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Heart of Venom (Elemental Assassin, #9)

Jennifer Estep

Start date: September 1, 2017

Finish date: September 30, 2017

Discussion: Challenges: What's the Rush

Why we're reading this: Part of our group series (re)read: Elemental Assassin

Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in August…more
[close] Part of our group series (re)read: Elemental Assassin

Voted as our "Most Popular Books Published in August 2013" October BOM [TIE]

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Challenges: What's the Rush

* 2025 Series Read: K.N. Banet's "Jacky Leon"
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* YEAR-LONG CHALLENGES
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What Members Thought

Feb 13, 2013 AH rated it really liked it

Shelves: babr-reviews, magic, arc-edelweiss, paranormal, urban-fantasy, vampires, giants, dwarfs, assassins, zzread-june-2013

Initial thoughts: 4 stars - Gin Blanco is one of my favorite assassins. She is well equipped, lethal, ruthless, and she is a fantastic cook. Yup, she cooks. Kind of takes the edge off of all that killing.

The Review: Heart of Venom takes place a few weeks after the events of Deadly Sting. The story begins rather innocuously, as Gin and the girls plan a girls’ night. But of course, it wasn’t to be and Sophia is kidnapped by Harley Grimes, one of Esteps sickest psychotic villains yet.

Gin vows to Initial thoughts: 4 stars - Gin Blanco is one of my favorite assassins. She is well equipped, lethal, ruthless, and she is a fantastic cook. Yup, she cooks. Kind of takes the edge off of all that killing.

The Review: Heart of Venom takes place a few weeks after the events of Deadly Sting. The story begins rather innocuously, as Gin and the girls plan a girls’ night. But of course, it wasn’t to be and Sophia is kidnapped by Harley Grimes, one of Esteps sickest psychotic villains yet.

Gin vows to get Sophia back. After all, Sophia and Jo-Jo are “family” and no one messes with The Spider’s family. What follows is an amazing, action packed, shoot-‘em up, blow ‘em up story that had me on the edge of my seat throughout. Gin follows a cunning and simple plan in order to get Sophia back:

”Like I had told Finn, my plan was simple. Save Sophia. Kill Grimes. Stab to death anyone who got in my way.”

This installment of the Elemental Assassins series provides more about Gin’s background as a young teen. We also learn more about Sophia and how Fletcher had rescued her from the same Harley Grimes. My heart felt for Sophia. It must have been horrible reliving the pain of her kidnapping a second time.

It never ceases to amaze me just how much I enjoy this series. Gin is surrounded by a wonderful group of dedicated characters, each of whom brings in his or her own set of talents to complement Gin’s skills as The Spider. The magic in this series is really neat and I like how the wielder of each type of magic needs to think as they use their particular form of magic.

Leave it up to Gin and her destructive glory. Gin never does anything without some sort of flourish, and the explosions are awesome. I do love Gin’s need to cook some down home dishes as a respite from the violence. Ms. Estep, will you be publishing The Gin Blanco Cookbook at the end of the series?

Oh and if you are wondering about Gin and Owen – my lips are sealed.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Pocket Books for a review copy of this book.

Review posted on Badass Book Reviews.
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7 likes · Like · see review

Aug 28, 2013 Diane ~Firefly~ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: paranormal, kindle, magic, uf, pb-also

Another good entry in the Gin Blanco series. It was nice to get some more background information about Jo-Jo and Sophie as well as Fletcher (for someone who has been dead since the series started, you certainly learn a lot about him, which kind of makes me more upset that he is dead). Based on everyone Gin has taken out since the beginning, I was having some trouble understanding why this job was so difficult (view spoiler) ...more

1 like · Like · see review