Read by Johanna Parker
Book 2 of The Bloodhound Files series
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: paperback & audiobook
About Death Blows:
FBI profiler Jace Valchek was pulled into this parallel realm to hunt for Aristotle Stoker, a human serial killer who preys on vampires and werewolves. Now she works for the National Security Agency of the Unnatural States of America - and her boss is a vampire.Source: Info in the About Death Blows was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6781162-death-blows on 26/10/2012.
At a bizarre crime scene, Jace finds a bloodsucker murdered by magic, fried to the bone and dressed in the costume of the comic book hero the Flash - a character who isn't supposed to exist here. Comic books have been outlawed for their powers, including crossover spells like the one that transported Jace to this world. Soon, she's following a trail of dead bodies into the sinister underworld of black-market comics - where a deranged madman gives new meaning to the term "super-villain."
Okey, so in Book 1, the main protagonist, Jace, had the tendency to be too stupid to live (TSTL) but I hadn't expected it to be compounded a million times over in this book. I guess I was being too optimistic. The TSTL was annoying like hell! So much so that I had to have breaks from it or I'll throw the damned book against the wall. Which made the pace of this book quite slow even with the convenience of the audiobook edition. Maybe for those readers with a whole lot more patience than I have will read this book quicker. And maybe for those audiobook listeners who does not read the paperback at the same time would find this book a little faster than I did. Maybe... The plot depended on Jace being stupid to create a story. Safe to say I wasn't terribly impressed. However, if you learn to ignore that fact, it did have a story where the main protagonist managed to save the world against all odds.
I like Johanna Parker's narration though. And would continue to buy audiobooks by her. I am obviously an old fan of hers, so that opinion might be more than a little biased.
Anyway, at the end of it, I am a fan of vampires and shapeshifters and this world have those in spades, but I don't think I would be buying any books in this series or of this author. If ever, I would borrow it from the library.
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 2
Character development = 1
Story itself = 1
Ending = 3
World building = 3
Cover art = 4
Pace = 1 (9 hours of listening time)
Plot = 1
Narrator = 5
Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 cherries
Arghh why is everyone TSTL!?
ReplyDeleteI've read all the books in this series to date and enjoyed them much more than you did Death Blows. I find that some books are better in the written than audio form. I think audio form really hurts the Darynda Jones books for example. It seems to emphasize how little content there are in those books. As for Jace's series, I really enjoy the unusual world she is taken to, a definite twist to UF. On average, I'd give the books a 3.5/5.
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