Gwen’s review of Doomsday Can Wait (The Phoenix Chronicles, Book 2) by Lori Handeland (WARNING! Sound on her site.)
Urban Fantasy released by St. Martin’s 28 Apr 09
I dithered about the grade to give this book. It was some good storytelling, but the plot didn’t move forward as much as I would have liked. I have the same complaint about many serialized books these days. It seems that authors or publishers or editors (not sure who to blame) want to stretch out stories beyond a book’s reasonable length so that they get multiple books where one or two would have done better.
I realize this is a simple economics lesson – supply-demand, etc. However, are we really doing the story and the reader any real favors by doing this? In many cases – one of which being, unfortunately, The Phoenix Chronicles – there just doesn’t appear to be enough story to support this many books. It feels like small-ish details are stretched out beyond all reason, dragging the story down and slowing the pace to a point where it becomes a chore to read.
Books that seem to be written this way are full of rather pointless character introspection. You know what I mean. Paragraph after paragraph where a character (the heroine, in this case, since it’s written in first person POV) does endless navel lint inspection. If I want this kind of writing, I’ll pick up Gore Vidal, or Ayn Rand. I’m here for a story, doggonnit, and I want dialogue and action. Not paragraphs of “why me? why not me? what’s the meaning of life”. Gah. Dull!
Sawyer is still my favorite character in this series. The ending was interesting, but only because something actually happened in it. The series has some interesting characters in it and an interesting premise, but that’s not enough to carry the plot.
I hope the next book is the end to the series, though I’m unlikely to read it. And I really don’t think it should be dragged out beyond that unless something changes significantly in these characters’ lives.
I can recommend this book to fans of the author and the series. If you haven’t picked up the series but still feel interested, be prepared for a book with a sedate pace.
Grade: C
Read more reviews of books in this series by following its tag here.
Summary:
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SHE CAN SEE EVIL COMING FROM ALL DIRECTIONS…
It took the near annihilation of humanity for Liz Phoenix to understand the true meaning of her premonitions. Liz is one of the sacred few on earth who has the psychic powers to fight the malevolent forces that have tried to wipe out the human race since the beginning of time. She battled these beings once, thwarting Doomsday but losing most of her soldiers in the massacre. Now she must replenish her troops quickly-because the supernatural war isn’t over yet.
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Read an excerpt here.
Other books in the series:
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