2008: #98 – Any Given Doomsday (Lori Handeland)
Book #98 was Any Given Doomsday, the first book in Lori Handeland’s Phoenix Chronicles. The back of the book reads:
Elizabeth Phoenix once used her unique skills as a psychic to help in the Milwaukee Police Department’s fight against injustice. But when Liz’s foster mother is found viciously murdered—and Liz is discovered unconscious at the scene—her only memory of the crime comes in the form of terrifying dreams…of creatures more horrific than anything Liz has seen in real life. What do these visions mean? And what in the world do they have to do with her former lover, Jimmy Sanducci?
While the police question Jimmy in the murder, Jimmy opens Liz’s eyes to a supernatural war that has raged since the dawn of time in which innocent people are hunted by malevolent beings disguised as humans. Only a chosen few have the ability to fight their evil, and Jimmy believes Liz is among them. Now, with her senses heightened, new feelings are rising within Liz—ones that re-ignite her dangerous attraction to Jimmy. But Jimmy has a secret that will rock Liz to her core…and put the survival of the human race in peril.
I received this through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer’s Group, which had an extremely large batch of 1500 books to give away. As the reviews started trickling in from other users, I got a little concerned… they were all bad! But now that I’ve read this, I think that most of those reviews were from people who don’t read much paranormal fiction, if any at all, and aren’t familiar with the genre. I didn’t think this was that bad… I liked the premise of the ultimate struggle between good and evil, between different groups of fallen angels. It was a new spin on your typical vampire/werewolf/other-bitey-scary-thing storyline. The story moved pretty well for most of the book, and while there was a good amount of sex (which was one of the complaints I saw a lot), I thought it fit into the story and wasn’t particularly gratuitous.
It did have some problems. I would have liked to have learned more about Liz’s time as a cop because I found myself forgetting that she had that background and was probably more capable than your average female being thrown into these circumstances. And unfortunately, the ending was pretty weak. The story started to fall apart as the conclusion nears, and the crucial final events end up coming off as rushed. But overall, I liked it enough that I would read the next book in the series.
I somehow ended up with two advanced reader copies of this book, so stay tuned — I plan to give them away very soon!
Page count: 352 | Approximate word count: 96,800
2007: A Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin)
2006: A Dangerous Fortune (Ken Follett)
Thanks for this review. I got it from LT too and had been about to give it away based on the reviews. I DO read paranormal stuff (and romances, for that matter) so perhaps it won’t bother me. Have you read the last 8 or so LK Hamiltons? What is your opinion on those, and how they changed from the beginning? It seemed to me from the other reviews that this one would be like the laters ones, which I thought were a bit overboard.
I love Laurell Hamilton’s books but yeah, they’ve gone way overboard with the sex in the last several. I mourn the loss of a good Anita Blake storyline. The sex in this is not even close to that bad…there’s really only three or four scenes in the whole book.
The book sounds intriguing, even though it falls apart near the end. I’d still like to read it. I’ll keep my eye out for when you give away the arcs, I’d love to get my hands on one.
🙂 I would give this one pass anyways!
I had mixed feelings about this book, but I’m someone who doesn’t read a whole lot of paranormal stuff. I’d probably read the next in the series, though. I added the link to your review to mine, which is here.