5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read....with some flaws, August 12, 2008
This review is from: Ravens Deep (Paperback)
I enjoyed reading this book and honestly cannot wait for the other two books to come out in this trilogy. However, there are two things in this story that bothered me immensely - enough to earn only three stars.
-1 star: The grammatical errors throughout the story were just too annoying to ignore. Floating quotation marks, incorrect pronoun usage, and lack of proofing for sentence syntax. For any author, his/her first book should be carefully proofed before it is released to the public. How one writes is a reflection of the care they took while writing it.
-1 star: The excessive use of aggressive behavior from the male lead, Darius, toward his love, Madeline. The author did a great job portraying Darius' struggle with his demonic side, and I was quite impressed with how well Jordan did showing how he had to prevent anyone from finding out about his life. However, I truly felt that Darius did not need to show his turmoil with his inner demon by slapping Madeline around or threatening & controlling her. That is not a healthy relationship, and I think that Jordan could have depicted Darius' struggle without the use of aggression and verbal/physical abuse on Madeline, his love. His slapping her in the face, scratching her with his fingernails on her cheek, and shutting her up in a coffin as she struggles for air and claws at the coffin until her fingers bleed are all simply abusive and not really very loving at all.
I'm no prude and have read several vampire books by J.R. Ward, Gena Showalter, Kresley Cole, Keri Arthur, etc... And, to these authors' credits, they were able to successfully portray their demons' inner struggles without the use of abuse on their loved ones. Fiction is escape for readers - why not make the male lead somewhat redeemable in character despite their tragic flaws in nature?
I hope Jordan considers veering away from the male lead using physical and verbal abuse on their love interest in future stories. It is just a big turn-off to have some male bullying his love around - we have too many of those unfortunate males in our current society today to have our fantasy male leads do such things to their female loves.
This is just my opinion. Great story, very engaging. However, the use of violence against the female lead was just unnecessary, and the grammar/syntax needs to be seriously reviewed before publishing.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly written by a true writer!, August 29, 2010
This review is from: Ravens Deep (Paperback)
I was very happy with this book. I do not usually like love stories, however, the writer took careful steps to research some fascinating history. I loved that there were stories from the time opium was smuggled into the country. I also liked the fact that Darius is not just a lover, but has mezmorized Madeline, so far into love that she does not know her own mind anymore. She has succumbed to his charms and I cannot wait to see if she becomes less dependent upon him, or will she keep being a slave to his love. This book was VERY easy to read, and I would suggest it to anyone. Great job
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, June 1, 2010
This review is from: Ravens Deep (Paperback)
Ravens Deep is an exceptional book...not your typical vampire book. It's deep and dark but the romance is wonderful.
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