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crystalstarrlight's review
1.0
Bullet Review:
That was awful. Painful. Drawn out. Meandering. Pointless. A cash-in.
Okay, so there's probably worse out there (IS worse), but in terms of my disappointment and absolute abuse of my favorite plot (the survival story), this is the bottom of the barrel.
Full Review to come after the weeping and sprinkling of ashes.
Full Review:
Maya and company run around like chickens with their heads cut off in the woods. One by one, the kids get kidnapped. Plot points are dropped like anvils from Wiley Coytoe. Then the book ends.
I don't know whether I am angry at this book or just plain hurt. Angry that this waste of trees got published while another more talented author is buried on Amazon Kindle. Angry that this book never should have existed. Hurt that one of my favorite authors wrote this. Hurt that my favorite storyline/plot (the survival/escape story) is horribly abused.
Since there's a lot to criticize, let me attempt to alleviate some of it with compliments. I really do think Kelley Armstrong is a good writer. Or maybe not a "bad writer". She has a craft. She's not like some YA authors where the book is solely about getting Female Parts to bump uglies with Male Parts. She can do action scenes, which tends to be something women authors shy away from. Also, her characters tend to be far more realistic and refreshing than the Pure and Holy Virgins populating most other YA books.
Or maybe, let's face it, I DON'T WANT TO NOT LIKE ARMSTRONG. I have very fond memories of the Darkest Powers series - I FLEW through the first two books and had to wait an agonizing amount of time for book 3 (which, of course, never quite rose to the height of the previous two books). I LOVED those books and therefore, I want to LOVE everything Armstrong does ever.
But I don't. The previous book was garbage - over 300 pages of teenaged angst, makeouts, NOTHING HAPPENING and people making excuses all over the place to ignore the obvious weird sh!t happening. But somehow, this book is even worse.
See the last book, you could use the excuse that it was setup, and I'd begrudgingly buy it. It was bloated setup, but it was establishing characters and situations (although somewhat badly). But this book? All it is is a bunch of teens running around in the woods, getting into the most RIDICULOUS scenarios that Armstrong manhandled into her book to force the book to be longer. And yes, fiction is ridiculous, but when your story has the following in the first 100 pages, maybe it's too much author influence:
+ Inexperienced teenager flying a helicopter
+ A teen sliding out of said helicopter, getting caught by Maya; Maya nearly falling and getting caught by Corey and Daniel; then teen falls out anyway
+ Fighting the pilot in the helicopter
+ Crashing the helicopter in the water (all teens in the helicopter survive)
+ Swimming to an island
+ Wrapping up their clothes (which get wet anyway) and then swimming to the mainland
+ Freezing and shivering but it somehow goes away even though their clothes are wet and they have no fire (and the night is cold)
+ Escaping the bad guys on the beach
+ Having one of their own "shot"
+ Angsting after the shot kid and the one who fell out of the helicopter
+ Wandering through the woods
+ Going around/over a mountain
+ Hearing an ATV and evading ATV
+ Sneaking into a cabin to grab food
+ Hiding under a bed in the cabin and watching as Bad GuyTM grabs a beer out of an ice chest (this particular baddie pretty much has a beer EVERY TIME THE KIDS MEET HIM, which means he's an alcoholic)
And this is ONLY the beginning! This is followed by ANOTHER hideout in a store (where in the kids do CRAZAY HIJINKS to hide in the crawlspace while another runs off as a distraction and gets caught!), the kids going to a restaurant where the server thinks they are just playing a YouTube prank (!!!), a guy who agrees to help but turns out, is ANOTHER BAD GUY (!!! The woods are FULL of these bad guys!), Maya dropping in on Nicole in a tent (cue Revelation Sequence and Bad Guy Monologue), and then ANOTHER capture attempt by Dr. Inglis, leaving one man in shock tied to a tree (you wouldn't do that to a dog, but you will do that to an injured human being???) while the remaining kids finally flee.
This. Is. Ridiculous. I thought I would never say this, but there is just way too much action! It's all GO GO GO GO with some exposition crammed in there (oh here's some convenient papers laid out! Oh let's canoodle and chat about our new abilities!).
I love action as much as the next person, but I think one of the reasons I like survival stories is that it's a combination of action and character development. It's the author, carefully crafting these people (who may or may not have the appropriate skills for survival) who get thrown into a scenario (such as a chase from the authorities) wherein they have to think on their feet. Sure, they get downtime, to contemplate who they are, what they are doing, how life was before and what life will be like afterwards.
But I don't care whether Maya, Daniel, Corey, Nicole, Hayley, Rafe, Sam or Kenjii (well, maybe Kenjii) live or die - because ultimately, I know that Maya, Daniel and Rafe won't die, and no one else matters. Corey is a goofy doof with headaches. Nicole is the faux sweet girl (her change of character and the resolution to what happened to Serena was dreadful). Hayley is the Tori of this book - the Queen B!tch who makes a turn around. Sam is our token lesbian (if you think this is a spoiler, you are sadly mistaken). And if Armstrong kills the dog, she's the worst type of person ever.
The setup for the survival is pathetic. It comes out of nowhere - one minute the kids know nothing about their weird small town owned by a giant corporation and the next, the entire West Coast of Canada is out to get them, with the audience left wondering what happened. And the entire time, ham-fisted attempts to explain this world are tossed in like chunks of tomatoes in a salad. And while the book seems to want to be about the resurrection of supernaturals via science, I can't help feeling that this is like most YA, where the most important thing is Team Rafe or Team Daniel. Which is weird, because Maya and Daniel have zero sexual chemistry and while Maya and Rafe do have sexual chemistry, Rafe is a horrible person, who lied and canoodled his way to Maya's panties. And you can't help but wonder why Maya, on the run from random people who want her, whose friends are dropping like flies left and right, is constantly thinking about the boy she's kissed more than talked to. (And don't get me started on all the excuses Maya has for not being friends with her female classmates. Good grief.)
The saddest part perhaps is that this might have made a good one-shot or duology. To end the review, here are my ideas for tightening Books 1 and 2 into one book:
Book 1: This book needs to be heavily trimmed, so that the fire happens somewhere 1/3 - 1/2 through the book. Tighten up the introduction of characters. Get people to investigating sooner - have Maya actually talk with Mina. I'd get rid of the Rafe Insta-Lust crap and remove the "Daniel is sweet on Maya" business (come on, you know it's true). If you need a romance, I'd pair Maya with Sam.
Book 2: Condense, condense, condense! Remove the first cabin scene, the restaurant scene and the scene where Maya goes back to see Nicole. If someone falls out of a helicopter, they die. Period. No divulging information while half-naked in the shower. Keep chapters 26 - 28 whole.
It's sad, because I want to love Maya. I want to love this survival story. But while I love the inclusion of non-white characters, that doesn't automatically make a great story. Maya deserved a better story than this (based on her initial character, not the Mary Sue she's quickly becoming). It's also sad because this trilogy definitely makes me wary of reading anything else by Armstrong (particularly anything new she's written).
Read at your own risk.
That was awful. Painful. Drawn out. Meandering. Pointless. A cash-in.
Okay, so there's probably worse out there (IS worse), but in terms of my disappointment and absolute abuse of my favorite plot (the survival story), this is the bottom of the barrel.
Full Review to come after the weeping and sprinkling of ashes.
Full Review:
Maya and company run around like chickens with their heads cut off in the woods. One by one, the kids get kidnapped. Plot points are dropped like anvils from Wiley Coytoe. Then the book ends.
I don't know whether I am angry at this book or just plain hurt. Angry that this waste of trees got published while another more talented author is buried on Amazon Kindle. Angry that this book never should have existed. Hurt that one of my favorite authors wrote this. Hurt that my favorite storyline/plot (the survival/escape story) is horribly abused.
Since there's a lot to criticize, let me attempt to alleviate some of it with compliments. I really do think Kelley Armstrong is a good writer. Or maybe not a "bad writer". She has a craft. She's not like some YA authors where the book is solely about getting Female Parts to bump uglies with Male Parts. She can do action scenes, which tends to be something women authors shy away from. Also, her characters tend to be far more realistic and refreshing than the Pure and Holy Virgins populating most other YA books.
Or maybe, let's face it, I DON'T WANT TO NOT LIKE ARMSTRONG. I have very fond memories of the Darkest Powers series - I FLEW through the first two books and had to wait an agonizing amount of time for book 3 (which, of course, never quite rose to the height of the previous two books). I LOVED those books and therefore, I want to LOVE everything Armstrong does ever.
But I don't. The previous book was garbage - over 300 pages of teenaged angst, makeouts, NOTHING HAPPENING and people making excuses all over the place to ignore the obvious weird sh!t happening. But somehow, this book is even worse.
See the last book, you could use the excuse that it was setup, and I'd begrudgingly buy it. It was bloated setup, but it was establishing characters and situations (although somewhat badly). But this book? All it is is a bunch of teens running around in the woods, getting into the most RIDICULOUS scenarios that Armstrong manhandled into her book to force the book to be longer. And yes, fiction is ridiculous, but when your story has the following in the first 100 pages, maybe it's too much author influence:
+ Inexperienced teenager flying a helicopter
+ A teen sliding out of said helicopter, getting caught by Maya; Maya nearly falling and getting caught by Corey and Daniel; then teen falls out anyway
+ Fighting the pilot in the helicopter
+ Crashing the helicopter in the water (all teens in the helicopter survive)
+ Swimming to an island
+ Wrapping up their clothes (which get wet anyway) and then swimming to the mainland
+ Freezing and shivering but it somehow goes away even though their clothes are wet and they have no fire (and the night is cold)
+ Escaping the bad guys on the beach
+ Having one of their own "shot"
+ Angsting after the shot kid and the one who fell out of the helicopter
+ Wandering through the woods
+ Going around/over a mountain
+ Hearing an ATV and evading ATV
+ Sneaking into a cabin to grab food
+ Hiding under a bed in the cabin and watching as Bad GuyTM grabs a beer out of an ice chest (this particular baddie pretty much has a beer EVERY TIME THE KIDS MEET HIM, which means he's an alcoholic)
And this is ONLY the beginning! This is followed by ANOTHER hideout in a store (where in the kids do CRAZAY HIJINKS to hide in the crawlspace while another runs off as a distraction and gets caught!), the kids going to a restaurant where the server thinks they are just playing a YouTube prank (!!!), a guy who agrees to help but turns out, is ANOTHER BAD GUY (!!! The woods are FULL of these bad guys!), Maya dropping in on Nicole in a tent (cue Revelation Sequence and Bad Guy Monologue), and then ANOTHER capture attempt by Dr. Inglis, leaving one man in shock tied to a tree (you wouldn't do that to a dog, but you will do that to an injured human being???) while the remaining kids finally flee.
This. Is. Ridiculous. I thought I would never say this, but there is just way too much action! It's all GO GO GO GO with some exposition crammed in there (oh here's some convenient papers laid out! Oh let's canoodle and chat about our new abilities!).
I love action as much as the next person, but I think one of the reasons I like survival stories is that it's a combination of action and character development. It's the author, carefully crafting these people (who may or may not have the appropriate skills for survival) who get thrown into a scenario (such as a chase from the authorities) wherein they have to think on their feet. Sure, they get downtime, to contemplate who they are, what they are doing, how life was before and what life will be like afterwards.
But I don't care whether Maya, Daniel, Corey, Nicole, Hayley, Rafe, Sam or Kenjii (well, maybe Kenjii) live or die - because ultimately, I know that Maya, Daniel and Rafe won't die, and no one else matters. Corey is a goofy doof with headaches. Nicole is the faux sweet girl (her change of character and the resolution to what happened to Serena was dreadful). Hayley is the Tori of this book - the Queen B!tch who makes a turn around. Sam is our token lesbian (if you think this is a spoiler, you are sadly mistaken). And if Armstrong kills the dog, she's the worst type of person ever.
The setup for the survival is pathetic. It comes out of nowhere - one minute the kids know nothing about their weird small town owned by a giant corporation and the next, the entire West Coast of Canada is out to get them, with the audience left wondering what happened. And the entire time, ham-fisted attempts to explain this world are tossed in like chunks of tomatoes in a salad. And while the book seems to want to be about the resurrection of supernaturals via science, I can't help feeling that this is like most YA, where the most important thing is Team Rafe or Team Daniel. Which is weird, because Maya and Daniel have zero sexual chemistry and while Maya and Rafe do have sexual chemistry, Rafe is a horrible person, who lied and canoodled his way to Maya's panties. And you can't help but wonder why Maya, on the run from random people who want her, whose friends are dropping like flies left and right, is constantly thinking about the boy she's kissed more than talked to. (And don't get me started on all the excuses Maya has for not being friends with her female classmates. Good grief.)
The saddest part perhaps is that this might have made a good one-shot or duology. To end the review, here are my ideas for tightening Books 1 and 2 into one book:
Book 1: This book needs to be heavily trimmed, so that the fire happens somewhere 1/3 - 1/2 through the book. Tighten up the introduction of characters. Get people to investigating sooner - have Maya actually talk with Mina. I'd get rid of the Rafe Insta-Lust crap and remove the "Daniel is sweet on Maya" business (come on, you know it's true). If you need a romance, I'd pair Maya with Sam.
Book 2: Condense, condense, condense! Remove the first cabin scene, the restaurant scene and the scene where Maya goes back to see Nicole. If someone falls out of a helicopter, they die. Period. No divulging information while half-naked in the shower. Keep chapters 26 - 28 whole.
It's sad, because I want to love Maya. I want to love this survival story. But while I love the inclusion of non-white characters, that doesn't automatically make a great story. Maya deserved a better story than this (based on her initial character, not the Mary Sue she's quickly becoming). It's also sad because this trilogy definitely makes me wary of reading anything else by Armstrong (particularly anything new she's written).
Read at your own risk.
breezy610's review against another edition
4.0
this book was soo much better than the first. it flowed better than the first one. Reading this book has got me in the mood to re-read the darkest powers trilogy. I can't wait for the next book to where all of the people from the first trilogy meet up this trilogy
kathydavie's review against another edition
5.0
Second in the Darkness Rising urban fantasy series for young adults revolving around the St. Cloud cabal's townful of experiments in Salmon Creek on Vancouver Island.
In The Gathering, Armstrong dropped the bomb which tied Salmon Creek with the events and characters in the Darkest Powers series (be sure to read Summoning, Awakening, and then Reckoning before starting this series---if you're OCD like me about the chronology. It isn't necessary to read it, but you'll experience a bit more fear if you do!
My Take
I just love what Armstrong does with her series for young adults. She's not condescending to her readers, instead she simply writes a good story with tension and drama and a good dose of excitement. This particular story simply tidies up what flared up at the end of The Gathering, although Armstrong still has us wondering at the end of The Calling. This has more the feel of a bridge novel and, I hope, will make the connection in The Rising when it's published, hopefully, in 2013.
It's an amazing journey and one on which the kids learn a great deal about each other, themselves, and the purpose behind the people chasing them. Sharing the information they gathered and that Mina Lee steered them toward gives them something to grab onto as well as a direction.
The Story
We pick up where The Gathering left off...with the kids getting on the helicopter to escape the fire, but they're not safe yet. The bad guys are way ahead of them and when the chopper goes down, the kids escape into the woods. Where they are picked off one by one. Traps. Bait.
The Characters
Maya Delaney has discovered she's a skinwalker like Rafe and his sister Annie. She was adopted by her parents (the Delaneys) and it's her Navajo blood from which this Gift derives. Kenjii is her German shepherd. Daniel has been her friend forever---I suspect he's in love with Maya.
The rest of the kids on the chopper include Nicole, the mayor's daughter and her cousin Samantha Russo, Mayor Tillson, Hayley Morris, and Corey Carling.
The Cabals from the Women of the Otherworld series are playing and experimenting in both Darkest Powers (Nasts) and Darkness Rising (St. Clouds). Dr. Davidoff (from Darkest Powers) came to Salmon Creek annually to conduct health exams. Calvin Antone is one of the "searchers" and he claims to be Maya's real dad. With only Maya's best interests at heart. Yup. Uh-huh...I ain't believin' this either… Moreno. Penny. Dr. Inglis is the head of the lab in Salmon Creek.
The Cover
It's a beautiful cover...all dark background with a soft focus closeup of Maya's face. Her absolutely gorgeous face with its thoughtful look.
I can think of several interpretations of the title. The Calling could be the enemy that set the forest fire in Salmon Creek, the need the kids have to stay together, and/or Maya's attraction to Rafe.
In The Gathering, Armstrong dropped the bomb which tied Salmon Creek with the events and characters in the Darkest Powers series (be sure to read Summoning, Awakening, and then Reckoning before starting this series---if you're OCD like me about the chronology. It isn't necessary to read it, but you'll experience a bit more fear if you do!
My Take
I just love what Armstrong does with her series for young adults. She's not condescending to her readers, instead she simply writes a good story with tension and drama and a good dose of excitement. This particular story simply tidies up what flared up at the end of The Gathering, although Armstrong still has us wondering at the end of The Calling. This has more the feel of a bridge novel and, I hope, will make the connection in The Rising when it's published, hopefully, in 2013.
It's an amazing journey and one on which the kids learn a great deal about each other, themselves, and the purpose behind the people chasing them. Sharing the information they gathered and that Mina Lee steered them toward gives them something to grab onto as well as a direction.
The Story
We pick up where The Gathering left off...with the kids getting on the helicopter to escape the fire, but they're not safe yet. The bad guys are way ahead of them and when the chopper goes down, the kids escape into the woods. Where they are picked off one by one. Traps. Bait.
The Characters
Maya Delaney has discovered she's a skinwalker like Rafe and his sister Annie. She was adopted by her parents (the Delaneys) and it's her Navajo blood from which this Gift derives. Kenjii is her German shepherd. Daniel has been her friend forever---I suspect he's in love with Maya.
The rest of the kids on the chopper include Nicole, the mayor's daughter and her cousin Samantha Russo, Mayor Tillson, Hayley Morris, and Corey Carling.
The Cabals from the Women of the Otherworld series are playing and experimenting in both Darkest Powers (Nasts) and Darkness Rising (St. Clouds). Dr. Davidoff (from Darkest Powers) came to Salmon Creek annually to conduct health exams. Calvin Antone is one of the "searchers" and he claims to be Maya's real dad. With only Maya's best interests at heart. Yup. Uh-huh...I ain't believin' this either… Moreno. Penny. Dr. Inglis is the head of the lab in Salmon Creek.
The Cover
It's a beautiful cover...all dark background with a soft focus closeup of Maya's face. Her absolutely gorgeous face with its thoughtful look.
I can think of several interpretations of the title. The Calling could be the enemy that set the forest fire in Salmon Creek, the need the kids have to stay together, and/or Maya's attraction to Rafe.
kayleeaaakison's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
kaeliwolf's review against another edition
5.0
I thought that this book was awesome. The book had even more things hidden beneath its covers than the book before it, The Gathering. The main character, Maya Delaney, finds out many things about her past and she is running from the truth, that the St.Clouds were hiding a HUGE secret from the whole town, except for the scientists that worked in the lab.
iceangel32's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this second installment of the darkness rising trilogy. It was fasted paced with the group running from kidnappers and the St Clouds the whole time, but you got to learn more about the teens and their powers. I can not wait to see how this trilogy ends. Each book seems to leave you with more information, but no closer to finding the truth or who to trust or an ending.