out of nowhere that initially had me thinking I had misread something.

 

Overall, Soul Eater was a fun read, although the story got so strange there didn't really seem to be a good way to wrap up everything, so some things just weren't.

 

So, the hubs and I went to San Francisco over the weekend for a kid free vacation.  I needed an book for the flights and I've had Cracked sitting on my kindle for a while so went for it.  I have never been so grateful to that flights from Florida to Cali last for hours and hours and hours because that meant that pesky things such as sightseeing didn't interfere with my reading time.  

 

I LOVED this series and Meda in particular.  She is literally the perfect anti-heroine.  I wish she were real so I could girl crush on her a little bit harder.  

 

Anyhoo.  I'm still sucking at the whole forming actual thoughts to go into reviews (i.e. I'm too lazy to think) so I'll keep it short.  This is a YA paranormal sans romance, it's got the whole demons/Templars/God/Angels etc thing going on without being overtly "religious" in nature, it has interesting characters at all levels of good, bad and good & bad in the mix, it is immensely readable and book 3 comes out on the 17th of this month so no miserably long wait for the next one.  So, it really is a complete win/win situation.   Read this series. 

 

 

The Fraternity of the Soul Eaters is the third of Scott's Samuel Roberts Thriller Series, and having not read books one and two I am confident in saying that this reads perfectly well alone.

I found the story a little intriguing, as a Brit, I know very little about the Fraternity's in America, I don't believe we have them over here. Anyway, it was interesting to see how they guide a person's life beyond College. I found the story line a little far-fetched, but hey we can't have it all. Women ritually murdered in a pyramid built under a college campus, yeah whatever, like I said far-fetched.

I did enjoy the characters though, who were all very well introduced and built. Sam is a guy many of us girls would love to meet, well until they realise that he's married to his job that is.

The Story has plenty of twists, and surprises making for a very exciting read for anyone. Enjoy

I received a copy of this book free in return for an Honest review