mlsimmons

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

This is a series that I started many years ago and have been a huge fan of. I started reading the first book back in 2009 and there were three books out at that time. They were also considerably shorter and less complex back then. When the books first started our, Cassie was just a clairvoyant who was running from vampires. As she becomes Pythia, her life becomes a lot more complicated and she spends more and more time in the past.

Lately with this series, there isn’t time for breath in the story. Cassie is taken from one whirlwind to another throughout the book. She is trying desperately to go back in time to reunite Pritkin with his soul. She is taking his father, Lord Rosier, the demonic lord with her. There are adventures with Rosier, with Pritkin, and just Cassie and her run ins with past Pythias.

Cassie spends a lot of the time fighting to convince the Circle to let her do her job. No one seems to trust her do her job. She is untrained, but yet she has this uncanny ability to land on her feet. She does have the power of a demi-goddess running through her veins, so that has to count for something. Tell that to the Silver Circle.

One thing I love about Cassie is that she keeps fighting on no matter what is thrown at her. The hardest thing in her path are the different groups refusing to work together. If she could get the demons, vampires and mages to all back her play together, she would be in a much better place. They all want to help her, but don’t want the other groups to be involved. They keep telling Cassie she can’t do this on her own, but they won’t work together to help her. It seems like an impossible situation for her.

This has been a good story. I can’t even go into everything that has happen or this review will be the size of a novella because so much happens. Almost too much happens. I feel like so much happens and nothing at the same time. I don’t know if the overall story arc has really moved forward or not. I love this series and I will continue to read it, but I feel like we need to have the story arc make movement forward. Only four months have passed since this series started, it seems like we just aren’t getting much progress. I think part of that is so much time is spent in the past.

Narration

Jorjeana Marie did a okay job with the narration of this book. This is the first book I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to her. I thought she really brought out the chaos of Cassie’s life, probably more so that the previous two narrators of the series. I didn’t have any real issues with any of the voices, though it did take me a little bit to get used to them. This being the seventh book in the series and the third narrator in the past three books make it a little hard. I don’t know if the amount of time between each book makes it hard to schedule a narrator, but I prefer to have the same narrator for an entire series, especially a first person urban fantasy like this one. I thought she did a good job, I just don’t like changes in narrators in the middle of a series.