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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Desdaemona by Ben Macallan





I'm not going to lie - I give the first two-thirds of this book two stars and the last one-third of this book five stars. So I'm averaging it to three and a half stars.

Jordan is a runaway - running from what we don't quite know - who is found by Desdaemona, Desi for short. She knows a little about him and also knows that he helps other runaways occasionally. She needs his help in finding her sister Fay, who disappeared while Desi was off becoming a daemon. Being a daemon means that Desi possesses something called an Aspect. This makes her stronger and faster than a normal human, but even still she cannot figure out what happened to her sister. So she ropes a reluctant Jordan into helping her. She doesn't have to do much...expect give him a smile and a muffin. He is charmed by her even though he doesn't really want to be. He can't help it, he is forever 17 years old and stuck with the hormones of a 17 year old.

Confused? Yes, me too.

This book unfolds a little at a time. And when I say little, I mean LITTLE. Nothing about the cover of this book or the first chapters of the book is right. You think you are getting into an entirely different story than what you are actually getting. This isn't really a werewolf story or a vampire story. I don't actually even know what kind of story this is, to be honest!

This is the third book in a row that I haven't loved until more than halfway through. I'm sure this is just a coincidence, but I find it really annoying. I almost stopped reading this book two or three times because I just didn't really connect to it. I didn't love the relationship between Desi and Jordan in this book. Maybe it was just because it was different than what I am used to reading, but I just didn't really connect with their relationship at all. That was a bit of a downfall for me. When we finally do begin to get their stories, a LITTLE bit at a time, the book becomes much more intriguing and I became hooked. I just don't think any author should wait that damn long to hook the audience!

The book finally picked up (for me at least) around the appearance of a new character who comes 200 pages in. It wasn't necessarily that I loved this new character so much, but rather that we started to find out a little more about Jordan when this character appeared. Also, the action in the story picks up considerably with his appearance.

All in all I can say I'd recommend this book to others, but with reservations. It is a different style of writing and a different kind of story than most of the other UF books I've read, and I still haven't really decided if that's a good or bad thing!

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