Customer Reviews

Mona Lisa Awakening

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

A friend pressed this into my hands the other day. "You liked Sailor Moon as a kid, right?" she asked. "You have to read this. It's killer."

As soon as I finished I called her up and said if she ever pulled a stunt like that again, I'd tear her arms off. But I don't think she heard me over the sound of her own maniacal laughter.

Mona Lisa (no last name, apparently, like her creator) is an ER nurse working in Manhattan. She's had a Tragic Childhood -- abandoned as an infant, the only identifying artifact a silver cross around her newborn neck with her name inscribed on it. She's been bounced around foster homes for most of her life, and is now alone the world at the tender age of twenty-one. She informs us right away that sickness "calls to her," and is working the rounds at St. Vincent's when an astonishingly handsome patient exerts some juju on her, calling her attention to the fact that not only is he awfully pretty, but he has powers similar to her own. (More on that later.) Sashaying up to the fellow, he promptly informs her that she is a Monere, though a "Mixed Blood," and feels like one of their Queens to boot. The Monere, he tells her, are a special race of creatures with magical abilities that once lived on the moon and have now retreated to Earth in territories ruled by different Queens. His own Queen stabbed him with a silver blade, which is poison to the Monere and doomed him to a slow death unless he can attain the help of another Queen. (We're just reached p.12, by the way.)

You think we're in bad fanfic territory already? We've only just begun.

But as much as my friend wanted me to associate systematic rapes and sexual healing (again, more on that later) with my childhood heroine, this book reminded me much more strongly of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. Other reviewers have noted the similarity, including Romantic Times. Of course, though matriarchal societies built on a sexual power structure are reminiscent of Bishop, she doesn't have a patent on them. But when the author introduces Prince Halcyon, the son of the King of Hell with a penchant for white shirts and black trousers, who wears his nails long, is "demon dead" and drinks blood (not characteristic of the original, but Bishop's exact concept AND terminology), and I start calling him "Daemon Sadi 2.0" in my head, you have to wonder if the homage is being taken a little far.

But even without obvious borrowing from other authors, the book isn't very good. Mona Lisa is the Sue-iest Sue I've seen. She can already withstand silver and walk in daylight because of her human blood, unlike other "Moonies." As for her other talents, she tells Gryphon: "I can see through the darkness and hear for miles around me... My sense of smell is acute. I am fast like a cat, strong as a lion. With effort, I can control people's minds with my gaze... I can detect ailments within the body and, to a small degree, ease some of the pain, but I have yet to obtain the ability to heal." (p.33-34) And don't worry, gentle readers, she will. Through sex. She'll also have learned to call silver, demonstrate her abilities in "street fighting and a hodgepodge of other disciplines," bear the Goddesses Tears (which haven't been seen in generations), and be able to transmit her tolerances to those who follow her. Again through sex. She's practically perfect in every way -- oh, except she's a trifle lacking in the bosom department. Quelle horreur.

And hey, Mary Sue-type characters can be fun -- especially those this shameless. But the prose fails to back it up. Mona Lisa's narration and dialogue switches between a stilted, almost archaic diction and a more laid-back slang, and the incongruity threw me right out of the story time and time again. Even worse was when the two were blended -- my favorite phrase is when Mona Lisa comments a character "creeped [her] out most ardently."

Add to all this cardboard characters, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am love interests, and half-baked world building... it's hard to grade something like this, because how to you determine the reading worth of mindless fluff? But sorry, can't bring myself to give it more than one star.

I finished this book over a day ago, and I'm still angry. It's not inspired by Anne Bishop and Laurell K. Hamilton, it's ripped off from them. It's not so bad to play with big ideas that have been around for years like Ms. Hamilton has done in her books, though I never liked her style of PWP eroticism with a blatant self-insert character in Anita Blake. But Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy is a unique fantasy realm and magic system that wasn't derivative, so borrowing names and ideas from is just not professional. I'm surprised this book is still for sale. The copy I read was from the library so thank goodness Sunny didn't profit from me.

This book was a combination of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy, Laurel K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry series and Ms. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, all rolled into one.

I lost count of the number of times I recognized entire societies, class structures, characters and explanations that caused me to flash back directly into those other books. Sunny's entire construct of Hell, complete with the demon dead and having the psychic strength to transform to demon dead...it was stolen DIRECTLY from Anne Bishop's series. Satean, Andulvar - demon dead!

Learning to control your beast - uh...Anita Blake, anyone.

Creatures that have sex and glow...Merry Gentry

Queens ruling territories, abusive queens...heck...this is an amalgam of all three...well, lots of vamp novels include territories so I'll give her a by on that one, but come on!

The line has to be drawn somewhere. I am returning this book posthaste!

Ugh!

I have to give Sunny credit where credit is due -- I cannot think of another urban fantasy author who actually made me want to tear off my own head.

And her debut novel "Mona Lisa Awakening" succeeds in being a reeking, oozing slab of pure wretchedness on every level -- it has a Mary Sue heroine, painfully purple prose, incoherent non-plot and an endless stream of rapes, icky sex and circus-freak penises. Urban fantasy has some real stinkers, but sadly Sunny's first novel surpasses nearly all of them.

Mona Lisa is playing the magic Florence Nightingale at a hospital, when she encounters an UberHawt man with a rotting side wound, whose name is Gryphon (really?). He reveals that he is a Monere (moon person), she is a mixed-blood Monere, and she's also a queen who has magic powers, super sex appeal (called "aphidy"), and "goddess tears" that can heal on her palm.

Oh yes, and she starts licking the blood from his injury. Evidently Mona Lisa has never heard of the Nightingale pledge.

After some quick sex at her apartment, Mona Lisa and Gryphon rush off to find an antidote for his silver poisoning -- and due to Mona Lisa's awesomeness, they are immediately caught by the evil Mona Sera. After repeatedly ordering professional rapist Amber to rape her, Mona Sera learns that Mona Lisa is actually her abandoned daughter. Since this is a good reflection on her, she whisks Mona Lisa to the High Court.

But the High Court turns out to have its own dangers -- and Sunny appears to be making up subplots and plot twists as she goes. Mona Lisa must deal with rapist guards, other Queens, rapists, the seductive "demon dead" Prince Halcyon, rebel bands of rapists, and so on. All this, while trying to be the only "good Queen" and locate her equally sociopathic little brother.

Take Anne Bishop's "Black Jewels" world, combine it with Laurell K Hamilton's ghastly heroines and sex magic... and then put them in a blender and hit "liquefy." With the top off.

If you did that, the result might be something like "Mona Lisa Awakening." Without benefit of a central plot, Sunny simply strings together a half-dozen stories centering on the awesomeness of Mona Lisa. And Sunny uses these stories to let her fantasies run amuck -- endless rapes, Hot Men with rotting wounds and third-degree burns, and a parade of "just jealous" women.

And even worse: her prose. Sunny crams this book with awful dialogue ("I've already found my hell-cat. None are as sassy as you") painfully unfunny witticisms ("Where did a Monere Queen live? In Queens, of course"), and the most basic factual errors (since when is the moon a planet?). And her style is absurdly purple and vaguely pseudo-Victorian ("a dear price for a fragile whore"), except she peppers it with modern phrases.

And I can only assume that Sunny has some very serious issues with men. All her men are evil gang-rapists or pathetic lapdogs, and Sunny even gleefully pens a scene where Mona Lisa tap-dances on a rapist's severed penis.

The worst part? Mona Lisa herself. Not only does Sunny glorify her by making every other woman a sadistic freak, but Mona Lisa is quickly established as being the fastest, strongest, most compassionate, sexiest, most alluring, and most unique Queen. She also heals people via sex, can dismiss pain or burn people alive with a wave of her hand, and has kung-fu skills that can subdue the best superhuman Monere warriors. Oh yeah, and she's so intimidating that she actually makes one man wet himself.

It's difficult to find a more ridiculous ball of ripoffs and cliches than "Mona Lisa Awakening," one of the most spectacularly horrific fantasies in years. This is urban fantasy's "Eye of Argon."

Let me save you some time "I'm a nurse. Look at that patient, he's so hot I creamed my pants. He's all 'I'm not human yada yada, you're a queen' and I'm all 'Ya I know right? Let's do it.'" There, save yourself $7.

I did enjoy this book and I plan to read some of "Sunny's" other titles, but this felt very much like fan fic as it was so derivative. Anyone who has read Laurell K Hamilton will feel a little deja vu. Beautiful men guarding a young, mixed blood but unaccountably powerful heroine? Check. An oil that can drive someone mad with lust? Check. Private jets, limos and a convenient stream of endless wealth? Check. A new Queen (or princess) who cares about her "men" and wants to see them happy rather than just use them as pawns? Check. An attempt at snarky real world dialog to break up the mood? Check. Healing powers that arrive during sex? Check. Lots of bloodlust mixed with sex? Check. Lots of people with "political" motives to kill off the heroine? Check.
Given that this was the first book, I felt like we weren't given time to get to know Lisa, which made her even more of a Mary Sue.
Fans of the later works of LKH who are looking for something to tide them over will probably enjoy this. Fans of earlier LKH who are frustrated with her current crop of novels will probably be frustrated with this (though it is refreshingly free of the pycho-babble that has been a bit thick in the more recent LKH books.)
If this is your genre, this is a good beach read. If you are short on funds, read some LKH fan fic and save your money. If you are looking for original dark/urban fantasy, look elsewhere.

I read the first book and somewhere near the middle of it I flung it across the room. How this writer has not been sued for plagiarism, I do not know. If I had found this on fanfiction I wouldn't have batted an eye and might have enjoyed it. Finding it here and having her claiming the ideas as her own is just galling. This is a pure Anne Bishop ripoff.

I was very disappointed in this book. Sadly, this felt more like fan fiction then a real novel. The Author took no time to let the story unfold, letting us learn more about the characters and grow to love them. Her writing was empty and boring. Although the story was a fun idea it felt like a rip off from the later cheesy Laurell Hamilton series. The story was rushed as if the Author only wrote what she wanted and didn't take the time to craft a real story. What should have happened in four books was crammed into one. Every now and then there were beautifully written passages, showing the potential of a true writer. However this will only happen if the stories are very critically edited and redone. Most of the meat of the story was left out leaving the pretty trimmings which doesn't make a whole meal. I also thought the Author's blurb in the back of the book saying how she was a good writer was very presumptuous and in poor taste. I am honestly dumbounded how this story got published and can only hope her other books are an improvement.

I really wanted to like this. I love the genre and was excited to find a new author writing it.

The premise was clever: a young nurse with a bit of a healing touch discovers that she's half human and half Monère--a race of beings from the moon. Not only that, but she's a Queen, and the first mixed blood Queen ever.

When I was about a third of the way through the book, I described it like this: "It's like the offspring of Queen Betsy and Jaenelle was raised by Merry Gentry." Betsy because she's an unexpected queen with powers unusual for her kind. Jaenelle because the male Monère have a need to serve a Queen, and because there's a tendency for the Queens to become evil and mistreat the males. And Merry Gentry because sex = power.

I don't mind parallels in books. If you get a narrow genre like this, there are bound to be parallels. Even though I was very familiar with the Black Jewels books and the Merry Gentry books, the two series this is most like, I could still have enjoyed it without thinking it was a copycat. I still don't think it's a copycat.

What I do mind is characters who can do no wrong, and situations that resolve themselves way too easily.

Mona Lisa has no flaws, and thus, no character. I liked her initially, liked the young woman being thrust into a completely foreign and dangerous situation, while at the same time getting that feeling of "finally! I'm not alone!" But she always does the right thing. Everyone loves her, particularly the males, who are inclined to worship her. She's madly in love with the first Monère male she met, and she's staunchly monogamous, but she's willing to take one for the team when sex is required to heal one of "her" men. Even the council holds her in awe. Except for the evil Queens, who fear and despise her because she's so good.

What's even worse, though, for me, is the way the plot skipped from one "dangerous" situation to the next, only the situations weren't apparently all that dangerous, because Mona Lisa never had any trouble getting out of them, or saving her people. She either charmed her way out of danger, or called on some brand-new power that popped up just in time to save her.

I'd have liked the story much more--in fact, I'd probably have been raving about it--if it had had only about a third of the plot situations, and they'd been explored more thoroughly. If Mona Lisa had needed some help figuring a way out of a dilemma. If she'd had to use her wits instead of a handy-dandy paranormal-power generator. If there was some reason to believe she'd fallen completely in love with Gryphon, instead of just having the hots for him.

All these complaints sound very familiar to me, which leads me to my conclusion: if you like the latest Laurell K. Hamilton books, you'll love this one.

I started reading "Mona Lisa Awakening" by Sunny, ready to dive into another "not so normal" erotic/romance book. About a quarter into it I had to pause for a moment, had I read this before? I have been known to reserve the same book twice from the library, then begin to read it only to realize my mistake, so I checked my "already read" list, and nope, so why was it so familiar? A woman, young and beautiful, suddenly finds herself to be royal blood thrust into an unusual "world within a world", she is a queen by birth and she has unusual powers that are stronger than any of her kind The "children of the moon" the "Monere" who came to earth 4000 years ago and are hiding amongst us, our vampire/werewolf legends heck maybe even our obsession with reality TV might have come from them. This Mona Lisa, whose own mother gave her up because she was a Halfling, must now prove herself among her peers who so happen to hate her tainted blood. She gets to pick out strong, powerful, virile men to accompany her, protect her and have lots and lots of sex with her. Other jealous queens try to kill her, she finds out she has a brother, demons kidnap her and try to rape her, and throughout she learns to control her powers of healing, and seeing in the dark and changing into a tiger. When she beds these men, she shares her powers, and heals them. Frankly I found it gross that she is making whoopee with some dude who is a) rotting away from a stomach wound b) burnt horribly and c) torn in half Yuck, Yuck, and double yuck. It was so hard for me to believe that a 21 year old ER Nurse, hadn't ever used a cell phone, or doesn't know how to use a computer!!

Whatever this book claims, believe me you HAVE read it all before. It's called the "merry gentry" series and it's written by Laurell K. Hamilton. It might not be word for word, but it's darn close. Between the group sex, evil queens, and abnormally large endowed men Laurell Hamilton better call her lawyer quick. Seriously, you can admire another author's work but you should never ever rip them off. I love Stephen King, you don't see me writing a book about a town called "Talems Plot" where some creepy dude moves into town, opens a shop and vampires eventually take over, oh wait not vampires ...blood suckers or even better... vampyres!.
Sunny isn't a bad writer, its palatable and understandable, but it's a simpler echo of a great series and that's unforgivable. She even gets a beloved American commercial phrase wrong. In quoting Tony the Tiger, she says "that's great" when its "they're great" I know that's nitpicky, but cmon........my final word is don't buy this, get it from the library if you must and compare and contrast on your own, if you have never read Hamilton please read hers first and you will nod your head with compliance to my (and in reading reviews many many others) comparisons.