Early Review – Heart of Venom (Elemental Assassin, Book 9) (3.5/5 stars)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Size: 384 pages
Publisher: Pocket Books
Release Date: August 27, 2013
ISBN: August 27, 2013
Stand Alone or Series: 9th book in the Elemental Assassin series
Source: eGalley from Edelweiss.com
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
This is the 9th book in the Elemental Assassin series. The tenth book will be a prequel novel titled The Spider and is due to release in December 2013. This was an okay book but, like the last one, it was a pretty self-contained story and didn’t do much to advance the broader story.
Sophia and Jo-Jo have some history with a brother-sister (Grime and Hazel) crime-lovin’ combo team. When Grime and Hazel come to claim Sophia as their own, Gin will do everything in her power to get Sophia back.
These books have become very, very formulaic. Someone Gin loves gets hurt/kidnapped by someone else very powerful, Gin goes on a rampage to save them and almost dies, Gin regroups and enlists the aid of her friends and kicks butt. The last few books in this series have been exactly like that, it makes them very, very predictable.
There is excessive recapping of previous books (as there has been in every book in this series). This is something that has continually bothered me with this series. I like some recapping, but I don’t need the same things recapped over and over throughout the book.
I am still enjoying the characters and the writing style is easy to read. Estep has continued the story arc involving the mystery of M M Monroe, although not much progress is made with that story in this book either.
All our favorite characters are present in this story. Fletcher, Bria, Gin, Owen, Jo-Jo, and Sophia all have a part to play. Fletcher and Bria spend a lot of time in the background. The story is mostly about Sophia, so we learn a lot of background about her and Jo-Jo.
Owen and Gin also feature in the story a lot. Supposedly their relationship is still on the rocks because of events that happened in the last book. Owen tries to make up for his mistakes in this book…it made him come off as kind of whiny to be honest. I am kind of sick of the on again, off again thing that has been going on with Owen and Gin. This is an issue we don’t need to revisit in these books; they need to either get over each other or stick together…I am honestly sick of hearing about it.
While it was nice to hear Sophia’s backstory, this was still one of the weaker books in this series. In my opinion the more recent books in the series have been weaker. I thought this book was slightly better than the previous book but still not nearly as engaging as earlier books.
Overall this book was better than the eighth book in this series but still not all that great. It was good to hear about Sophia’s backstory, but the Gin/Owen stuff is getting old. The book followed the same formula as all the previous books in the series have. There wasn’t much progress made on the M M Monroe mystery that started many books ago. I am still enjoying the characters and the awesome action scenes, but thought the plot was lacking.
I’ll definitely read the next book but if it doesn’t improve over these last couple books I think I will be setting this series aside. I still do recommend this series to fans of urban fantasy. The first six or so books in the series were really well done.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– 100 Books in a Year Reading Challenge
– 150+ Reading Challenge
– Paranormal Reading Challenge
