Review: A BRUSH OF DARKNESS

A Brush Of Darkness by Allison Pang

Genre: adult urban fantasy

About A Brush Of Darkness:

I had a naked incubus in my bedroom. With a frying pan of half-cooked bacon and a hard-on. And a unicorn bite on his ass. Christ, this was turning out to be a weird morning.

Six months ago, Abby Sinclair was struggling to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. Now, she has an enchanted iPod, a miniature unicorn living in her underwear drawer, and a magical marketplace to manage. But despite her growing knowledge of the OtherWorld, Abby isn’t at all prepared for Brystion, the dark, mysterious, and as sexy as sin incubus who shows up searching for his sister—and is convinced Abby has the key to the succubus’s whereabouts.. Abby has enough problems without having this seductive shape-shifter literally invading her dreams to get information. But when her Faery boss and some of her friends vanish as well, Abby and Brystion must form an uneasy alliance. As Abby is sucked deeper and deeper into this perilous world of faeries, angels, and daemons, she realizes her life is in as much danger as her heart—and there’s no one she can trust to save her.

Source: Info in the About A Brush Of Darkness was taken from the author's website at http://www.heartofthedreaming.com/books/ on 15/08/2010.

Buy Link(s):

Author Links:
Allison Pang at Simon & Schuster
Allison Pang at GoodReads
Blog

My Thoughts:

The first few chapters were slightly disorienting because the explanation about Abby's world didn't really start until about chapter 4 or 5. So one can say that the world building was a slow build-up to a beautiful architecture. I would give it a 4.5 out of 5.

The first 8 chapters or so just repeatedly extols how clueless our main protagonist is. As if the author can't pound it enough into the readers' head just how clueless she truly is! It just goes on and on repeatedly... Character development? I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5. But... ah, yes, the sassy unicorn sidekick. Another character love! From a reader's point of view, I think the sidekick's character is more loveable than the main protag...

I like the cover! It was what caught my urban fantasy reader's eyes. Yes, I'm shallow that way! I like the way the artist played with the light on the background where it highlighted one side of the model but bluish on the other. To my reader's eyes, it went down very well with the title, A Brush Of Darkness.

Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 3.5
Story itself = 4
Ending = 4
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 5
Pace = 4

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 cherries

Acknowledgements:
A huge THANK YOU to Satisfaction For Insatiable Readers for hosting a contest and making it possible for me to win A Brush Of Darkness by Allison Pang!!

Unicorn image was from this site: http://blog.b92.net/text/6419/Da-li-je-ateizam-religija on 30/01/2011.