Customer Reviews

Beyond the Pale (The Darkwing Chronicles, Book 1) (Bk. 1)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I tried very hard to like this book; it had so much going for it: a good premise, some nice descriptives, a fairly hot guy or two. But, in the end, I just didn't. There was too much wrong with it, beginning with the fact that, for a centuries old vamp with an off-the-scale I.Q., this heroine was remarkably stupid. And no, sorry; all of it simply could not be explained by hormones, despite the author's best efforts.

For someone with a superior I.Q. and a photographic memory not to remember who the guy with the missing left index finger was seemed just stupid; the minute the `ghost finger' was mentioned I knew who the guy was; Miss Brilliance couldn't figure it out after seeing him again twice? And there was just something about this gal that was unlikeable; I'm sure the author was intent on portraying her as a kind of lost soul, floating about through the centuries, mooning after Byron, but it just didn't wash (neither did Byron, according to the author, which didn't help the credibility of a 200 year state of mourning for the heroine).

Throughout the story all kinds of homage is paid to the idea that the heart isn't rational; this, I think, is supposed to give license to the heroine's taking the extreme liberty to moon about like some spoiled adolescent for two-or five, depending how you look at it-centuries. When the hippie mom is more mature than the `serious' daughter, you know you're in trouble. (And an ex-hippie working for the government? Please. The govt. types I've known would slit their own throats first. In an expendable capacity, sure, but not as a top honcho, as is portrayed here.)

Since this moonie gal is to be the lead character for the series, ouch-no, ouch-cheewawa. It stretches credulity to think that: 1) the lead character has mooned about like some self-indulgent bratolescent for two centuries, yet will now find `meaning' to her existence within a few short weeks by becoming-gasp!-a spy; 2) that the mom would not have b--ch slapped her out of it a long time ago, especially if she's the `all that' leader of nations and shaper of history she's portrayed as being; 3) that this person could ever get a date with Darius, let alone be his `soul'. Yuk.

This book tries very hard to be intelligently written, and succeeds in places where descriptives are needed; however name dropping and place dropping do not an intelligent writing effort make. And where it comes to the in-depth characterizations of its characters, it falters badly, almost irredeemably, in places. Most obvious of those is the heroine herself; others are Darius, who by description is a man who's been around, but who, for some reason which can't be determined in any way, shape or form, falls madly/truly for the heroine, despite the fact that he spends the whole book playing down to her, keeping things from her, and insulting what we're told is her level of intelligence (Could it be that he noticed its non-existence too? Still, it would make him an idiot for `falling' for an idiot).

And J, her spy boss, who hates vamps, is suddenly turned completely around by one shining moment of visionary clarity wherein he sees our heroine in her vamp form and all is forgiven. Uh, no. Bigotry is seldom so easily dealt with, since it comes from a place of fear, and fear is one tough S.O.B. to overcome, even with time, for most people. It just doesn't wash; it doesn't ring true. I hate to be so negative with this review; this is the author's first book, and she does show great potential. But this is WHY I feel the negativity is needed. Ms. Russe shows the promise of being an extraordinarily intelligent writer if she can just find her genuine voice and a bit of genuine conviction. A place of passion and all that.

The heroine gets mad at the hero, but she never really GETS mad, even though she has more than enough reason to believe he may not just be shining her on, but actually endangering herself and the others on her team. Gutless. Brainless. Definitely not lead character material. She's less a protagonist than an antagonist; you have to oppose your own good sense to like her. And the rest of the story was, unfortunately, just not interesting enough to carry a protagonist this weak.

Having already bought the second book in the series-the promo for the series sounded so good I bought them both at the same time-I will read it and hope for a better review to come. In the meantime hopefully Ms. Russe will polish her craft and become a bit more personally involved with her characters-which I think would make a world of difference in her writing. For a pretty good--about four star--debut vamp novel, I recommend The Turning by Jennifer Armintrout; funny name--great book.

I give this three stars because it's the writer's first effort, and because it's obvious here that she can probably do better once she gets serious about writing--not for money, notoriety or such, but as an artistic expression, or heck, even just plain fun. Look forward to reading that effort.

She was the mistress and unwitting slayer of Lord Byron. For more than four centuries, Daphne Urban has walked the world's night, existing, but not truly living. Love is too dangerous and eternity is rapidly becoming an exercise in monotony. Monotony would be welcome, however, when her world is turned upside down and she is conscripted into service for the US government as part of a highly secret team of vampires, along with a ditzy blonde Southern Belle and a shallow, gay vampire searching for his big break on Broadway. Perhaps the madness of the plan is its genius. Sent to prevent a dangerous man from gaining artifacts that could lead to worldwide destruction, the three's mission is soon complicated when Daphne is contacted by another governmental agency operative. Darius della Chisea has no idea she is a vampire, just that she works for another branch of the service, and he wants to work with her for reasons of his own. Though Daphne finds him extremely attractive, something she's not felt since accidentally killing Byron, there is a large drawback, Darius hates vampires, and does enjoy killing them. Romance is of secondary or even lower importance. First, she has to save the world. Highly classified mission or not, Daphne may have to resort to the most trusted method of accomplishing the impossible, calling in her mother, Mar Mar, an ancient teen aged hippie.

***** Inevitably, comparisons to Buffy, La Femme Nikita, Alias, early Anita Blake, and Rachel Morgan's various series can be made. However, those comparison's only go so far. The Darkwing Chronicles promise to be unique; exciting, fast paced, funny and just plain fun. It has everything, humor, action, mystery, and a bit of romance. Let's hope the wait between books is not long. *****

Daphne "Daphy" Urban works for the government. She's also a vampire. Part of a new program that taps into the strength and power of the vampire to fight the war on terror, Daphne is recruited against her will. A sexy and dangerous operative named Darius crossed Daphne's path, she must fight the war on terror and her lusty feelings. Much to Daphne's horror, Darius is a vampire hunter.

This book was just plain bad. Against my better judgment, I decided to give this book a try. The keywords "Paranormal romance" on the book gave me pause, but I purchased it and the sequel anyway. That was a complete waste of money. This book was extremely poorly written. The dialogue was painful. Savannah Russe, the author, created a book that is a painful cross between Sex in the City and a Tom Clancy novel, with a side order of Anne Rice. Russe's characters talk on cell phones while they fly around the city on their big bat wings (yes her vampires turn into bats). They worry about Jimmy Choo shoes and being fashionable. Plus, "Daphy" falls for the overly-macho, woman-bashing Darius. Please. Hokey is the best word for this book.

I would not recommend this book to anyone.

A completely unique and original plotline that sent shivers up and down my spine. Vampires are always portrayed as dark and sexy and are rarely working for the "good guys" so to speak. They play the villains or they are the protagonists, but they certainly aren't working for the government. One notable exception to that little rule is Kim Harrison's Ivy Tamwood; but then again she's a runner (see bounty hunter/PI) and the government agency is corrupt and rife with politics so she joins up with a witch to make it on their own. So again, nothing like what I've seen before. Despite the semi-predictable love affair tossed into the story's summary, the book really came off as new and refreshing. I couldn't wait to curl up with it and start reading.

But the saying holds true, never judge a book by its cover. Despite the enticing promises that the story's summary offers, and the captivating plot, the story falls short of its mark. Drastically short of its mark. I suppose that if you're looking for a book with steamy sex-capades in it then this book is for you. However, I would recommend checking out the romance and erotica sections of your bookstore first before picking this book up. Certainly you'll find books there that don't have one dimensional characters who are just blatant attempts at bringing to life every stereotype imaginable. You'll also probably find books by authors who can keep the story's pace flowing and who know how to make their characters believable.

In all honesty I only kept reading this book so that I could see how it ended and so that I would know the entirety of the story when I wrote my review of it. Not even half-way into the book I just wanted to fling it out the window and let the dogs have it. I didn't though, which is a good thing, since someone at one of the book swaps I'm a member of has requested it. Pity them.
The story's plot concept was original yet the way the author chose to execute it made the book entirely hokey. You have the protagonist, Daphne Urban, former lover of Lord Byron (yes that Lord Byron), who hasn't had a lover since then. Despite being heralded as a genius the character acts like an airhead, is flakey, and cannot seem to think on her own. Considering the fact that her friends call her "Daphy" this really shouldn't be too much of a surprise actually. Now granted, book smarts does not equate street smarts, but for someone who is nearly five hundred, knows thirteen different languages, and has a genius-level IQ she seems rather dumb. There is never a hint of the character's intelligence in any of the actions or thoughts she has throughout the entirety of the book. No book smarts and no street smarts. It makes you wonder how she possibly survived, and then you get introduced to her mother. Her mother has been the hand pulling the strings in many governments and monarchies throughout her life, and no surprise, she has a major influence in the present day US one as well. When you see how much of a continued presence the mother has in her daughter's life you completely understand how Daphne survived this long. It's also no surprise that the mother was behind Daphne's "forced" recruitment.

Daphne is not the only vampire hired on by the government to form a top secret taskforce, of course, so let us take a look now at Daphne's two team mates and supporting cast: Benjamina "Benny" Polycarp and Cormac O'Reilly. Benny Polycarp is a rather newly made vampire, and characters that makes any women who was born in the South cringe in disgust of the appalling stereotyping of a Southerner, and then punch the author for the affront. Yes it's that bad. The character is blonde, big breasted, empty headed, has a very thick southern accent (which is even accentuated by the author), not to mention just about every sentence out of Benny's mouth ends with `honey', `honey child', `sugar', or `darling'. Benny also has the appalling habit of using overly clichéd phrases (I feel like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs) in every other sentence. Thank you Ms. Russe, for your appalling portrayal of women from the south, I'm sure we will never get tired of seeing these derogatory caricatures. Shall I now go on to make a horrendous caricature of a Yankee from Pennsylvania for you? Somehow I doubt you'd appreciate it.

If that wasn't bad enough you have Cormac O'Reilly who is, unfortunately, the stereotypical flaming gay in the story, complete with flapping hand movements, Broadway dreams, and poorly timed comments about past lovers for shock value. If I didn't know any better I'd say Ms. Russe sat down one day, spent all of her time coming up with a compelling plot idea and after jotting down some notes walked away only to return later with no idea of how to flesh it out. So instead of starting back from square one she just thought of every clichéd stereotype she could think of and started plopping them into the story. You have your ditzy air headed bimbo of a protagonist, despite her initial description contrasting this, with the flaming gay guy, and the ditzy bimbo Southern belle as her supporting cast. Even Daphne's romantic interest is so stereotypical; blonde, tall, handsome, brooding, and self-involved. His only "saving grace" is that he is also bigoted and prejudice, but that's not much of an improvement really.

As for the big bad guy they were supposed to nab, Bonaventure, well I've seen sticks with more life. Honestly his character description and portrayal was akin to reading a news recap. No life, nothing to make you drawn to the character and see him as real, let alone be able to dislike him. This was evident in all of Russe's characters though, but in all honesty, it was more readily apparent in J, Mar-Mar, and Bonaventure. They were just names in the book, not people. Had they been offed you wouldn't have cared in the least, they just weren't real to the reader. Then there was the mission they undertook. They flubbed it up horribly but despite Bonaventure being a kingpin of crime somehow he was as much of a bumbling idiot as his pursuers since they did eventually prevail. Ah of course, clearly Russe got the memo that the good guys always win so despite her initial portrayal of Bonaventure she quickly altered his personality and character to allow Daphne and company to nab him. Note to self: if your story begins to take a different turn than you originally thought it would don't work with it, just divert it back on track by any means necessary; this includes having characters act out of character and against their own makeup.

In short, if you want a read where the heroine not only meets her romantic interest but has slept with him by the third chapter than you might like this book. There is also an obvious tension between Daphne and her boss and since by the end of the book the relationship between Daphne and Darius is on the rocks you can expect things to heat up with the boss or another character in the next book. Beyond the Pale had a predictable turn of events, poor execution of a potentially riveting story concept, unoriginal and flat characters, horrible and atypical stereotypes, and not an once of character development left this reader wondering how the book ever made it to the publisher at all.

I just finished Beyond the Pale and I want more! For anyone who loves the thrill of a good vamp or fantasy novel this one is a keeper. Part of the allure of this style of writing is fantastic characters who maybe don't fit into a stereotypical role. It makes them interesting! And there's no shortage of interesting characters in his book.

Daphne is our main character and we catch up with her doing the tediuose 20 year annual errand of getting a new drivers license with a new identity to hide the fact that she is actually a 450 year old vampire. However she finds that she's being followed by several groups: one of which catches her and forces her to join project Darkwing.

Project Darkwing is a new anti-terrorism group lead by the handler J and comprised of three newly recruited vampires: Daphne who speaks 13 languages and has a genius IQ, Benny- a wise-cracking southern belle from Branson who is an expert on jewels, and Cormac- the gay drama queen actor who lacks the ability to remain seriouse.

Their first assignment: Stopping a Russian weapons dealer drom selling a nuclear device to Al Quida and also from aquiring art full of dark mojo is complicated by the appearance of Darius della Chiesa, who has also been following Daphne. He thought she was a vampire but after seeing her with a tan he changes his tune. He and Daphne can't trust each other but as they work together to help the mission they quickly fall in love.

Ofcourse all's not well that ends well, since our anti-hero Mr. della Chiese is also a vampire slayer...hmm, how does Daphne explain that one to her mother?

It certainly isn't fair to compare any author's characters to another's, but this book contained characters that were so schizophrenically conceived, any comparison would be impossible anyway.

The basic plotline was easy enough to follow; Daphne Urban and a couple of fellow vampires are recruited by a government agency to take down an arms dealer. So you'd think this is a serious story, right? By page 65, she's mooned over lost loves, had an intense sexual attraction to her new boss, shifted shape into a vampire and had wild sex with some stranger who's been following her. And that's just the good part of the book. Plotlines are left dangling all over the place, especially when Daphne has an instinct about something. There's a buildup that she senses something is horribly wrong and then...nothing. The big plotline about the aboriginal art turns out to be zip, I still don't get the business about all the various bodyguards and who did what to whom.

The whole vampire scenario is unusual, to say the least. These are not necessarily blood-sucking vamps; they eat normal food, raw hamburger apparently being a delicacy when veggies aren't available, don't take blood all that often, sleep in coffins and apparently the only form they can take other than human is some impossibly tall furry bat with a naked human body. It's mentioned about a dozen times how Daphne has to strip naked before she transforms. The author gives little to no actual physical description of the vampire form, so what little I came up with in my own head was just ridiculous.

In the latter half of the book, the story plummets from just boring to absolutely mind-numbing and confusing. Characters come and go with no particular purpose, people get killed or staked left and right without any explanation or much of a description really. To be honest, I know there was some super silly plot twist involving a nuclear bomb but for the life of me, I have no idea how it was defused. I was either asleep or it was yet another plotline the author or editor just forgot about.

None of these characters are particularly likeable, although Daphne's not too bad. Too much attention is given to her extensive designer wardrobe descriptions and the ridiculous name-dropping of her past boyfriends (including Byron, Hemingway and JFK Jr., of all people). I had to wonder if the author was reading Janet Evanovitch's numerical series when she decided that Daphne would adopt the dead art dealer's rat and make it a cute little home and feed it human food.

J is somewhat interesting, but he appears in total for probably a dozen pages and a lot of the aspects of his relationship with Daphne and the bizarre turn of events with Daphne's mother go unexplored when they should have been dealt with in this first book. Darius turns out to be an absolute lying pig; the final image of him sobbing into Daphne's ripped panties and hating her pretty much sums up his character. I'd say I hope he redeems himself in future books, but frankly, I don't care, since this won't be a series I continue reading.

The book for my taste got a zero rating, but because I've actually read worse vampire fiction and I think there may really be an audience that will like this faux cloak and dagger stuff, I grudgingly can give it a recommendation of 2 stars for anyone who's bored and needs something to read.

Daphne is a 400 year old Vamp who's just been caught by the men in black so to speak. They want her to work for them catching terrorists and other less than desirable humans. So with her fellow darkwings Daphne is for once in her life going to find something that makes her life worth living. Not to mention a hot love interest in a fellow spy who works for a different 3 letter agency, problem is he hates vampires.

I definitely recommend this book. This was much better than several of the last vampire stories I read. Ms. Russe has a great series going here and I look forward to many more of Daphy's adventures, not to mention you'll love her mom!

Daphne Urban has lived for five hundred years, has an IQ that is off the charts and speaks thirteen languages. She is also a vampire, has superhuman strength, amazing night vision, and is a martial arts expert. Now someone tell me why she freaks out and shakes with terror when confronted with three human men? Also, why does she hardly ever use her supposed genius IQ?
The book was hard to get through. I wanted to smack the characters all throughout the story. There were parts that were fast paced and kept my attention, but they were few and far between. My next grief is the relationship between Daphne and Darius. The way that she kept going back to him when he was such a jerk got on my nerves so much it made my stomache hurt. My last grief is that this is another one of those books that is only part of the story so that you have to buy the next book ( and the next, and the next) to see how it ends.
Overall, I would not buy the next book!

When I read the back cover of this book I was so excited! I love the paranormal romance subgenre and was looking forward to adding a new series to my reading list.

Alas, I was sadly disappointed in this book. It was trite and boring. The characters had no depth and there was no flow or development of things. The protagnonist goes from being captured and threatened-into-submission to embracing her new job as a means to make her life count...all this in like 2 paragraphs??? WTF?!

Also there were strange inconsistencies. The author goes through this whole long spiel about how uncommonly intelligent and clever the protagnonist is...IQ off the chart and all that jazz, but then literally in the next breath she is hunted, caught, coerced, and controlled with nary a hair out of place by her pursuers. Odd.

Even stranger...there's a sequel to this mess??? No thanks.

The premise of this book sounded promising, a team of vampires recruited to act as spies and to destroy a ruthless arms dealer and a group of terrorists. Daphne Urban, the vampire heroine, is also attracted to another mysterious character, Darius della Chiesa, who may be pursuing the same goals as she is and yet may have his own agenda. There are some hot and heavy sex scenes between the two of them although she's never quite sure of his motives. The author also leaves her relationship with her superior, J, ambiguous.
The writing however doesn't live up to the promise. It is strangely unsophisticated, Daphne comes across as rather silly and naive despite having lived for hundreds of years. The plot is rather forced and seems to be hastily contrived to take advantage of the interest in terrorists and the supernatural genre. It doesn't add much to vampire lore, except the transformation to bat form, which was rather comical to me. The story also doesn't end satisfactorily. The book on the whole was a light and pleasant read, but not particularly engaging and I wouldn't go out of my way to read the rest of the books in the chronicles. I would rather re-read Linda Lael Miller's novels on romance and vampires.