Joeanne’s review of The Book of Life (All Souls Trilogy, #3) > Likes and Comments
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I agree with your review Joeanne. As you said it is supposed to be a historical fiction but the love scenes made it seem like an adult romance novel. I liked book 1 and 2 better.
uncanny how you read my mind. Apparently I do not handle disappointment as well as you. After awarding five stars to each of the previous books, I gave this one a single star. Apart from giving birth to twins and christening them, retrieving the Ashmole from the library and standing before the Congregation to defend her principles and findings, nothing in this book seemed necessary to that plot. Everything else seemed like 'padding'.
And why didn't they go and save that witch? They see it and think...oh, I think i'll go to Yale.
I know that Deborah is a big fan of the Outlander series, which is historical fiction that includes many sex scenes if its characters and it is extremely popular. Maybe she was copying that formula but didn't account for her audience to have a different reaction? Just a thought.
FYI, you did miss Chris Roberts' race in the first book, which states that he has "tight black curls and a dark face."
I 100% agree. I loved the first book, struggled through the second, and suffered through the third. She made it too complex and left too many previous characters/minor plot lines unresolved. Such a frustrating end.
This review is exactly the way I felt about the book.
@Laura-I totally picked up on the Outlander themes while reading Book of Life! (I started the Outlander series in between books 2 & 3 of All Souls.) There were several instances where I was struck by the similarities. Happy to read that it wasn't my imagination! :)
Yes, Gallowglass suddenly has an accent in book three!!
I finished this today and came across your review. You have nailed how I feel about this book in your comments. I am so disappointed that I have read so many pages just to learn that there aren't 3 pure species and blood rage can be controlled. I hope someone writes a some fan fiction for this that will give a more satisfactory ending!
Nailed it. It's like you pulled almost every thought I have about this book, straight out of my head, and wrote the review I intended to write.
A few exceptions/additions are:
(Spoilers!)
1. I did notice that her BFF was black in the first book, so that didn't surprise me.
2. I will even say that in the first book, and even mostly in the second, the love scenes worked. In this one though? Not so much.
3. The ending was about as anticlimactic as it can get. "It wasn't me! It was HIM!" "No sh*t."
Seriously, I thought everybody already knew that? And obviously, they did. How lame.
4. Also, this is one of those books where none of the good guys die. Bad guys are dropping dead everywhere, littering the pages with the cold corpses of the evil. But somehow none of that nasty reality touches our main cast. Books like that irk me. Phillipe doesn't count, since he was dead way before Diana was even born. But he's as close to death as any of them come. Totally indigestible.
5. That whole thing with the goddess? Eesh. "You will have to give something up to get the book." And what about the coin that Phillip left her, for her boat ride across the Styx? All this hinting that one of them had to die, only to be totally forgotten about later, or resolved through something pathetic like "it was FEAR I had to give up!" Oh, jeez. What a loss. That must be awful for you.
6. And the arrowhead? And the Phillipe? So he was the "justice" of the goddess? Why? Or was it Ysabeau? It's not clear, and it makes little to no sense within the story. And to throw it in at the very end, like, not only is she a walking, ever changing tattoo garden, but now she's the earthly hand of the goddess as well? Why would the goddess need a mortal to mete out her justice anyway?
The point is, after the promise I saw in the first book, and even the things I enjoyed from the second, Book of Life was a MAJOR letdown. :(.
Loved the first book fell in love with the characters . Book 2 a romance novel , at times , so much lost potential . The end I was furious ! I haven't read 3 yet but from the reviews it doesn't look promising
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Gilda
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Jul 19, 2014 02:10PM
I agree with your review Joeanne. As you said it is supposed to be a historical fiction but the love scenes made it seem like an adult romance novel. I liked book 1 and 2 better.
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uncanny how you read my mind. Apparently I do not handle disappointment as well as you. After awarding five stars to each of the previous books, I gave this one a single star. Apart from giving birth to twins and christening them, retrieving the Ashmole from the library and standing before the Congregation to defend her principles and findings, nothing in this book seemed necessary to that plot. Everything else seemed like 'padding'.
And why didn't they go and save that witch? They see it and think...oh, I think i'll go to Yale.
I know that Deborah is a big fan of the Outlander series, which is historical fiction that includes many sex scenes if its characters and it is extremely popular. Maybe she was copying that formula but didn't account for her audience to have a different reaction? Just a thought.
FYI, you did miss Chris Roberts' race in the first book, which states that he has "tight black curls and a dark face."
I 100% agree. I loved the first book, struggled through the second, and suffered through the third. She made it too complex and left too many previous characters/minor plot lines unresolved. Such a frustrating end.
This review is exactly the way I felt about the book.
@Laura-I totally picked up on the Outlander themes while reading Book of Life! (I started the Outlander series in between books 2 & 3 of All Souls.) There were several instances where I was struck by the similarities. Happy to read that it wasn't my imagination! :)
Yes, Gallowglass suddenly has an accent in book three!!
I finished this today and came across your review. You have nailed how I feel about this book in your comments. I am so disappointed that I have read so many pages just to learn that there aren't 3 pure species and blood rage can be controlled. I hope someone writes a some fan fiction for this that will give a more satisfactory ending!
Nailed it. It's like you pulled almost every thought I have about this book, straight out of my head, and wrote the review I intended to write.A few exceptions/additions are:
(Spoilers!)
1. I did notice that her BFF was black in the first book, so that didn't surprise me.
2. I will even say that in the first book, and even mostly in the second, the love scenes worked. In this one though? Not so much.
3. The ending was about as anticlimactic as it can get. "It wasn't me! It was HIM!" "No sh*t."
Seriously, I thought everybody already knew that? And obviously, they did. How lame.
4. Also, this is one of those books where none of the good guys die. Bad guys are dropping dead everywhere, littering the pages with the cold corpses of the evil. But somehow none of that nasty reality touches our main cast. Books like that irk me. Phillipe doesn't count, since he was dead way before Diana was even born. But he's as close to death as any of them come. Totally indigestible.
5. That whole thing with the goddess? Eesh. "You will have to give something up to get the book." And what about the coin that Phillip left her, for her boat ride across the Styx? All this hinting that one of them had to die, only to be totally forgotten about later, or resolved through something pathetic like "it was FEAR I had to give up!" Oh, jeez. What a loss. That must be awful for you.
6. And the arrowhead? And the Phillipe? So he was the "justice" of the goddess? Why? Or was it Ysabeau? It's not clear, and it makes little to no sense within the story. And to throw it in at the very end, like, not only is she a walking, ever changing tattoo garden, but now she's the earthly hand of the goddess as well? Why would the goddess need a mortal to mete out her justice anyway?
The point is, after the promise I saw in the first book, and even the things I enjoyed from the second, Book of Life was a MAJOR letdown. :(.
Loved the first book fell in love with the characters . Book 2 a romance novel , at times , so much lost potential . The end I was furious ! I haven't read 3 yet but from the reviews it doesn't look promising
