Customer Reviews

Blood Enemy (Underworld, Book 2)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Greg Cox writes another excellent underwold installment. Cox ties all the strings of storyline together nicely here, thus explaining even more just what the first novel pertained to, and movie didn't quite clearly explain, in terms of background info.
Sure, this is more the lycan Lucian's story, with a tie-in to Selena in the beginning and end, but still this was so entertaining I didn't care after awhile.
Lucian's and Sonja's love story is well told here. Greg Cox shows us the very beginnings of this Lycan/vampire break-up in the midieval times setting, which was also wonderfully written. I loved the back and forth romp through time, from present day to distant past, showing the lycans and vampires in their sword and sorcery type setting.
I hope the next movie follows this same type of storyline.

This one was hard to rate because the story rocked but the writing sucked. Sorry, but please don't jump down my throat. I LOVE Underworld and like I said the story ROCKED but I wish they'd get a new writer.

Selene is watching the lycans and an arms dealer when she is mysteriously attacked by someone killing her vamp partner and two lycans. Before she can investigate, we are thrown back in time...

Lucian was born a werewolf (lycan) and as a baby was enslaved by Viktor, a vamp elder. He has grown up thinking he is better than the rest of the "dirty beasts" and madly in love with Viktor's daughter, princess Sonja.

When he saves her from an ambush they are alone and start to admit their feelings.

However, Sonja is soon engaged to an odious vampire prince and in desperation seeks Lucian out. The affair begins and soon enough they are pregnant and marry themselves in a secret ceremony. They plan to escape but are betrayed by a lycan bitch who wants Lucian for herself.

As punishment Sonja is burned alive and Lucian is whipped but escapes. Enraged he seeks out wild lycans and forms an army, capturing the vamps' silver mine. However the vamps regroup and slaughter his forces, making him retreat and laying the seeds of a much greater lycan army, that battle should be told in "Underworld: Evolution".

Back in the present Selene kicks butt, takes names, and discovers who is trying to kill the lycans and vamps alike. In the process she almost discovers a secret plot...

Great plot but HORRID writing. Try this on for size: "the catapults rumbled down the road with the force of...well, catapults". It's paraphrasing, but I mean, yeech!

Only for the most rabid Underworld fans and please take an Excedrin before you read and spread it over a few days.

If you like Underworld then this book is a must, if you have never heard of Underworld...read this book then read the Underworld book. Overall the book was solid, entertaining, and fun. There are also a couple things that should of been done but weren't. Unless Greg Cox is writing another prequel (that would be awesome), then this book is great.

Selene's lack of involvement in the book is bothering. The book starts with her, but never goes into her back story. But the author did do a great job of giving readers and fans a more in-depth idea of what Selene is like....and she is bad ass. Once again, if there is another prequel to be written with this series, then not going into Selene's origins is no problem.

The outcome of the events about present times in the story was pretty weak. Although it was a nice touch to have the bad guy be who it was, it really made no sense. How could a war have gone on for 800 years and this person not be heard from? Also the whole revenge for not being loved is way overplayed.

All the book except for four or five chapters is in the past, so the "present" story flaws do not take much away from the book. This book was an excellent telling of Lucian and Sonja. It also sets a tremendous foundation for characters like Kraven, Soren, Viktor, and Lucian. The main reason for this book is to provide you with a deeper understanding of the characters from the movie and get you deeper into the Underworld history. And this book did so with perfection....assuming that there will be another prequel written.

This book went back and forth in my mind between 3 and 4 stars several times. It does, as the other reviewers pointed out, go into alot of backstory information, but it also attempts to add to that back story. Unfortunately, Mr. Cox is NOT Len Wiseman or Danny McBride, and many of his attempts to add to the story (for instance, the sniper), just seem dumb. He did an excellent job with the novelization, and if he had just focused on the story Wiseman and McBride had already given him from the movie this would have been a clear-cut four-star book.

Also, this might have been better done as two books. I think a great deal more can be said about Lucian. Mr. Cox was unable to even get to Kraven's betrayal. I feel he should therefore have simply cut the book off with Lucian's escape, or possibly with him finding his first set of followers, and made the next book about the whole war.

If he had just made it into two books, not having ANY scenes in the modern day, and told us how it's determined when a pure-bred stops aging (been wondering that since the novelization) this would probably have been a five-star book.

Still, Cox didn't completely screw it up, and it remains four-stars.

If you're not a fan of Underworld, you will be after reading this book. It's written well and draws you into the emotion that led to the war between the lycans and vampires. The first review is correct, it is all backstory to the movie but that's the purpose of the book. If you liked the movie and want to know more about the events that lead to it - read it. If you're just a fan of vampire or werewolf novels, you'll enjoy it too.

First of all, let's not kid ourselves - this is a terrible book. Plot twist is without surprises, the characterization is as superficial as in the movie, and the sentences are run-on, of the type "Lucian looked up at the wall where the were archers shooting arrows at the other guys while others were getting tar to drop on them and one the people was wearing socks his granny knitted, and once she made him a peach cobbler...". Not to mention melodramatic past the limit of the silly: "Lucian stared in rapt admiration at the incandescent vampire princess." It is not a book that would have been published in any other genre than paperback romance, had it not been an Underworld prequel.

So why give it a three?

Because it *is* an Underworld sequel, because I wanted to read the Lucian-and-Sonja story, and that aside from the really bad use of language, it is well laid out. The switches from past to present are effective, and the suspense works even if we know what is going to happen. I read it in about four hours, and I loved it. I hated it, but I loved it. A book doesn't always have to be of great literary quality to be a good read.

The way this book was written reminded me of the style of the movie Godfather 2. It jumped from the "current story" which takes place about a year before the movie to 1200 AD when everything got started over and over.

With Selene's face on the cover and the opening chapter focusing on her, I was more than surprised to find that the lionshare of the book is Lucian's story. But it fills in some of the blanks like Soren's role, where Kraven shows up, and all about Viktor's daughter Sonja.

The book is 310 pages so I don't think they could've done more history this time around, however the way this is written I have a feeling that they plan on writing many more fun books filling in more blanks and providing more details on what happened during the vampire - lycan war.

If you liked the movie, read this book. It's compelling and kept me turning the pages. I would also HIGHLY recommend you read the novelization of the movie BEFORE reading Blood Enemy. I really liked the way this prequel jibes with the original.

Cox did the job well. I hope to see more, hopefully before the next movie.

Blood Enemy is a gripping, Tristan and Isolde-like story about Lucian (a werewolf slave of the vampires) and Sonja (vampire and daughter of vampire elder Viktor). Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down, though I was a bit disappointed to discover that Selene doesn't make much of an appearance in this story. The only problem is that this story was obviously written before Underworld: Evolution, and as a result a number of things didn't add up. Marcus makes an appearance, and his character doesn't agree with that of Evolution, among other things. But, keeping in mind that the author was not privy to details of the future movie, it's a great story - I highly recommend it to all Underworld fans.

Blood Enemy reveals the history behind the lycan/vampire conflict. For anyone who has seen the movie "Underworld" (or read the book) there are very few surprises. The doomed romance that ignited the conflict serves as a backdrop to the contemporary problem of some mysterious person or organization determined to eliminate both the lycan and vampire tribes. They wage their campaign against both groups by employing normal humans equipped with a variety of high-tech weaponry to attack individuals and gatherings.

All told, the book has both a great deal of bloody violence and passionate romance, but the detached, almost prosaic writing style fails to ignite sympathetic passions in the reader. Not a boring book by any stretch of the imagination, but not anywhere near as engaging as it could have been.

Picked up this by by accident and gasped. "An Underworld Prequel?" Says I... and the rest is history.

This book was very hard to put down. Like with all prequels it was predictable, but I enjoyed every moment of anticipating the known end. I felt the story was well told and loved that it put some definition to the love story that started the war that is waged in the film Underworld and the upcoming film Underworld: Evolution.

Someone I offered to loan the book to, however, complained because it was about Sonja and Lucian rather than Selene. If you're looking for or expecting a tale about Selene this is not it.