My rating: 3 of 5 flames
The beginning starts out with a bang, but shortly thereafter, I feel as if there is some sort of backstory I’m supposed to know. There are two characters who right off the bat feel as if it’s their story-Artur and Cybele. But it isn’t their story, and I’m sure they’re being set up for one, but they are not the hero heroine. I actually had to read the blurb again to see if I was wrong, but nope, the H/h are Cade and Maddie, and they were introduced later on. I thought I may have missed a novella or a prequel, but no this is book 1, so I sort of sucked it up, and moved on.
The premise is that the Fallen Angels who dabbled with mortals had soulless children called Nephilim. Angels consider the Nephilim demons, but they prefer to be called Watchers. When a Watcher is raised human, usually a near-death experience triggers their Nephilim side. If they don’t attract a nearby Watcher to help them through the transition, they’ll go crazy and die. But if one is nearby, they “anchor” them with sex. It allows the Watcher to control the adept. And when Maddie goes through her transition, Artur makes sure Cade is nearby. Maddie is from a different clan of Watchers, and if they anchor her to their clan, it will allow them to control her power, giving them an edge on the other clan. It was kind of confusing.
Her near death experience was surviving a brain tumor. But she thinks the tumor is coming back, so she leaves her normal life, and runs off to join an archaeological dig for a Watcher relic. There is a group of extremist who call themselves DAMNers led by an extremist priest and they had the potential to be a really nasty group, yet they were used more in name only, rather than in the driving action. I don’t know, it just felt like the whole book had so much potential and just…fell flat.
I really enjoyed Joy Nash’s writing style and flow-in fact I’ve read her before and liked her books. But this one felt like there was way too much going on, and I felt lost too often. I think that although The Unforgiven definitely suffers from First Book in the Series Syndrome, I’ll read the next one. I think that some of the side characters had a lot of potential.
**eARC provided by www.netgalley.com
To have to go check to see if I missed and prequel & to reverify the H/H would have driven me batty. I think I’m glad I skipped requesting this title from Net Galley. I would have been really disappointed. Great honest review.
Thanks Vanessa-you know what the weird thing is? One or two other reviews on goodreads said something similar, like they felt dropped into the middle of a series, so it’s not just me..but I also think that the series has potential.