Sunday, October 16, 2011

Review: Karen Duvall - Knight's Curse

Knights Series:
Book 1:
Knight's Curse: Chalice and Aydin
Summary:
A skilled knife fighter since the age of nine, Chalice knows what it's like to live life on the edge—precariously balanced between the dark and the light. But the time has come to choose. The evil sorcerer who kidnapped her over a decade ago requires her superhuman senses to steal a precious magical artifact…or she must suffer the consequences.
Desperate to break the curse that enslaves her, Chalice agrees. But it is only with the help of Aydin—her noble warrior-protector—that she will risk venturing beyond the veil to discover the origins of her power. Only for him will she dare to fully embrace her awesome talents. For a deadly duel is at hand, and Chalice alone will have to decide between freedom…and the love of her life.  –amazon.com description
Review:
This book was ok, the world itself seemed to be pretty interesting, at least there were all the makings of an interesting world but not all the pieces were there. You had gargoyles, an order of female knights, angels, fallen angels, magic, a talking mummy, and a bunch of other supernatural beings.  I really wanted to like this book, but regrettably I wanted to like it more then I actually did. I did enjoy the bonding with the gargoyles; it added something new to this genre. However, the 3 day time limit kind of impedes on the story, I mean really what can get done in three days and what if it’s a detailed mission that requires more than 3 days? It seems like anytime something was about to happen Chalice or Ayden was called back to their gargoyle.
Chalice is supposed to be a pretty bad a$$ knife fighter from the description but more times than not she is without her knives and at one point even says isn’t that great at throwing her knives and is out of practice. So is she really a knife fighter if she never has her knives?  Mostly she is a reluctantly thief who doesn’t see past her narrow little world. Her other abilities she dims down, wearing filters, after 25 years you would think she would have grown accustom to her powers and learned how to filter on her own. Stopping to remove your filters seems a bit counter-productive. Chalice doesn’t act like a 25 year old, more like someone who is barely 18ish. I actually think this novel would be better publicized as a YA novel, I didn’t see anywhere that it is considered YA, but it read like a YA novel would rather than for an adult audience.
Chalice’s love interest is Aydin a 900 year old person with special abilities and he is marginally more likable then Chalice but his character isn’t fully fleshed out. I had a really hard time even picturing him in my mind. He seems charismatic and well loved in the community but I didn’t get a good grasp on his personality. I mean he’s 900 there has got to be more to him then was provided to us. He at least seemed more adult and knew that there is more to life than his narrow world. The “romance” between Aydin and Chalice felt very forced and contrived, not at all natural. It felt more like a brother/ sister relationship or a teacher/ student and not like a romantic love.  Overall, this book had a whole bunch of talking and very little action and I would more ecommend this book to a younger audience.
Rating:



*This book was provided to me from the publisher through NetGalley for an honest review.

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