Customer Reviews

The Turning (Blood Ties, Book 1)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Courtesy of CK2S Kwips and Kritiques

Dr. Carrie Ames is new in the ER, ready to begin her residency. When a John Doe body comes in, horrifying Carrie and making her flee the ER, things slowly begin to change. Later, trying to confront her fear, she is brutally attacked in the morgue by said corpse, and left for dead. It isn't until much later that she realizes what really happened.

Carrie had the unfortunate luck of being turned into a vampire by John Doe, whom she later discovers is the indiscriminately cruel and purely evil Cyrus Kerrick. Rescued by Nathan Grant, Carrie learns what she has been "born" into. Nathan is a member of the Movement, a group of vampires who wish to destroy all vampires in a desperate bid to protect mankind... And Cyrus, now Carrie's sire, is their greatest enemy. Nathan gives her a choice, join the Movement or be destroyed. Not much of a choice if you ask Carrie.

As if that's not bad enough, Carrie learns she has a Blood Tie to her sire, a bond that works to hold her to his sadistic plans, giving him the ability to control her, and making her sexually attracted to him. Even worse, she's also greatly attracted to Nathan. What is a fledgling vampiress to do?

Jennifer Armintrout leaps on to the scene with The Turning, her debut novel and the first of a projected trilogy. Make no mistake though, despite the publishing house for this book, it is not by any stretch of the imagination even remotely romantic, but is a horror novel. There are some extremely graphic scenes of mutilated bodies and sadistic pleasures which will cause difficulties for more sensitive readers.

The plot thickens and barrels along at a breathtaking pace from the opening segment. Just when we think we're going to get a break and have some slow scenes, Armintrout throws something else into the mix which revs it up all over again. I especially enjoyed the overarching storyline that encompasses the entire second half of the book. Things really get interesting when that plot is added and don't be startled to find yourself getting chills up and down your spine as that surprise is revealed.

I was not especially impressed by Carrie. She comes across as pretty self-involved and the only thing that really redeems her is her feelings for Nathan and his "adopted" son and blood donor, Ziggy. The great lengths she goes to in order to protect them keeps her from being completely selfish. I also got annoyed by the fact she used her Blood Tie to Cyrus as a crutch for everything she didn't like about herself. Each time she did something she felt like she should not enjoy, she blamed the Blood Tie and Cyrus' pure evilness. If she committed some act that people could take for moral reprehensibility, it was because "Cyrus and my Blood Tie made me do it." That got really old really quick and I wanted to tell her to suck it up and admit that Tie or no Tie, she just had the hots for Cyrus, sick SOB that he was, and enjoyed being his "slave."

The other characters are what really made the story pop for me. I loved Ziggy in all his teenaged angst and awkwardness. He is such a sweet boy, who unfortunately knew more about the dark side of life than he should, that you can't help but love him. Nathan's dedication to his cause is admirable, made even more so when we see glimpses into his past and what made him into the vampire he now is. Then there is Dahlia, Carrie's greatest rival for Cyrus' affection. Dahlia's no princess either but her sheer desperation to keep Cyrus' interest is actually quite amusing. Even Cyrus, as sick and twisted as he is, when his history is revealed, makes us feel almost sympathetic to his plight and the events that led him to this course.

The Turning ends on a positive note, even though we can be sure there is still more horror to be found in the future books. I do look forward to reading book 2, Possession, which is already stored on my MP3 player for a future listen.

© Kelley A. Hartsell, February 2007. All rights reserved.

Dr. Carrie Ames has the unfortunate luck of working in the E.R. one night when a frightening trauma victim arrives. Missing one eye and his lower jaw the victim has been stabbed repeatedly with a large object. He dies, or so she thought. This mistake is jarringly corrected to Carrie when she finds the morgue attendant minus one eye and all of his blood. The vampire then attacks Carrie and mistakenly creates a fledgling vampire.

Searching for answers as to what has happened to her life since that Thing attacked her, Carrie is lured by an internet aquaintance to a very hippy trippy occault bookstore. There she is attacked by Ziggy, a college boy whose adopted dad is a vampire. She's then rescued by said dad- a hard bodied stud of a dark haired vampire named Nathan. Why would Ziggy attack a vamp if he lives with one you ask? Well, it seems Nathan is a member of the Voluntary Vampire Movement, a group whose aim is to destroy all bad vamps and thin their numbers for the betterment of the human race. And if you aren't with them you are against them.

When Carrie finally succumbs to the bloodthirst she follows all of the good girl vampire rules...but still succeeds in ticking off one very powerful whitch. Afraid for her life Carrie moves in with Nathan and Ziggy, but part of her is still curious about her sire whom she knows only as John Doe. She invites herself to his lair and sells herself to him in a bid to keep Nathan safe.

Cyrus, her sire, keeps her by his side due to the blood tie. He can read her thoughts and control her emotions so that her reactions to his deprived actions are numbed. The book takes a serious twist with the upcoming appearance of Cyrus's, father the Soul Eater- who is also Nathan's sire. Characters start dying off left and right and I won't spoil which ones. We do meet a funny hotty by the name of Max though who will hopefully show up in the next book. This book was a little weird , definitely good , but had a slightly disappointing ending. It has plenty of potential so I'd love to read the next book. Definitely worth the money!

The Turning was at times an interesting story, but unfortunately it was more often than not a frustrating exercise in patience.

The plot meanders wildly and there is very little sense of identity imbued into the tightly closed universe Armintrout has created. Characters are introduced - particularly Ziggy and Cyrus - in such a way as to be completely dissonant with their intended roles in the plot.

The main character, Cassie, is hard to like or sympathize with and it becomes increasingly difficult as the story goes on to see that she has any motivation other than contrariness. The antagonists are hardly menacing figures and come off less as brutal or psychopathic and more as petulant and ridiculous, particularly given their penchant to abruptly turn up or disappear from view in ways that are far too obviously methods of prodding along the plot (Hi! I'm randomly in your apartment to do something for all of two seconds that is never fully explained so that you'll drive over to the big mean vampire's house looking for an antidote and thus have to make a dramatic sacrifice. Oh! and I set some stuff on fire too! But don't worry, the fire department's already on its way and nothing will seem to have been damaged by the time you return! I gotta run now so I can get to the B.M.V.'s house ahead of you so I can be duly punished for my actions, thus driving a further wedge in our already rocky acquaintance!).

All that said, The Turning does have its moments, mostly in the brief and sometimes out of place moments of character development. Though there is never enough shown of these characters to give the reader more than a rough two dimensional notion of what their personality may be, what little is given is fairly engaging.

The biggest disappointment with The Turning is that nothing ever really seems to be at stake. Cassie's humanity is never established enough to allow her choice between the unpolarized "good" and "evil" to be a gripping struggle. Nathan's guilt complex has a tendency toward the laughable, but is generally simply annoying because it has no context until the very end of the book, by which point the reader is wondering why they care anymore. And Cyrus' somewhat powerful first impression quickly falls apart as he becomes little more than a discombobulated jumble of increasingly schizophrenic character flaws. At the end, the reader is left to look for someone to root for, for something that has been gained or lost that means more than a few tugged heart strings. I suppose there is some concept of family at stake, but that's a hard stretch.

The Turning requires a lot of energy on the reader's part to remain engaged and demands more trust in the author's ability to spin a yarn than ever actually pays off. There are some intriguing ideas here, but they lack organization and are never fully realized in the lines of the novel.

Carrie Ames is a newly "minted" ER doctor. She has followed her life plan to get to this paint in her life. But, it goes horribly wrong one evening. When she is confronted with a patient who she thinks is beyond redemption she freezes and runs away. Later after talking with her boss she decides to face her fears head on and goes to the morgue to look at the body. This is when things go wrong she quickly figures out that the coroner has been brutally murdered, and she is attacked and left for dead by the very corpse she went to see. The issue is that the corpse was a vampire Cyrus. After waking up and finally being released from the hospital she starts to except that she has been "turned" into a vampire herself.

She seeks the internet for information. Eventually stumbling on Nathan Grant who is also a vampire she starts to understand all the changes that are taking place. She accidentally runs into her new "Sires" lover (Dalia) who is out to kill her to keep her sire (Cyrus) from interacting with her. Nathan saves her after he run in with Dalia and then turns to give her an ultimatum. She can either join the movement he is a part of, which believes that vampires should never harm anyone, and those that do are to be eradicated. In fact he was the one who had attached Cyrus the night he ended up in the hospital where Dr. Carrie worked; he had an execution order to kill Cyrus from the movement.

As Dr. Carrie is trying to decide what path to take she is drawn to Nathan. This is why when Dalia attacks Nathan and puts him in a coma Dr. Carrie is willing to go live with her sadistic sire. She trades her freedom for Nathan's life. But she won't let anyone tell Nathan this and he suddenly treats her like a leper. When Nathan's adopted son runs into trouble he runs to Dr. Carrie she is put in a further tight spot when she becomes determined to save the sons life. Now she needs to keep them both safe, especially during the superstar even of the year for vampires, "The Vampire New Year", when the movement plans to attack and kill Cyrus and his Sire.

This is definitely a book I wasn't expecting from Harlequin. It doesn't have the normal happily ever after story line. Also there are graphic accounts of injury and torture by the vampires. But, that being said this was a fantastic debut novel by Armintrout. If the series keeps up she will be held in the same company as Charlene Harris, Laurel Hamilton and Sherrilyn Kenyon. He characters are well thought out and she took the time to work through how people go about not aging and having dead people disappear and not be suspected.

I feel bad. I obviously didn't read the same book as everyone else. I think I get where the author was trying to go. Even so, this book did nothing for me. I kept plugging away trying to finish this book, only to be let down in the end.
A great villian, totally wasted on a wishy washy heroine. An organization of vamps that want to extinguish their own race with enlisted vampire killers? That is truly baffling. I don't think I will read the next one.

I loved this book - read it in one day. Couldn't put it down! The characters are being developed slowly and they can be quite frustrating, particularly Nathan. I liked the way the author subtly mentions werewolves and demons and I'm sure there will be more of them in the next book. A vampire story for adults only. I cannot wait for the next book.

I picked this up at a library book sale thinking it looked like the type of book I would enjoy and I wasn't disappointed. There was lots of death, but it wasn't overly gory (Well, I guess it depends on how squeamish you are). There were fairly graphic sex scenes, so if you have issues with that you may want to avoid this book.

All of the characters seem to have psychological issues. Carrie had a poor relationship with her parents and now wavers between detached and unemotional to jealous any time she feels ignored. I wish she had been a bit more passionate about things given that she's our heroine... she's supposed to make us feel with her. Carrie isn't the only one who's a bit too unemotional, Nathan also exhibits that trait though in his case it's more obvious that it is a defense mechanism to keep from getting hurt. He feels a lot for people even if he does his best to keep those emotions bottled up. Cyrus, our villain, is the most emotional, he has issues similar to Carrie, which is one of the few reasons you can understand her interest in him, yes there is the blood tie, but the whole relationship between them makes it appear Carrie is one of those girls who seems to try and find the most self destructive relationship she can.

All in all, I'd recommend this book. It was interesting enough to hold my attention and make me want to read the next in the series.

This series was mind blowing! The characters were great, the relationships were real & twisted. I highly recommend anyone wanting a twist to get this series- warning they are pretty sexually graphic

In the Michigan Emergency Room Dr. Carrie Ames is in the morgue when a vampire attacks her. She slowly recuperates from the assault, but she is no longer the same person as in her efforts to thwart the molestation, she exchanged blood with Cyrus the vampire; she is now a creature of the night.

Carrie struggles with the "Big Change as no one is there to nurture or guide her. She seeks information that leads her to an occult bookstore owned by Nathan the vampire. He tries to provide her some support as she transforms. Nathan also warns her to be careful of a vampiric group, the Movement that wants to commit suicidal genocide by killing all of their kind while the opposite side is 200 proof evil as they attack innocent people. Nathan insists Cyrus is one of the malevolent types, using his assailing her as his anecdotal example. She must choose one side or the other as there is no third position; whatever she chooses someone plans to kill her for selecting wrong.

The first book of the Blood Ties tales is a delightful horror thriller with some romantic and chick lit elements that enhance the overall impact of a swell written vampire story. The heroine is a wonderful protagonist as she struggles with the Big Change and an attraction to two individuals from feuding camps. Though gory and even unintended comical at times, THE TURNING is a terrific debut novel.

Harriet Klausner

I stumbled across this series while browsing the book forums and I'm sure glad I did. After reading the Twilight Series and Almost Human Series, I was ready once again for a new vamp series. I read the reviews and jumped in with both feet and bought all 4 books. I like a book that grabs me from the start and this one sure did. Although many reviews talked about the graphic violence at the start, I didn't find it really that graphic. I could handle it just fine. You can read the desciption of the book on your own so I won't get into that. The main characters are Carrie, Nathan, and Cyrus (plus their are a few other supporting characters). The author introduces you to each one and builds on their characters. Pretty soon you feel like you know them personally. Be prepared for a lot of twists and turns which really keep the story moving quickly. I need something to keep my attention from cover to cover and this book does just that. The sexual situations are mild. So for those of you who don't like explicit scenes, this series is a good one.