Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Review: Shona Husk - Kiss of a Goblin Prince

Shadowlands Series:

Book 2:

Kiss of the Goblin Prince: Dai and Amanda

Summary:
From goodreads.com
Trapped for centuries in the bleak Shadowlands, Dai clings to his humanity with a thirst for knowledge. But now he's free of the goblin curse, and some would say he knows too much—he can make nature bend to his will, influence the minds of others, and command magic. Yet love eludes him. Then he meets Amanda, a single mother with a sick daughter whom he feels compelled to protect. But could she possibly place her trust in the kiss of a goblin prince?

Review:

I am so incredibly sad to have to write this review.  Let’s just start by saying how much I adored the Goblin King and how much I was looking forward to reading Kiss of the Goblin Price. Goblin King is one of the most memorable books I’ve read so far this year in a good way; it was refreshing, fun and exciting. Regrettably, I cannot say the same for Kiss.  I am about 45% of the way through this book, I put the book down about a month ago and I haven’t picked it back up since. I think it’s time to admit defeat.  I really wanted to love this book, but I just don’t and here is why.

1.  So we are about half way through and the only time the hero and heroine have spent together is 1 couple minute dance, an extremely awkward car ride where Dai spend the entire ride trying not to puke all over the place, and a conversation about a possible goblin kid.  In fact Amanda hasn’t been in the book all that much so far, a bit here and there.

2. We are dropped kicked into the world of magic with no back up information. So I have read the first book in the series. I purposely read the first book because I wanted to read this book and I didn’t want to enter a world in the middle of a series not knowing what in the world was going on. What I got was entering a world not knowing what in the world was going on.  So all of the sudden Dai is a magic user with thousands of years of knowledge, ok, cool. Got it. But apparently there are rules to magic use and only this “Bank” that has all of Dai’s books knows the rules to magic use?? Yet, Dai has been studying magic for 2000 years under masters of magic use shouldn’t he know at least some of these “rules”? And this Bank is not so subtly threatening him about magic use, but not telling him why, and he doesn’t seem to know why, so we don’t know why, so now I am half way through a book with no clue what in the heck is going and it was getting more and more vague and I just stopped caring to find out. You know how you get the burn to get to the end to find out everything, I just never got there and now I’m over it.

3. The magic use itself just isn’t that interesting. I am a big fan of the magic aspect of the paranormal world. Actually, that’s what brought me to paranormal romance. It wasn’t vampires like a lot of people, it was witches.  I was reading all I could get my hands on with witches as the main characters and then there was cross over and now here I am. So I’m kind of picky with my magic use and Dai’s was boring. So, sure he was fledgling, ok, maybe my expectations are high and I’m sure it got better later in the book, but Huck didn’t keep my attention long enough to get me there. So the magic we have seen was, Dai, looking through the magic eye to see the magic weave everything is made up of, he tried to heal a tree, he transported himself and some beer and put together some furniture and that’s about it.

4. Whining: Dai is kind of whinny. I never thought he would be so whinny, but damn if he is. Yes, he had a hard life, he had the potential to be a strong tortured warrior type, but he just turned out to be sad and whinny. He had such great potential for so much, it was such a let down, it makes me so sad. His brother had it pretty crappy, but he came out strong tortured warrior type, so how did Dai go so wrong? I don’t understand! =(

Ok, so I hate to only have the negative in a review and the book isn’t all bad, I did enjoy Amanda. We didn’t see that much of her, but what we did see I liked. She was strong and determined and a good mother to her child. She is a character that I could have really liked and wished we had seen more of her through the first half of the book.  She kept herself together and raised her daughter in the face of great loss, when others may have fallen apart.  We also get glimpses of Eliza and Roan post Goblin King and I am glad to see them again. You also see glimpses of a third ex-goblin, I’m not going to spoil it, but this is a trilogy! I will probably pick this book up again someday, just for these glimpses because I do want to read the third book, but that day is not today, or tomorrow or the foreseeable future.   I have not given up on Shona Husk, I loved Goblin King and the Summons and I am still looking forward to reading the third book in this series.  If I do finish this book and my opinion does change I will update this review accordingly.

Rating:


No comments:

Post a Comment