Title: Blood’s Voice
Author: Áine Massie
Pages: 400
Review Source: the author Áine Massie
Rating: **
Back of Books Synopsis (from goodreads):
Anya Millar had no memory of her life or an
instruction manual on how to navigate the insane world of humans, biting, and
reality. Instead, Anya has had to learn to navigate the world of love, life,
and sanity while avoiding those that would see her dead or enslaved.
This is the ongoing journey of Anya and Nicholas, human loving vampires and the
human they love, Declán. What makes it all more complicated is that they are
abominations in their own world and Declán is a natural born vampire hunter
called a Guardian.
Anya must come to terms with who she is and her missing past, Nicholas must win
back the object of his eternal love while dealing with new cravings in his
silent heart, and Declán must learn to destroy the very creatures that he has unequivocally given his heart and blood.
My thoughts:
First of all, there are a ton of good reviews on
this book so my opinion will not be very popular. And for that I am sorry. I
think the idea behind the story was really good and unique but I could not get
passed the technical issues. I know I have positively reviewed books with
technical issues before but in those cases the issues did not trip me up
constantly and force me to have to put it down out of frustration.
The sentences were awkwardly worded in some cases,
and in others they just did not make any sense at all. The tenses shifted a lot
though out the story and there were instances where there were incorrect words used.
(ex. “Involution” which means entangled instead of “evolution” which means to change
over time.. although another of my problems was that I could not tell what the
point was in a lot of the internal thoughts like in this case. So I guess "involution" could have been the correct word choice)
I am also not a fan of first person narratives; the character
has to be really exceptional for 1st person to not get annoying
after time, and I really could not feel a connection to Anya -- maybe because the
language used was very formal and none of the characters had distinct voices so
they all sounded like Anya, the narrator.
There was also a lot of dialogue and not enough action.
The characters would talk about what happened and so the reader would not see
the events as they unfolded. It took
away some of the immediacy that could have been felt through some of the
situations that had the potential of being very tense.
Ok I feel like I am being super negative and I hate that.
Like I said in the beginning, the story/idea for the
story was very good. I really liked the fact that instead of the usual Twilight-ish
theme of the male being the vampire, that the powerful and potentially
dangerous character was Anya, a female. I also really liked the Nicholas/Declán/
Anya relationship going on. I thought it added a lot of really great
complications. I also liked that in the beginning I was not sure that Nicholas was
who he said he was or that he was looking out for Anya’s best interest. I think
Áine created a wonderful world and a unique story line with lots of potential.
I am going to do something a little different here
since I enjoyed the story and it was the technical aspect that made it less enjoyable
for me I am going to give it two different ratings, an overall rating and a
rating for the story by itself
I give it (technical aspect + story) **
Story by
itself would be ****
