TEST
A while ago, I tried to read Minion, L.A. Banks’ first novel, yet couldn’t finish it. The idea of her Vampire Huntress series appealed to me, but I couldn’t get past the writing style. In fact, Minion’s prologue now ranks as one of the worst I’ve ever read. Despite this, when I learned that the author started a werewolf series, I decided to give her another shot. Unfortunately, Bad Blood, the first book in this new series, didn’t fare any better and if I hadn’t needed to finish it, I wouldn’t have.
The book started off very poorly. This prologue joins the other one I’ve read by this author among my list of the very worst. It was all over the place. The characters came off as immensely fake and there really wasn’t any flow. The conversation and action were erratic and often had gaps, making everything very difficult to follow.
Sasha Trudeau has werewolf-tainted blood and belongs to a military group of like individuals. She invites them over one night to help her put together some IKEA furniture and all the men do is beam at each other and laugh (that’s the fake part). But then a challenge is issued and they settle down to work. Suddenly, their leader, Rod Butler, gets incredibly angry and it’s clear that the wolf side of him is peeking through. All the members of the squad must take medication every twelve hours to suppress the werewolf virus in their blood. Sasha is able to calm him down and inject him with her own meds, but everyone is worried about what is happening to their leader. Within moments, however, they are called in to the base and given new assignments.
On her own, Sasha heads to North Korea to track down a werewolf. You see, her squad has the strength and the speed of werewolves, but technically, they aren’t. Their job is to hunt down and kill those who are, and if the medication fails to work and a teammate Turns, they are trained to eliminate that teammate as well. What Sasha doesn’t know, and what she learns in North Korea while confronted with a sexy werewolf, is that there are different kinds of wolves. The truly bad ones are called demon-infected, which, as you can guess, means they’re infected with a demon strain. This causes those creatures to go mad at a full moon and requires them to eat human flesh. However, there also exist normal, un-tainted werewolves who do not need to eliminated, and Sasha knows she needs to get this new information to her commanders. She does not realize that her commanders already know much more than they have let on.
Before she goes to brief them, she enters a bar and meets another kind of werewolf, one who seems to know a lot about her squad members. Scared for her teammates, even though she knows they’re on a mission, she visits their homes to check for signs of trouble. She finds it at Rod’s house. Apparently his infection is of the demon variety and he’s finally Turned. He came home early from the mission after he tried to attack his teammates and they shot him. Unfortunately, he turns on Sasha and she’s forced to kill him. The guy from the bar also shows up at Rod’s house and she starts firing on him with no provocation. This bothered me, because (as the stranger points out) there were neighbors nearby and her bullets were going through walls, not to mention the fact that she doesn’t even know if the man is a threat. But he calms her down and tells her about shadow wolves, not only his breed, but hers. So Max Hunter takes her home to his pack, Along the way they begin a relationship, and Hunter teaches her about what she is.
The flow and writing style were the biggest issues for me. The plot jumped all over the place and the author used massive info dumps that, after I finished the book, didn’t seem necessary. Sasha would meet someone and he (it was always a he) would give her a bunch of new information, then she would go somewhere else and another man would tell her a bunch of stuff. I don’t know if it’s because all the men are after her or if she just thinks she’s all that, but Sasha seems to think that she’s very entitled. She breaks into all her friends’ homes, but then leaves other innocent people to clean up her messes. She also has a holier-than-thou attitude, and jumps down other people’s throats when they challenge her, sometimes even when they’re simply expressing concern. Perhaps this was intended to create a tough-girl persona, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.
The book features continuity issues as well. In the prologue Sasha is aware of Rod’s changing feelings for her, that he now wanted more from her than friendship, but she thought of him simply as a brother. Then, when he was dead, she felt sad at the loss of her lover, and a couple of pages later she didn’t really want to tell Hunter about her relationship with Rod, her potential lover. The book also has an uneven quality. Sasha, taught her whole life that to turn into a wolf is a very bad thing, is understandably terrified at the prospect. But when it happens to her, it’s completely sudden and she doesn’t have any thoughts on the life-altering change. To further the unevenness, conversations start with no lead-in and for the first part I’d be lost, wondering where the thoughts initiated. Then, when I’d think that I had correctly interpreted what transpired, pages later I’d learn that something else entirely was meant by what I read. There were just too many “huh?” moments.
Finally, when it ends, crucial connections to solving a puzzle are missing. Conclusions are apparently made off the pages, because all of a sudden Hunter and Sasha go after “the bad guy,” but I have no idea when or why they realized it was that person. Sasha also entertains some thoughts that make one think she was merely stringing Hunter along for the entire book.
Sadly, I could go on and on, so I obviously took some serious issue with this book. However, I guess I could see how some people might not dislike Bad Blood as much as I did, especially if they enjoy Banks’ vampire series. The story has some exciting moments, even if not written as I’d like, and there was plenty of heat and lust. However, this particular author just isn’t all that as far as I’m concerned.
Grade: D-
Book Type: Urban Fantasy
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 08/06/08
Publication Date: 2008
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.