Friday, August 21, 2009

Review: Dawnkeepers by Jessica Andersen

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Title: Dawnkeepers
Series: Final Prophecy
Author: Jessica Andersen
Read copy: eBook
Published: January 6, 2009
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
ISBN: 1440660875
ISBN-13: 9781440660870

The countdown to the end of days has begun—and only the Nightkeepers can stop the annihilation of all mankind...

Though a Nightkeeper, Nate Blackhawk refuses to allow others to control his fate. The gods have even tried to influence his love life, sending him visions of Alexis Gray, a sleek blonde who is everything he’s ever wanted in a woman.

The two warriors can’t deny their attraction. But a frightening vision leads Nate to distance himself in spite of the intense passion he feels. Thrown together once more, they must reassemble seven Mayan artifacts that hold the key to preventing the end of the world...

My rating:

I'm giving this one four stars instead of three based solely on the second half of this book. The first half majorly sucked, if you ask me.
It was extremely hard to get into this book and the pace seemed (I'm using this word, because maybe it was just me) so slow that any slower and it would've moved backwards.

It started almost right where the last one ended, but the first half definitely lacked the "polish" of Nightkeepers. There was no action, only speculation, no particular suspense, no spark between the characters...And it had the biggest flaw this book could brag with. The heroine.

I disliked Alexis with a passion from the get go. The initial description, done by Alexis herself, of her being a klutz and severely magically deficient, was probably used with the purpose in intention of endearing her to the reader, making her someone we "normal, average-looking, average-weighing women" could relate to, sympathize with, but it achieved the complete opposite for me.
I still can't get over the fact, she was really a materialistic, "overachieving brown-noser" (if I use Nate's own thoughts), incapable of having any lasting relationships, because she always went for the wrong guy, but she still blamed everyone and everything else but herself for it. She hadn't a single thought that was her own, but simply parroted the rather dysfunctional and potentially ruining teachings of her over-ambitious (occasional) man-hater of a winikin. I felt acutely sorry for Nate and the screwage the gods did on him with such a mate.
Lucky for me, Nate and the whole story, Alexis left the bitch-train after page 290, got a brain, got a spine, sorted out her problems (sort of), and it was pretty smooth sailing from then on.

I have absolutely not objections to Nate. He was great, completely misunderstood by his "team" and his mate, though he had a clear and consistent point throughout the story. Well, he smoothed Alexis out, she smoothed him out a little in the end, so I'm a pretty happy camper.

The suspense grew exponentially with the lack of days to the equinox, with a new super-villain thrown in for the chills and thrills, giving us a new and extremely interesting reason for keeping our fingers crossed and cheer for the can of whoopass the Nighkeapers are bound to deal...Can't wait.

And the ending, ain't that a cliffy. It simply crashed through everything we thought we knew, sending the Nightkeepers back into the "Nightkeeper stone-age" with no hope for the future...

So, the second half definitely redeemed the first. Good writing, good dialog, good character interaction, great suspense, great final twist. I can't wait for the next one, which, according to the reviews on this site, is the "best in the series so far".

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