Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

The Decoy Princess

By Dawn Cook.

This one has an amazing yet awful premise: what if your entire life has been a lie? What if the job you've been raised to do your entire life is taken away from you?* And what kind of sickos adopt a kid and raise her as their own to be the freaking princess and then are all, "Um, never mind, you're not actually the princess, you're just a ringer. Sorry! Oh yeah, you both have the same name too..."

As you can tell from the title of the book, this isn't a spoiler. The country of Costenopolie (I so keep wanting to say Constantinople, I suspect the author did too) is already riddled with assassins, and that was before "The Red Moon Prophecy" was spread around about the princess. Our narrator, 20-year-old Princess Contessa, thinks she's getting married to Prince Garrett of Misdev. But when the prince shows up early, demanding that they get married now, the king and queen are all "Um...this isn't the actual crown princess here. We just adopted this one as a decoy. The real princess has been raised at a nunnery, we told her about this a year ago, and she's the one that's been writing you letters. We'll just have to wait until she gets here." Naturally, nobody freaking told Tess, the girl who's been raised in the palace all her damn life... though I guess it explains all the artwork about a young blonde girl that decorates the place (Tess is a brunette).

Unfortunately, Tess finds this out right before Garrett slaughters her parents and starts taking over the country and making all kinds of nasty threats to her. However, Tess got brought up by Chancellor Kavenlow, who's taught her how to disappear, how to hide and escape, how to defend herself, and he's had her develop an immunity to iocaine powder venom.** The girl carries around poisoned venom hairpins and shoots them whenever she can, and gets the hell out of there. Garrett is obviously unhinged, but he's got a fairly loyal (at least to the actual Misdev king) and very smart captain of the guard, Jeck, who seems to admire Tess's skills, but will do whatever he has to do to do his job here.*** Tess gets away and has to figure out how to track down Kavenlow, who's gone to fetch the actual princess, and get him to stop the impending war that's about to erupt once people find out what's going on. She meets and partners with Duncan, a convicted thief/card cheat that Tess identifies as such, and they manage to forge a romantic-ish friendship despite their squabbling.

There's cool twists within the structure of the story, which I enjoyed (see spoiler space remarks). The book also mostly manages to handle the dilemma of "How do you cope with the girl who is literally going to take over your life from you?" I don't think it's a perfect handling, but I think it's about as good as you could possibly get under the circumstances, and the plot sets it up well enough that Tess will manage to go on doing... well, that would be spoiling. I enjoyed Tess as a badass trained heroine who may have been betrayed by her family, but she'll still do what she has to to save her country. I also enjoyed Jeck and Contessa (the original princess). I would have liked to have seen a bit more of Kavenlow and Tess's palace friend Heather, given their prominence in her life, but oh well.

So, four stars.

Venom

By Jennifer Estep.

(Third book in a series, haven't read the first two yet.)

Retired assassin/restaurant owner Gin Blanco (a.k.a. Genevieve Snow) is also an Elemental. Most people have control over one element, while Gin has two: ice and stone. Gin is currently pretending to be unpowered (and she doesn't want to blow cover, enough to take a massive beating at the start of the book rather than do so) because she's plotting her revenge against Mab Monroe, the fire elemental who burned up her mother and older sister. However, life takes a turn when (a) a friend of hers starts getting stalked by one of Mab's henchmen and Gin is totally willing to come out of retirement to give her a freebie for this serial rapist/killer, and (b) her long lost baby sister Bria turns up in town-- as a cop investigating Gin's beatdown and other things, such as the Snow family murders. Elliot needing killing will force Gin's hand and make her need to start her campaign against Mab, so she plots with her friends about how to do it.

Gin's delighted to see her sister again, but does NOT reveal herself due to the whole "we're plotting to kill Elliot and boy, is that not gonna be legal" thing. While I think it's a bit of a stretch that Bria doesn't recognize Gin (specifically, she doesn't recognize Gin's voice after Gin helps her while wearing a ski mask at one point), and so far Gin's managed to not show the telltale hand scars that would give her away, I suppose a girl's got her reasons.

There's also Owen, her new love interest. Unlike Gin's previous cop boyfriend who dumped her when he found out what she does, Owen totally accepts Gin for what she is. They also turn out to have some past history together which makes him totally cool with whatever Gin wants to do. It's almost too good to be true, but I appreciated a heroine finding a guy who can deal with her darkness.

Anyway, I enjoyed the plotting in this one, the characters, the whole thing. Four stars.

Darker Angels

By M.L.N. Hanover.

Previous book here.

After six or seven months of traveling around, Jayne and co. get a call from former FBI agent Karen Black, an old associate/fuckbuddy of her dead uncle Eric's, looking for help. The local voodoo queen's got a rider in her, and Karen says the rider is going to eat Amelie's teenage granddaughter Sabine, so the best way to save her is to kidnap her first. Karen Black is a standout lady. It seems that everyone gets a crush on her, between her charm and her badassery. Including Jayne, which leads to an intriguing "hey, there could be some hot lesbian lovin' here" vibe,. This, alas, does not quite pay off. However... Chogyi Jake notices that there's something off about Karen, which leads to the entire case turning on a dime, Jayne turning on a friend*, and Jayne making a very strange new alliance**. She also comes to a realization that I think kind of blows my mind in this series.**

On the plus side: I continue to really enjoy Jayne's development in the story. She may be technically a Badass Bad  Guy Hunter Sort, the way all heroines in urban fantasy are, but you never forget that Jayne is 23 years old and NOT TRAINED to this sort of thing. She's still growing up, making mistakes, and taking responsibility for her actions. She can feel insecure, she can want to be badass, but she remains human. Now, she might have a bit of extra power here and there (btw, I find it odd that this series is called "The Black Sun's Daughter" and we still have NO explanation for this, even though you get an inkling behind it in this one), but you can relate to her even if she's got a gajillion dollars and hunts bad guys with a posse of dudes.

I also found Karen Black to be a very interesting character, for so many reasons. Her charisma and life situation just pop on screen. I kinda wish she'd become a recurring character, but I doubt it.

I also really like the developments toward the later half of the book.** I'll talk about that below the spoiler cut though.

On the minus side, compared to the female characters in this world, I think the regular male characters just fall flat. Jayne, Karen, the Glapion ladies, and even Joseph Mfume have Personalities to me. Aubrey, Ex, and Chogyi Jake, on the other hand... are not nearly as vivid, comparatively speaking. Chogyi Jake is kind of a cipher, but when he speaks, you see his personality shine through. He's pretty perceptive in this one. Aubrey is a nice enough dude, and has his interests in science and Jayne, but as a love interest he's pretty tepid when you think about it. (Why Jayne would carry around his divorce papers for 6-7 months and not tell him...well, I don't even know or get this, I guess.) And Ex seems to have about three traits: being an exorcist, an ex-priest, and he stomps off in a huff. When it's revealed that he has feelings for Jayne, it was pretty much out of the blue and... I did not care. Couldn't really see it too well and I did not care and neither did Jayne on that level. So...why? Because we're obligated to have some kind of love triangle in urban fantasy stories? (Thankfully, Chogyi Jake isn't into white girls or else I'd be muttering "Anita Blake harem time" under my breath and wondering if it was remotely possible for a woman to hang around guys for any length of time without them developing a hard-on for her.) So as a plot development, that was very meh.

(Btw, what is with the covers on this series? I don't get why we have a half-dressed, half-headless heroine playing with a snake. To be fair, there's actually a snake in this book, but I can assure you that Jayne does not go around wearing it like a boa or anything.)

I'm going to give this three and a half stars. Not bad, a little better than its predecessor.

Unclean Spirits

By M.L.N. Hanover.

Jayne (and it's "Zha-nay," NOT Jane, it's a big deal about that) Heller is almost 23, estranged from her nuclear family, a recent college dropout, and down on her luck when she finds out that her uncle Eric just died. Jayne and Eric were semi-close (he was her lone sane, non-fundie family member who tried to rescue her, but then Dad cut Eric off for being a "pervert." Naturally, Jayne assumes he was gay), but she had no idea he was extremely filthy rich. Oh, and he died trying to fight against riders. What are riders? Demons and vampires and the like who take over a human body. Eric had a team of people lined up to take out Randolph Coin, a rider who ended up killing him instead. Jayne ends up leading the old team and picking up a few members of her own. Notably, she gets interested in science guy Aubrey, until she finds out that he has a possible romantic issue already.

I like that this is a book about Jayne growing up and taking responsibility. Even though in a way it seems a little soon that she'd take on this giant sort of battle upon just finding everything out, I like that she stepped up to the plate and figured out how to do things in her own way, and even got a little tricksy at times.

The one thing that really bugs me about this series is that at big action moments, I felt like I'd missed something, in the "one, two, skip a few" sort of way. Like for example, something was done to fix one character and then I kept rereading it trying to figure out if that happened onscreen or off. This happened a few times. Now, it might have just been me missing something, which is entirely possible, but I felt like I blinked at the wrong moment and missed some crucial development.

Three stars.

One Salt Sea

By Seanan McGuire.

Previous book here.

I'm going to say this right off: this book gets 5 stars. Why? Because it is EPIC in scope, scale, and emotional impact.

The Luidaeg calls in her previous favors to Toby when she asks her to head off an impending war between the land fae and the sea fae-- a war she feels the sea fae would totally win. You see, two children of sea fae royalty have been abducted, and if  the kids can be returned--and prove that the land fae Queen of the Mists had nothing to do with it-- there might be hope to fend off the war in 3 days. Toby, who spends a lot of her life looking for missing children (a huge theme in this series), volunteers to find the kids. This also leads to her taking a cool trip undersea, and an amusing scene involving a wheelchair racing through the streets of SF at 5 a.m. Toby recruits her friends into the search, working in a wide variety of ways. Naturally, it turns out that this relates to Toby's first lost child case-- the one she couldn't solve. And then It Gets Personal, bringing on a character we've never met, but I've certainly wondered about. For Toby, this is a real gutwrencher.

I don't think I can say much more than that that isn't spoilerriiffic. But again, five stars for epic scope and consequences.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

By Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters.

This one's even more crazy awesome. Seriously, folks, if you are forced to read Austen in school, adding in a great whomping amount of sea monsters trying to kill everybody really livens up the plot like mad. It really does make you wonder why the entire whole of England hasn't just oh, moved inland and given up seafood. But I guess the English in this book are VERY adventurous.

After the death of their father, the Dashwood ladies are kicked out of the family home by their stingy-ass jerk brother, and offered a sea shack on Pestilent Isle (you have no idea how accurate that is) by adventurer Sir John Middleton. Sir John is known for having captured his islander wife and her mother, the cheeky, matchmaking "Mrs. Jennings." Lady Middleton, alas, is more inclined towards plotting an escape. Her sister Charlotte Palmer, on the other hand, considers the whole thing kind of a joke. (The island ladies also like to make everyone play an island game that, well... seems designed to win money off of people, ahem.)

The usual plot goes as it usually does: after a brief period of time seen together, Edward and Elinor are separated, plus he's engaged to someone else. Marianne and Wiloughby are in love as usual until he marries for money. Colonel Brandon, on the other hand, has been cursed by a sea-witch and thus has a tentacled face.* I think this is a great commentary on settling. Not only does young, hot Marianne have to settle for an old (though nice) dude, she has to settle for someone called Old Fishy Face?!? Yeesh, and come on. Not that I ever got that relationship in the first place (it's even more of a "settled for"/afterthought to finally have Marianne be the "prize" to be won in this one, I think), especially since Marianne is almost always avoiding his ass and I don't get why Brandon didn't decide to go for her also nice looking sister who would actually have a conversation with him, and frequently so. I've always found it annoying how Marianne basically had to have her health ruined and get emotionally and physically squished like a bug to get her to cave into Brandon's charms. (Nice or not, it still seems like Eeyore marrying Tigger to me. Just...wrong.) But then again, I don't think Austen was the world's best romance writer either since you barely see any scenes with the couples together and then they spend 95% of any book apart, having drama.

Anyway, back to this book specifically....all the romantic stuff takes place against an awesome backdrop of everyone constantly getting attacked by sea creatures, and Margaret finally having a plot because she's losing her damn mind and seems to be being taken over by some Cthulhu-ish creature. And then most of the action takes place in Sub-Marine Station Beta, a massive underwater city. Yes, the English in the 1800's have the kind of massive awesome underwater technology that we in 2011 still don't have. It's amazing. People are constantly gadding about and watching shows where "domesticated" sea creatures do tricks, at least until they start attacking the audience. And watch the hell out for the fish at your window...** It really gives you a new perspective on the characters to find out that they are the sorts of people who will tactfully ignore the loud frantic flailings of a servant beating on the dome window for help while he gets eaten by a fish. Damn, y'all. Not to mention that the relationship yakking still continues even as more extreme events of nature occur. Then again, that's just kind of funny as well. It's also rather funny that nobody gives a shit if a particular character is eaten by a sea witch or not!

Anyway, it's a hoot. 3 and 3/4 stars. Yes, that's kind of ridiculous, but since Austen books alone are kind of a 3 to me, and I'd feel bad if I claimed it was a 4... well, if you like sea monsters and like crazy mashups, this will work for you. If you're a diehard Austenite, beats me if it will.

* And according to the ending, a tentacled...something else that Marianne finds maritally pleasurable. Dear god, it's just like the Centauri on Babylon 5...
** Poor Station Alpha. Something else that reminded me of Babylon 5 here...

Yendl

By Steven Brust.

Previous book (approximately) here.

I had a hard time getting into this one somehow, but things get more interesting after a hot chick kills Vlad. Vlad gets revivified and falls in love pretty much instantly with the assassin paid to kill him, Cawti. (She gives the money back.) Anyway, the person after Vlad seems to be involved with a plot to get someone into a higher position within the Dragon clan, and it turns out that one of the potential heirs to the throne is Cawti's business parttner Noranthar.
I dunno, it wasn't my favorite of this series, but it gets more interesting as it goes on, and I enjoyed the plot developments.

Huh, I seriously don't know why I can't come up with much to say on this one. Three stars, I guess.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

By Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

I took a long time to read this one (finally read it because I'm staying at a friend's house where they own it). On the one hand, while I'll watch a Jane Austen movie here and there, I find her writing style to be a semi-slog to read through. So yeah, adding zombies would perk it up, right? On the other hand...yeah, gimmick, and is it even worth reading beyond snickering at the idea of P&P with Z?
Hm, yeah, overall I'd say it is. Mostly because of the evil, bitter snark that creeps in, and how enjoyable it is to see at least half of the cast of the book as total badasses in every way.

The premise: zombies have been rampaging England for 45 years, and Dad Bennett had his five daughters trained in China to be fantastic killing machines and brides of death. And they are amazing at it, have dojos and "modesty strings" (should a lady want to walk on her hands to show off at a party) and "sparring gowns", and it's nice to see that the Bennet sisters would be able to get jobs as bodyguards should nobody ever get married. Knowledge of the deadly arts is considered a classy thing, though some folks (guess who) will still be declasse should you show up bloody after slaying zombies on the way to your house. Elizabeth is particularly badass, as she wants to kill anyone who insults her (mostly she remains restrained), and will happily chomp on the still-beating heart of a ninja with no shame. That's hilarious. I did really enjoy the juxtaposition of the genteel society with deadly slaying, and how the latter is much more accepted. It's also fun to have Lizzy kicking Darcy's ass across a room when she gets his marriage proposal, and plotting his death in her head (oh yeah, and I'd better kill Colonel Fitzwilliam because he could finger me for the murder....). Bwah.

There are a few plot twists from the original that relate to zombies, such as Charlotte marrying Mr. Collins because among other reasons, she's suffered a zombie bite. During the visit to Rosings/parsonage/etc., Elizabeth watches her friend being roughly 3/4 dead, with sores on her head and losing her ability to speak (and at one point, she nearly pees in Lady Catherine's living room), and thinks stuff akin to, "Seriously, NOBODY IS NOTICING THAT SHE'S 3/4 ZOMBIE?!?! I guess everyone here is just totally stupid." Okay, so one wouldn't expect the total brainchild Mr. Collins to notice jack shit (and in the end, at least one person has noticed), but one does wonder if in this society, people are either totally oblivious or just being super mega polite in not noticing until Charlotte hits the point of no return.

Also funny to me is to read this book while comparing it to the Newsflesh books, where nobody leaves their house unless they're a journalist/Irwin or it's necessary. But if you took out all of the trips in P&P, there'd be no plot, so everyone continues to journey out even if they are likely to run into a hundred zombies. Comparing the two societies amused me.

One gets the feeling that the author ah... gave well deserving punishments to the more despicable characters in the novel. And really, I can't disapprove, especially of the one who deserved a good beating. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, that is hilarious.

Also awesome are the reading group questions at the end, such as "what's the real Elizabeth, stone cold killer or sweet girl," and "Is Mr. Collins really that stupid not to notice and does his profession have something to do with it," and "Since Elizabeth has butch interests, is she really gay?" and "Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?" Bwah.

You know, I'll give it three and a half stars.

Rules of Attraction

By Simone Elkeles.

This book is the sequel to Perfect Chemistry, a book I'll probably get around to reviewing one of these days, so I'm kind of leaving this sentence as a placeholder for when I eventually do. Having not quite read the first book but having the general gist of what it's about, I wonder if readers of this book are pretty much here for a replay of the first one. Which in a way it is. Or at least, it's a similar setup of "Mexican gangster guy and middle class white girl get together, but the gang stuff is a big problem to the relationship." But it's an enjoyable read anyway.

The scenario: a couple of years after Perfect Chemistry, Alex and Brittany are going to college in Colorado. Alex's family has moved to Mexico, but his brother Carlos is being shipped back to Alex after getting canned from his factory job. Carlos is, of course, in a gang down there. Alex's professor has a teenage daughter Carlos's age, Kiera, who gets tapped to be his peer guide for his first week at school. Carlos is very heavily invested in being a delinquent and Kiera is not terribly into that. But after a week at school, someone frames Carlos by putting drugs in his locker, leading to him getting arrested and being put into an after-school counseling program. Alex's school also finds out that a non-student is living there, so Professor Westford becomes Carlos's guardian for the year and he moves in there. Much to Carlos's surprise, he finds himself liking the Westford family life...and their daughter in particular. (One has to give massive props to the dad for coping with that in a mature, reasonable manner. Most men would not be so cool.) Carlos didn't narc on who he thought did it (though figuring out who isn't too hard), but it turns out that another gang leader wants to recruit him. Whether Carlos wants to be or not, and they'll kill his family in Mexico if he refuses. And he's worried about what will happen to the Westfords too.

It's an sweet relationship between the two leads. I suspect it might replay similarly to what Alex and Brittany went through (those two are mostly off screen a lot, though you do find out how their relationship is going), but hey, it's fun. If there's any quibbles I have about this, it's that I kind of wonder if Carlos's gang situation wrapped up a bit too easily. Not that I know jack about gangs, but there's one "hm, really? Isn't that convenient?" sort of thing that goes on that seemed... well, easy. So it made me wonder.

Anyway, four stars.

The Phoenix Chronicles: A 3-In-One Book Review

Series by Lori Handeland.

I don't normally do this. I normally read each book separately and give them all individual reviews. But frankly, I read these three in a row (they were bought together and I brought them on a weekend trip, otherwise I probably would not have gone past book 1) and I pretty much feel similarly about all of them and have the same plot objections in every book. So screw it, this is a three in one review.

Here's the plots:
Any Given Doomsday: Elizabeth Phoenix is a foster kid who grew up with psychometric psychic powers. The one person who ever treated her right was her foster mother, Ruthie, who took in "difficult"/unusual kids. Turns out she had a reason for that. Anyway, Liz gets a psychic call to go visit Ruthie, who she finds dying on her own kitchen floor. Ruthie does something to Liz to put her into a coma for a few days... i.e. gifts her with more psychic power. You see, Ruthie was the general of the side of the Light, a group of Nephilim descendants who fight against the original Nephilim. Someone needs to be the Seer and send the demon killers (DK's) off after the Nephilim. Liz finds out that her first love, Jimmy, is a dhampir/DK and is under her jurisdiction. It is determined that Liz needs a power-up, stat, so Jimmy escorts her to Sawyer, the CREEPY Dine skinwalker mentor that Ruthie sent her to train with back when she was 15. He gives her a power-up...with his dick, whether she's okay with that or not. Liz is now a sexual empath who picks up the magical powers of whoever she has a big orgasm with. ANITA BLAKE TERRITORY WARNING went off in my brain there.

After that, Jimmy is captured by his evil vampire witch dad and forced to drink blood, which brings out his superpowered evil side. So Liz gets captured and turned into a sex slave, until she turns Jimmy's/her powers against his dad. Meanwhile, 3/4 of the people on the side of the Light got killed off while Liz was off fucking.

Doomsday Can Wait: Sawyer's evil Navajo spirit mom comes after Liz in her best friend Megan's bar, forcing Liz to go on the run to protect Megan even though Megan is clearly smart, can figure out in general what's going on, and isn't a total innocent. Liz goes looking for Jimmy, who's gone off to angst after the last book. Summer, the fairy DK that Jimmy cheated on Liz with when they were teenagers, takes off with him and magics him to only go vampire-y every other full moon. Liz and Sawyer travel around and pick up a new recruit, Luther, who can turn into a lion and channel the dead Ruthie. Then Liz finds out that the only way she can fight evil is to "embrace the darkness," i.e. go full evil herself... so guess how she does that.

Apocalypse Happens:  Liz is now evil unless she has a bespelled collar around her neck. Liz goes to the underworld with Jimmy to get the every-other-moon spell taken off of him and gets his own...cock leash. Liz finds out that her mother was a phoenix (literally) and a former seer to Sawyer's DK (and boyfriend) before she went evil. And dead. This naturally makes Liz wonder if she's committed incest, which uh... well, Sawyer SAYS no, but shoot, how do you tell when a phoenix only gives birth from its own ashes anyway? Liz's mom is batshit and doesn't really like, mind that Sawyer killed her. Then Liz has to fight her mom and kill one of her boyfriends.

Plusses With This Series:

• I like Ruthie (even if she's dead) and Luther as characters. Summer and Jimmy aren't too bad.
• The Evil: The one thing that makes this series particularly interesting to me is that it flat out says that in order to fight evil, you have to BE evil. That's not necessarily something that's fun for Liz to deal with (especially when it makes her lose the ability to talk to Ruthie), but I appreciate that someone acknowledges this as a truth. I think the descent into evil of someone who is supposedly THE representative of the light is an interesting tack to take in a series. It gives Liz a major inner demon to deal with, cope with, unleash at will or not.

Weaknesses With This Series:

• You know, we never do meet very many other DK's, there's no group meeting, there's no real showing of Liz leading the troops or much of anything. Hell, if you read the back plot summaries, not much actually goes down that relates to those. We're pretty limited in character scope for someone who's supposedly leading an army. She has so little contact with "the troops" that it's just bizarre.
• I like the character of Megan, but why is she in this series? She doesn't get to do jack beyond a scene or two per book. She's kind of like Ronnie from the Anita Blake books (the "normal" friend for comparison's sake), but even more infrequently used and eventually pointless. Hell, she's pointless now.

Major Minusses With This Series:

• MAJOR Anita Blake similarities, in the bad way. To the author's credit, so far Liz has only boinked the same two dudes repeatedly in order to get power-ups rather than every dude that comes across her way. It's occasionally brought up here and there that she could boink others for power, which so far she has not done. At one point Sawyer said something about the sexual power limiting how much Liz would be inclined to take from other people, because she'd be picky about who she slept with. (SO FAR. I can't trust that with a power like that that the series would stay with this.) But all things considered, "sexual empath" is uh...a squicky power to give anyone who OD'd on this shit in a previous series.
• Sawyer is massively creepy and seems to be about half evil. Every time he is mentioned or on screen I have the creeps crawling across my skin. I know I'm supposed to find him "hot" (though he has waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many tattoos for that. I know there's a plot reason, but just picturing the dude makes me feel a little sick. Did I mention that he has a snake tattoo on his dick? YOU STAY CLASSY SAWYER), but dear god, I don't. He's useful but kinda awful and I sure as hell don't feel turned on by his frequent sex scenes. And book 3 just ups the creepy. I cannot figure out why Liz keeps going back to sex with him other than the big O's.
• The love triangle: I prefer Jimmy. I can't figure out why I am supposed to root for Sawyer except that "teh sex scenes are hott." Liz bounces back and forth between their dicks like a Ping-Pong ball in every book. I'm not saying she should automatically pick one dude (NOT SAWYER) and settle down, but it's kinda odd.
• Oh yeah, and THIS SERIES IS RAPE-Y. Sawyer applies his "catalyst telepath" powers via his dick in the first book by drugging Liz with some kind of peyote thing and has sex with her (she thinks it's a dream until she wakes up). She didn't like the dude, so she obviously had to be drugged for this. Liz never calls it rape, but.... it's at least ambiguously creepy and wrong. And then there's the part where Liz is forced to be a sex slave for Jimmy. Yes, Liz loves Jimmy so it's not 100% unwilling there, but that whole sequence is, again, designed to creep you out because of how VampJimmy behaves. And that's just book 1. It doesn't really get all that much better from there, and one could possibly argue that Liz sexually attacking Jimmy during his "time of the month" so she can acquire his evil powers when he wouldn't have been cool with that under normal circumstances isn't exactly great on getting consent either. By their nookie in book 3, I don't think he's having quite so much fun.

There's a bit of good in this series overall, but...there's massive squick going on, and I highly doubt it's gonna get less squicky from here.

Every book gets 2 stars. Not 100% stinker, but... overall, not good. I don't think I want to read more of this.