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Friday 23 May 2014

Review: VENOM

VENOM audiobook
Venom by Jennifer Estep
Book 3 of the Elemental Assassin series
Read by Lauren Fortgang
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: paperback & audiobook

About Venom:
What kind of assassin works pro bono?

It’s hard to be a badass assassin when a giant is beating the crap out of you. Luckily, I never let pride get in the way of my work. My current mission is personal: annihilate Mab Monroe, the Fire elemental who murdered my family. Which means protecting my identity, even if I have to conceal my powerful Stone and Ice magic when I need it most.

To the public, I’m Gin Blanco, owner of Ashland’s best barbecue joint. To my friends, I’m the Spider, retired assassin. I still do favors on the side. Like ridding a vampire friend of her oversized stalker—Mab’s right-hand goon who almost got me dead with his massive fists.

At least irresistible Owen Grayson is on my side. The man knows too much about me, but I’ll take my chances. Then there’s Detective Bria Coolidge, one of Ashland’s finest. Until recently, I thought my baby sister was dead. She probably thinks the same about me. Little does she know, I’m a cold-blooded killer . . . who is about to save her life.
Source: Info in the About Venom was taken from http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7614747-venom on 05/04/2013.

Review:
The world building is still beautiful albeit still has those pesky tiny little holes which I choose to ignore given the wonderful reading time I had with the books in this series. Another good thing about this book other than the beautiful world building is the fact that the main protagonist is not TSTL (too stupid to live) this time around. In fact Gin is not only kick-ass but out-wits the bad guys! I think this author is getting better as she writes along! The narrator though seems to take a bad turn compared to the previous two books which is kind of strange. Anyway, I could distinctly hear her struggling with Detective Bria Coolidge's lines. Lauren Fortgang just couldn't strike the right note between soft spoken Bria and the hard cop that she is suppose to be. Nothing major. I could easily ignore that too! The plot is rather straight forward. The reader is told what the story is going to be from the get go and that is exactly what happened. Not much of a twist or surprises. Bland in a predictable sort of way. Not too bad but not great either.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 4
Story itself = 3
Ending = 3
World building = 4
Cover art = 4
Pace = (12 hrs and 9 mins listening time)
Plot = 3
Narrator = 3.5

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Elemental Assassin series:

2 comments:

Blodeuedd said...

And I gave up ages ago :/

Cherry said...

Blodeuedd - I did too after book 4 *sigh* ...this series has such great potential...

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