The following three books are some recent urban fantasy novels that I read last month and didn’t get enough out of to write full reviews. Out of the three, I believe that Spellbent by Lucy Schneider shows the most potential for a possible series.
Spellbent is Lucy Snyder’s debut novel, though she has been writing short fiction for some time. While there were some issues I had with the story, they are all easy enough fixes that she should be able to create a much better book for the next in the series. The main issues were some out-of-place vulgarity near the beginning, the fact that there is an easy spell for everything, and that the main character has no trouble getting done everything she wants–except coming up against the bad guy. Additionally, she gets some very heavy body damage at the beginning of the novel that it is almost never mentioned again, as if it never happened. I am very much hoping that the second book shows that Schneider learned some of what not to do in the first book. I’ll be looking out for it.
Three Days to Dead by Kelly Meding just did not do it for me. Evy Stone, a bounty hunter who has been resurrected into some other girl’s body, has three days to save the world as we know it. Unfortunately, her characterization and the story telling were uneven. There is never a real explanation for Evy not being completely confused and freaked out when waking up in someone else’s body–especially since she never expected such a thing. Also, Wyatt, the one who resurrected her from afar, recognizes her immediately even though he admits to not knowing anything about the body he used for her resurrection. None of the characters are terribly likeable, most seem pretty dim, and one ends up changing character, changing character, and then changing character again. It was just too inconsistent and ill-conceived. I will not be looking for the next in the series.
Confessions of a Demon by S. L. Wright started with some interesting premises about how demons procreate and eat but was lacking in realistic characterization, as the demons themselves seemed, for the most part, to act like they were teenagers rather than thousands of years old. The city felt like a Hollywood movie set, and the protagonist was unlikeable and not fully realized. Not a book I would recommend to anyone.
