Customer Reviews

Larissa

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

 

 

I really liked this book. The cover is deceptive, the heroine is a beautiful dark-skinned Amazon-like lady. I wish that there was a sequel to this book. I really enjoyed reading about Larissa the knife fighter. Most heroines in books are on the delicate side, compared to Larissa. This is one tough chick who is also extremely beautiful. I recommend this book.

This book is superb - the writing is fast-paced and witty, and Larissa is one very tough, smart, and eminently likeable character. A great read - the only dissapointment, being the deceptiveness of the cover - maybe it's bad marketing to have a beautiful dark-skinned lady on the front cover - it certainly didn't take away from an excellently written book, but did make me a little disappointed in the way an otherwise admirable heroine was let down by her PR department.

I love all of Emily Devenport's novels but this is by far my favorite. What made me love this novel was Larissa's character. She's strong and intelligent about life. Devenport's writing pulls you into the troubles of Larissa's life and keeps you there til the very last word. I have recommended this novel many times and I myself have read it many times. If great writing and a good story is what you want then this is the book!

The heroine is well developed (in more ways than one) and her life has many realistic squalid incidents. She has lots of sex and knife fights. The setting is a star-flung future where humankind and another human-like species have been conquered and are oppressed by two other human-like species. A not so subtle metaphor for race relations among modern-day humans. The novel's dramatic structure is loose, taking the form of a memoir. There's not a central conflict; it's more the protagonist's struggle to survive against a series of obstacles. I found the book more entertaining before the author decided to buckle down and get a plot, about halfway through. The human characters in the first part of the book are amusingly idiotic and venal, as real people often are. After that, we get all these inscrutable perverse aliens. Despite her alleged political savvy, Larissa makes no apparent effort to understand them and their labyrinthine intrigues. Fleshing out that part of the story could have added considerable interest. It's always nice to see a strong female character. This one wasn't too perfect to be worth tagging along with.

It's been a while since I read this book, but I dropped by to check to see if Emily had written anything new and saw that Larissa hadn't gotten any on-line reviews. It's Red Sonja in Space... and I LOVED the Red Sonja saga. I enjoy all of Emily Devenports novels. I recommend them all.

This is the first book I have read by Emily Devenport. My first question to Ms. Devenport would be "why does the cover of the book depict a white female?" Larissa, as described in the book, is an extremely dark skinned black woman...threw me a bit.

Devenport writes in the first person in this book and the internal dialogue of her character Larissa is reminiscent of Robert B. Parker and his Spenser series but sans the light humor. Having said that, I had a hard time caring about her characters. Larissa is strong but damaged, and Devenport had an opportunity to really flesh out this character and create real motivation for some of her more sociopathic behavious. but Larissa in my opinion, comes off as a bit one-dimensional and therefore less believable. There seems to be no softness in her only a masculine hardness that is hard to connect with in a real person. Rather than coming off as strong, which requires some human weaknesses, Larissa comes off as a bit of a sociopath.

Devenport's male characters are either distant, seedy or stupid OR a combination of all three. I would recommend reading this book if you don't expect too much more than an interesting diversion. I haven't read any other of Ms. Devenport's work. I am assuming that this one was an early try and will give her later works another read.

Larissa would have been a fine stand alone novel. The parts dealing with Shade felt a bit forced. This was a good story with a slow start. Larissa becomes a more interesting character as the book goes on.

In comparison with the previous book, Shade, this novel was simply better written.

This storyline is slow to start and as I read I found myself thinking "Why is the Heroinne doing all these stupd things?" because her character does not strike me as the typical stupid female. However, the story picked up eventually and kept my interest.