Review: BLACKOUT

Blackout by Rob Thurman
Book 6 of the Cal Leandros series

Genre: urban fantasy

About Blackout:

I was alone, and I was lost. I didn’t know where I was; I didn’t know who I was. It doesn’t get more lost than that. Knowing what I knew and not knowing anything else at all, why would I want to be in the darkness where monsters hide?

Because killers hide there, too…

Half-human Cal Leandros has always walked a bloody line between keeping his mortal soul free and clear (sort of) and unleashing the horror of his otherworldly heritage. The one thing that’s always saved him is the memory of his brother, Niko, his friends, and those he loves.

Until now.

Cal wakes up on a beach littered with the recently slaughtered remains of a variety of hideous creatures that were obviously looking for trouble. The fact that he was the one doing the slaughtering doesn’t bother him. The fact that he feels like a natural-born killer doesn’t either. What bothers him is that Cal doesn’t remember Cal anymore…

And he’s not sure he cares.

Source: Info in the About Blackout was taken from the author's website at http://robthurman.net/cal-leandros/blackout/ on 14/09/2010.

Review:
Book 5 all but screamed "Cal-is-going-Auphe-in-book6-and-it-is-so-not-good", so I was totally expecting something along those lines. That expectation kinda made me dread reading this book, at the same time look forward to it. Ambivalent much? Anyway, I was already about three quarters into the book (almost ending) and I was still waiting for this "Cal-is-going-Auphe-and-its-not-good" story line. So I thought to myself... "was that pointers in book 5 wrong??"... Well, it wasn't. Not really... until I got to the end. As you can see the plot is twisty enough that even a long time Cal Leandros reader like me cannot see where the story was going. I like that in a book. Because sometimes after reading a series for so long I can tell what is going to happen next. It takes a lot out of the book then. So much so that I tend to stop reading that series even if it was good the first few books, because it then becomes same old, same old. Like what I experienced with the Carpathian series. So the Cal Leandros series hasn't lost it's shine on me yet. And I like the fact that every book in the series gives a good resolution to the story. That is important to me because I hate being strung along hanging for another year. Authors that do that, I tend to avoid. And this book ended with a good resolution. Although it also gives out pointers to what is going to happen to the next book like book 5 did, enough to keep the reader interested in the series but the story did not end with a cliffhanger.

Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 5
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 4

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries


Books in the Cal Leandros series: