Customer Reviews

Once Bitten

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

New author - great story. I love books by such authors as Patricia Briggs, Karen Chance, Robin McKinley, Nalini Singh, Michelle Sagara, Katie MacAlister, Rachel Caine, Ilona Andrews, Carrie Vaughn...I love Fantasy, SciFi, Urban Fantasy. Well, I loved this book. Kalayna Price creates a world you want to visit and characters you want to know. My only complaint - it was too short. I wasn't ready to leave Kita and her friends. I want more.
Kita is a shifter who turns into a calico house cat and as her father's heir, she doesn't think she is up to the task of leading her clan, full of such shifters as lions and tigers. So she escapes to earth through a gate that opens on the full moon. Constantly hiding from the hunters sent to find her she is just scraping by, surviving hand to mouth, day to day. She is not really living, nor does she actually hope for more out of life. Truly a lost little kitten in a big bad world. I loved that the author let us know just how lost Kita was, how foreign she found earth by the little keepsakes she keeps in her coat pockets...like a couple of marbles. When Kita first found the marbles she thought they were very pretty rocks. The story is fast pased and for Kita it quickly goes to heck in a hand basket only to find herself a newly made vampire. She has no idea what that means for her. She's not even sure she's still a shifter. Talk about a fish out of water...a lost little kitten. Through her struggles she finds more strength within herself then she ever could have imagined. (She is woman hear her meow.) After being such a loner and so alone for the last 5 years, she finds true friends. People she can count on when things get rough...and they definitely get rough. I'm really looking forward to more in the haven series with book two, 'Twice Dead' coming out February 2010.

I really enjoyed reading Once Bitten. This book is one of those great reads that just allows you to escape the real world for awhile and when you are done you can't wait to go back and visit. The main character Kita is easy to connect with and the surrounds are so vivid I feel like I have been there. I thought the plot moved at just the right pace. Once I picked it up, I didn't put it down until I was done. I am definitely looking forward to a sequel. I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Kim Harrison and Kelley Armstrong. Great urban fantasy.

Once Bitten is the first book in what looks to be a promising urban fantasy series. The plot dragged in places, and Price could have developed the characters a bit more, but overall the book was interesting, entertaining, and well written. I look forward to reading the second installment this February.

While the book has some romantic elements in it, it is primarily an urban fantasy novel. Unlike most urban fantasy novels, the different supernatural species are not that familiar with one another. This is an interesting spin on the normal urban fantasy formula, and I can't wait to see how she develops the relationship between the two main characters.

If the publisher offered the book for $0.00 to get people hooked on a new series, they succeeded. I'll definitely pay to read Twice Dead.

I've had this book listed as an "Amazon recommendation" for a few months now. I've been resistant to trying it after downloading and reading the sample. It seemed a bit dull. The cover was also not my "style". I may sound a bit judgmental but really this is my hard earned money. Why not be?? Eventually, I ran out of reading material and went ahead and purchased the e book for my kindle. OMG what a disaster! The editing on this e book is horrendous. It was really distracting. That said let's talk about the material. This book is not very engaging imo. You may think well it is the first book in the series. Which usually involves world building, developing a long term plot being it is a series etc. Well that is not the case here. No excuses it is just boring. I am not adding this series to my "reading pile". The main character just plain annoys me. Try as I might I couldn't get into her or the story. I ended the book feeling like I wasted my time and money. She was so one dimensional and lacked any type of self preservation gene. She was a coward and unbelievable judgmental. She came across small minded and ignorant. My suggestion is save your money. Try the chicago land series.

so based off of the other reviews I figured I would enjoy this book. However I was extremely disappointed. The main character, Kita stays confused throughout the book, unwilling or just too stupid to comprehend her stiuation I am not sure which. The story starts off slow and just goes down hill from there. I really enjoy Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews as well as Kalayna Prices other series grave witch, but with this story Kalayna falls short, I would not recommend this book.

Once Bitten turns the shapeshifter genre into something brand new. The origins of shapeshifters are explained is a way that is surprising, yet logical in its way. The focus is on the spiritual, the soul, and gives the definition of shapeshifters being dual natured a slightly different than is normally seen.

There are many supernatural types featured in this book. Shapeshifters of all flavors, demons, magic-users, vampires are all strongly focused on with the possibility of others lurking in the shadows. It is becoming more common to find series with many different creature, yet Kalayna Price has managed to differentiate the world she's created from the others. She gives enough information for the reader to fully grasp the types without inundating them with the unnecessary lore that can become cumbersome in large quantities.

What happens when a shapeshifter is made into a vampire? At this point, we just don't know and neither do the characters. We do see enough to know that we'll learn eventually and that it's going to be knowledge painfully acquired.

Once Bitten contains an absolutely fantastic take on a vampire council that I could not have loved more. If you're going to have a vampire community, you know a council is inevitable. The four vampires briefly shown in Once Bitten are each so distinct that they could each carry a series all there own,

Kita has issues with just about everything but it fits the story and what we learn of her past and personality. The name fits the character in its sound, uniqueness and beauty. She's strong and weak, scared and fearless. She's real and human without ever being human at all.

This is a series to keep your eye on. It has the potential to to be listed among the best and brightest of the genre. Kalayna Price has created something truly spectacular here.

This book has a very interesting concept and some very interesting characters and yet it is vaguely unsatisfying. Part of the reason is although the characters/world is very interesting and I wanted to learn more I did not have enough background to feel like I knew the individuals or really cared about what happened to them (e.g., how does her ex feel about her, would does he wife, why does her father thing Kita is the right person to suceed him, what exactly would that entail, etc.). Part of this is that there are a lot of very interesting but not fully fleshed out characters in each book. The other issue I have is the fact that the main character deals with things through avoidance. I am not talking so much the running away (she shape shifts into a small cat and this might be the best strategy and frankly having a character who canno not kick everyone's butt is a nice change) but the lack of awareness about the effect of her actions and others reaction to her actions.

I am hoping Kita becomes a little more self-aware and likable because the ideas behind this series are wonderful and I am curious to see where it goes next.

I admit, I am pretty finicky when it comes to fantasy novels, but when I read the blurb for Once Bitten, it had my curiousity right away. A loner, away from her people, seemingly having the worst day ever.

From the first chapter you can feel the weight of the world on her shoulders as she evades numerous hunters and tries overall to be under the radar, but circumstances work against her.

Kalayna's characters are engaging, I felt a vested interest in Kita's struggles as she tried to clear her name and put up with one pretty insistent vampire, an old friend from her clan, and a charming magic user. This is a team up that is unusual, but the chemistry works. Add in the action and it made it a fast and engaging read.

Count me in for the sequel!

As a series opener, Once Bitten has hit the mark! Overall it is an intriguing story with interesting characters. Price manages to take some very familiar elements reweave them into a completely new garment. Traditional werewolves are now shapeshifters, meaning they can morph into a variety of different animals, not just wolves. Vampires still drink blood but only need about 1-2 pints, so they don't have to kill or turn a human to get a meal. Finally, there are the "watchers" or mages, the supernatural race who have taken it upon themselves to police all of the other supernatural races. Price, then, takes it a step further by having the shapeshifter protagonist, Kita, "accidentally" turned into a vampire! What happens to Kita in the first 24 hours as vampire is completely believable (if you first believe in vampires). Price successfully carries us along on Kita's emotional rollercoaster as she learns what has happened to her--vamped out--and how she must live out the rest of her existence--bloodsucker AND unable to shift--ranges from confusion and fear to resentment and anger. Kita is hard pressed to find an upside to her new life.

That withstanding, Once Bitten is not without its annoyances. My main peeve is with the main character Kita or Kitten, as she is sometimes called. Kita is completely unstable. She waffles from Miss Independent to Chicken Little almost in midsentence. She runs at the slightest change in the wind, which ALWAYS ends up getting her "friends" into serious trouble as they try to find her! She is ungrateful to her friends, who are constantly getting her out of one jam or another (did I mention that already?). And she is a bit of a mooch. It was really hard to find anything likeable about her, except that the other characters liked her. Nathaniel is enraptured by her vitality. Bobby recalls her courage from their childhood in Firth. And numerous random characters "love" her hair. *LOL Without giving away the plot, she is somewhat redeemed in the (very) end as she fights to save an innocent young woman and the lives of her friends whose fates are inextricably entangled in her own. Still, it leaves one to wonder if she would have fought if there was any possibility that she could have run away (again) without forfeiting her own life. Does she fight to save her own life or theirs?

I will definitely read whatever comes next in this series. Perhaps, it Kita's last redeeming quality or curiosity about Nathaniel's background (which is purposefully left out) or what the mage Judge will demand next or if Kita will ever willing feed that has piqued my curiosity. I will also be interested to see if the sequel(s) will explore the parallel world of Firth. So far, the human city of Haven is believable enough. It is like any other major US city with skyscrapers, horrible taxi drivers, posh clubs, and seedy underbelly. However, Price introduces an alternate universe, Firth, where the shapeshifters come from. And on every full moon, the inhabitants of Firth are able to cross the boundary between the two worlds. I think that will be the deal maker/breaker for this series for me. Any successful fantasy world has to have a sustainable landscape.

This story plunges the reader directly into the action and doesn't let up until the last page. The world and mythology is complex, intriguing, and unique. While fully developed for the story, it is clear the story only scratches the surface of the complex world these characters exist in and there is much more to discover. I can hardly wait to learn more about the shifter's world of Firth and the mage's world of Sabin. There is an amazing mix of humor, action, and mystery to this story that will keep readers hooked and hoping a next book is on the way.

If you enjoy authors like Patricia Briggs and Kim Harrison, you will love this book.