Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Incubus (Daughters Of Lilith) / Jennifer Quintenz


Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Genre: YA / Coming of Age / Paranormal

Approximate word count: 100-105,000 words

Availability    
Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

“Jennifer is a film and television writer, author, and graphic novelist. She has written for Twentieth Television, Intrepid Pictures, and Archaia Studios Press. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.”

This is the second book in her The Daughters Of Lilith trilogy. To learn more about Ms. Quintenz, visit her website.

Description:

“Braedyn Murphy used to think nothing important ever happened in her sleepy town of Puerto Escondido. But that was before she learned she was a descendent of Lilith, the mother of all demons. Now Braedyn fights to protect humanity from the Lilitu - the beautiful, souls-stealing daughters of Lilith.

As she fights the Lilitu, Braedyn must also fight her growing love for her boyfriend Lucas - because even a simple kiss could end his life. Their only ray of hope is an angel’s offer to make Braedyn human, but it’s an offer she can’t accept until the world is safe from the Lilitu.

Braedyn knows she’s a key player in this ancient war... but she’s not ready to believe she just might be humanity’s best hope of surviving the final battle for Earth.”

Appraisal:

Ms. Quintenz does a fairly good job reminding us where the first book left off but the recaps were brief and my memory is not as sharp as it used to be, so I floundered around a bit. However it didn't take too long to regain my footing.

I just have one small complaint so I will get it out of the way now before I get to the good stuff. This is about a style choice the author made when she chose to use digits instead of writing out numbers. These numbers referred to seconds, minutes, hours, months, years, feet, yards, miles, costumes, and soldiers. Mostly smaller numbers, under a hundred, but there were several. This didn't throw me out of the story, but I hated seeing a sentence starting with a digit. I guess I am just olde school like that.

There is a new evil threat in this book, it seems as though an Incubus, a rare male version of the Lilitu, has found his way to Puerto Escondido. There is very little known about the Incubus, or his powers, and details from the archivists of the Guard are sketchy since their secret library has been destroyed.

Not only is Braedyn trying to deal with typical, and some not so typical, high school drama. She is also trying to deal with not being allowed to know certain Lilitu history and knowledge the Guard has that affect her future. So Braedyn sets out to discover these things on her own. She is a smart girl but being the Guard’s secret weapon she has the weight of the world on her shoulders.

There is a lot of action in this book and the well executed battle scenes are epic. I enjoyed Braedyn's dream-scape the most, with Ms. Quintenz descriptive prose it was easy to be pulled into the scene. I like the way Braedyn's and Karayan's relationship is developing, I feel like these two can help each other. Meanwhile several other friendships are tested on many levels as the mystery twists and turns. If you love reading fantasy where characters are trying to find out how they fit in the world they live in, I am sure you will enjoy this story.

FYI:

This is the second book in The Daughters of Lilith series. I think it is important to have read the first book Thrall, before reading this one.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant editing or formatting issues.


Rating: **** Four stars

3 comments:

A Voracious Reader said...

I'll have to add this series to my TBR. Thanks for the great review! :)

BooksAndPals said...

A Voracious Reader,

It wasn't mentioned here, but the first of this series won the Readers' Choice award in its category.

Al

?wazithinkin said...

Thank you, Voracious Reader, for dropping in and commenting. This is a unique story, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Thank you for pointing that out, BigAl. I wonder why I forgot to mention that. My bad! :/