Web of Lies, Venom and Tangled Threads – Jennifer Estep
If you haven't read anything about the Elemental Assassin series by Jennifer Estep you should take a look at my review of Spider's Bite (the first book in the series) instead of this review which covers the second, third and fourth book.
Even though I read these books in quick succession after the first Elemental Assassin book, vacation and general procrastination has stopped me from getting this review written earlier.
These books are very similar to the first one - as one would expect of books in a series. They are quick paced, with lots of action and just enough plot twists to keep everything interesting.
As the books progressed the voice of Gin, and the personality of the characters around her, grew stronger. I think this is both a case of Jennifer Estep getting a better hold of who Gin is, and us learning more about the history that lies beneath everything.
Even though the characters' personalities grew strong and more defined in these books they all remained more or less the same. Gin is probably the only character that goes through any significant change, and even that change is barely visible over the four books I've read in this series. But that is not always a bad thing. These are supposed to be quick and action packed books, and you don't always need deep character development to achieve that.
There are a few things that started to annoy me as I read the books though. The first of these is the healing of Jo-Jo. Giving her the ability to bring heal everything, using only a few hours, seems very cheap. It makes all the sacrifices the characters make seem a bit hollow. Who cares about getting their ass kicked and their faces beaten to a pulp, when you can get everything fixed by the time you wake up the next day? Even after reading all four books I don't really understand what Jennifer achieves by giving Jo-Jo this ability. I think it would have been better to enforce a long recuperation time to allow her healing to take effect, or at least add something to make an injury affect the main characters for more than a few hours.
The second thing that started to bug me was the amount of repetition in the books. A lot of lore is repeated again, and again, and again. Often using almost identical phrases. The prime example of this is the explanation about how the elemental magic of Gin works. Almost every single time it is used you are given an explanation of it, even when it is an application of it that we have seen before. There is also a lot of repeated descriptions throughout the books. The sexy characters are described with the same words almost every time Gin lays eyes upon them, and her routine when coming home is explained with the same amount of details each time.
I think the repetition parts would have been less noticeable if I had not read the four books is such a quick succession. Luckily for me I now have to wait a little while for the next book to arrive, so I am looking forward to seeing if the break from Gin's world will make the repetition less apparent.
Spider’s Bite – Jennier Estep
I first heard of Jennifer Estep and her Elemental Assassin books when she wrote a guest post in John Scalzi's Big Idea "column". Reading about her reasons for starting the Elemental Assassin series was enough to make me want to get hold of the first book.
Spider's Bite is the first book in the Elemental Assassin series. The story unfolds in a strange version of the American city of Ashland. Dwarves, giants, vampires and humans coexist in the city, and to make everything a bit more extraordinary some people also have elemental magic - hence the name of the series.
The main character, Gin, is an assassin that has a bit of both Stone and Ice magic. Gin enjoys her job and she is good at it, but her life takes an upleasant turn when her handler is killed.
The book delivers on its promise to be fun read. Something is happening all the time, and even though the story is a bit predictable it has enough twists and turns to be entertaining to the very end. Just what I had hoped to get out of the book.
Ashland's place in the larger world is rarely talked about, and the deeper consequences of adding magic to our society is never explored more than necessary. Even with the magic and all the strange races everything seems just like a twisted version of our own world.
The characters in the book are all well made. Each of them have their own small quirks, and each of them has a back story that that you want to learn a bit more about. Most of them seem a bit one sided, either good or bad, but given the quick pace of the story the easy separation feels just right. Few of the people in the story undergo any real change, but this being a fun and easy read I had not expected that either.
In her quest for revenge Gin is joined by two other characters. One is a long time friend who has plenty of reason to tag along, and he plays an important role in the story. Both as a person that contrasts well with Gin, and as a character that has skills that Gin needs. The other character does not fit that well into the story. Without spoiling anything he felt like a strange add on to the story that never served any real purpose. It got a bit better as the book progressed, but he never felt like the same natural fit as most other characters.
One of the things that really impressed me with Jennifer Estep's writing was her description food. One of Gin's hobbies is cooking, and it has to be a passion of Jennifer Estep as well. Every once it a while she would give a detailed description of the food. It was rarely the fancy food that got described, but instead the sandwiches Gin made at home or the salad she prepared at the restaurant she worked. Each time the descriptions left my mouth watering.
Jennifer Estep's description of the sex scenes was also very detailed, at times a bit too much. I feel that sex scenes in book rarely add anything special so they can usually be boiled down to "and then they had hot and passionate sex" without loosing anything. Unfortunately I felt the same way when I read through this book. Luckily it did not happen too often, and it was easy to skim through until the story got going again.
In the end the book left me wanting to know more about Gin and the world around her. It was a very entertaining read, and I can recommend it to anyone looking for a fast and easy book with a bad-ass main character.