I read this at the prompting of several URR friends & their impressive reviews of the book...

Well...hmmmm.
First, let me start by saying there were parts of this book that were incredibly well done. It's dark but not in tone. It's traumatic but somehow still edges to the side of less dramallama than a [a:Brittainy C. Cherry|7121791|Brittainy C. Cherry|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1372453435p2/7121791.jpg] It's twisted AF but somehow [b:American Queen|30314992|American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy, #1)|Sierra Simone|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1475848621s/30314992.jpg|50802007] still takes the cake for what-the-fuckery for me in the past months. Oddly, this is all good. A book about a former hostage werewolf and the serial killer she 'inexplicably' cannot stay away from better not be too serious for its own good, after all, or we'd all be laughing like I insensitively did during Titanic when the boat tipped...So, crazily, I thought the overall story was really really well done in tone, pacing, and originality. Hell, I even enjoyed the romance. Cole is pretty hot, for a serial killer..Until...

BUT...Hmm.....
Apparently werewolf sex isn't my thing cause I legitimately can't get over that mating bit...
I had issues with Dana as alpha and all the betas chasing her tail...that's where the romance plot just fell apart for me. That was too much. Also, of course they were mated. I thought Dana read romances in high schools

Supporting characters Avery were well done, and in many respects, more multi-dimensional than Dana. I thought Cole even had a little more depth and the whole be who I am, embrace what I am, is sympathetic to a certain extent. Dana was trauma upon trauma, and yes, we are seeing her shortly after her release so maybe that is kind of real, and we can tell she's headstrong from her captivity and from her persistence. Ultimately, my main issue is her character's development or lack thereof, and I'm wondering if a little extra time between this plot and the end of her captivity so she could show a different side would have benefitted the book.

I thought the ending was intriguing, if convenient, and think the series shows promise. The main issue I have is very likely shifters really aren't my bag with their big packs and fur (there's a reason I like the Hidden Legacy trilogy 1,000 times better than Kate Daniels- Magic > Animals.) Despite all my reservations and issues, which are relatively minor but did keep me from 4-stars, and regarding my comma use, I'm sorry...no where was I, oh, this was a readable, enjoyable, well done series debut that's worth trying. It's got a decent anti-hero, I'm just a little iffy on the heroine.

Thanks for the shove in this direction, URRers. Oh, and OMG this cover. No.

I’ve been hearing good things about this author, but this was my first time reading any of her work.  I was pretty impressed.  The story and the characters grabbed me right away and held my attention to the end.  There are some morally-ambiguous plot elements, as opposed to a story where it’s very clear what’s right, what’s wrong, and what to root for.

 

This is one of those books that will exasperate some people, at least in the beginning, because the author throws a lot of unfamiliar terms, names, and places at the reader in rapid succession.  It’s nothing more than what epic fantasy fans are used to, though, and everything starts to make sense pretty fast.  It helped that I was reading it on my Kindle and could search for past occurrences of a word to remind myself of its earlier context.  There’s a glossary in the back, but I didn’t see it until the end, and I tend to avoid them anyway for fear of spoilers, however slight they may be. 

 

The general premise of the book is that a few people called “Gatherers” have the gift of helping people die peacefully, by sending the person’s soul into a peaceful dream world before killing them.  The theory is that this is only done for willing people who are very sick or elderly, or for evil, corrupt people.  But what if this power is abused?  There’s much, much more to the premise than this, but learning the details throughout the story is the fun part so I don’t want to spoil it.

 

At 418 pages, this book felt really short.  Part of that was of course because the story was so interesting that it was a quick read.  However, a large part of this book’s apparent shortness was because I wanted more meat and detail to expand on the world-building, history, and characters I was introduced to.  I would have liked to see the characters wrestle a little more with some of the moral ambiguity, and I also wanted a more drawn-out ending.  Things seemed to be resolved a bit quickly, and I wanted to learn more about how the characters we had been following and the greater civilization around them would change as a result of the events. 

 

I’m hopeful that maybe I’ll get a little more closure in the second book, if only by seeing what the state of affairs are in the next book.  I plan to start the next book later tonight, although I’m not likely to get much more reading time in before I have to go to sleep.  Happily, another four-day weekend is around the corner! :)

 

As a side note, I think this is the fastest I've been able to publish a review here on BL in months.  It's not perfect yet, but it does seem like it's improved over the last few days.

I loved the setting and the mythology in this book. The belief systems were so complex and something I found I could empathize with from both different perspectives that she portrayed. The entire religion surrounding the practice of euthanasia, and all the arguments surrounding that were very well-done.

 

The antagonist was very complex and human. I could understand their reasoning for the things they did, be frightened of them while still feeling moved by their loved ones. The book absolutely had one of the more compelling antagonists I've seen in a series.

 

The protagonists were not quite as interesting to me as the antagonist. I did not have the attachment to any of these characters that I did to the characters in the Inheritance trilogy. Ehiru was probably my favorite of them. I just never felt as attached to Sunandi or Nijiri. As a result, my reading of this book went fairly slowly. I went through the Inheritance trilogy really quickly, but this took me a long time. I had trouble getting sucked in, until near the end.

 

I enjoyed the ending, felt it was the right ending for the characters. it was sad in parts, although I cannot say it brought me to tears, which is something I've come to expect of this author. Still, I loved the setting and would love to read more about this world. 

I think I read this book the wrong way.

I started out reading the synopsis and still having a very hazy idea of what it was about, which is not my usual style. I like to have some solid conception of the ideas, themes, and characters before diving in so I know ahead of time what to appreciate. For this, I just heard it was good. And that it was placed in an alternate ancient Egypt.

If appropriating "bygone cultures" is a habit of Jemisin's, I may very well continue to read her other works. Capturing the feel of a land that might have existed thousands of years ago, in a desert setting so unlike the world I live in, with the yearly flood of the equivalent of the Nile River, is something Jemisin does so well it takes my breath away. It's for this reason I also plan to continue reading Guy Gavriel Kay, and the thought of having found two authors willing to make historical imagination into fantastical reality is quite a delicious discovery.

Anyway though.

What made this fail to click with me, or perhaps vice versa, was that I wasn't prepared for just how earnestly Jemisin would take a story of personal religious questioning. I don't really, as an individual, understand what is required to sustain sincere faith. (If you're wondering, I am an atheist.) Maybe deep down I actually have managed to believe that institutionalized religion is stupid, backwards, and worthy of the utmost scorn. To take anything in complete faith demands too much vulnerability from me. But at the same time, I don't want to acknowledge that the rejection is partially irrational. At the end of the day, despite all its intellectual trappings, cynicism is a defense mechanism. We question things so we know where to throw up our walls.

So when Ehiru and Nijiri first walked onstage with their oh-so-all-encompassing dedication to Hananja (I think? Jemisin's mythology is so complex that a lot of it actually flew over my head), I laughed.

I thought to myself, wait for it. The sarcasm. The irony. The criticism. The satire. Come on, it's coming.

...

...

 

...

...

Ok, maybe not.

 

(Just to be clear, I didn't expect Jemisin to demonize religion so much as subtly undercut it. A simplistic portrayal of anything is boring.)

If anything, as the story goes on, Jemisin makes fun of the very thing I was expecting. The villain, to me, portrays the consequences of the loss of trust; what happens when you characterize the entire world you live in as evil, rotten, and corrupt, with nothing else sincere to hold onto. I might call it oversimplified, but I dunno how much it's my own bias as a personally rather cynical person figuring in there.

I guess every once in a while, a book comes along that challenges the very fundamental base of your worldview. This was one of them, and it does so in such a thoughtful, engaging manner that I have no choice but to respect it.

I'm still not sure exactly what I think of Ehiru's storyline, just by virtue of coming from way over on the other side of the spectrum, but this review does that excellently.