Green-Eyed Demon – the Sabina Kane series, Book 3

Books:

    1.     Red-headed Stepchild (April 1, 2009)

    2.     Mage in Black (April 2, 2010) – 3 out of 5

    3.     Green-Eyed Demon (March 1, 2011) – 3.5 out of 5

“Exhale. Squeeze. Explosion. Chaos.”

Author: Jaye Wells
Narrator:  Cynthia Holloway – 3.5 out of 5
Length: 11:12 hours, purchased on audible 

 

Summary:

Sabina Kane, a rare half-vampire half-mage assassin, spent the first 53 years of her life living in L.A., doing the dirty work of the Dominae, the governing body for vampires led by her maternal grandmother.  Her world is turned upside-down after her twin, a Mage Oracle, announces to the dark races her prophecy – that Sabina will unite the dark races.  But not everyone wants peace.  The Dominae want war, so that they can resurrect to gods of the past.  Now, as Halloween draws closer,  time is running out.

At the beginning of Green-Eyed Demon, Sabina’s twin has been kidnapped by the Dominae, and the only way Sabina can save her life is to either trade in her own or to kill everyone responsible.  Sabina travels to New Orleans to save her twin, stop a war, confront the gods, and come to terms with her past. 

Sabina Kane’s To Do List:

1.         Perform voodoo ritual on evil owl;

2.         Find out who sold us out to the anachronistic  
      cast vampires;

3.         Make amends with lesbian werewolf;

4.         Rescue twin; 

5.         Murder grandmother.

Dangerous Plot Curves Ahead:

I’ve previously reviewed second book here. Jaye Wells keeps the best parts of Mage in Black in this third audiobook, from her fast-paced “from the frying pan into the fryer” plot twists, to the loveable Giguhl taking another bullet in the tush.  There are also new elements in this book that build and improve on the previous ones.  For example, Jaye Wells adds a bit more depth in her humorous characters.  Specifically, we are introduced to a fairy – in more ways than one - named Brooks/Pussy Willow.  I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t listened to the audiobook yet, but this character grows in complexity.  For me, however, both Sabina and Adam remained static throughout the three novels.  Also, Jaye Wells builds on those lovely plot twists that make the listener come back for more. Green-Eyed Demon has an honest-to-goodness mystery plot, where Sabina must figure out who among her new community in New Orleans is a traitor to the Dominae.  Mage in Black had a mystery plot with regard to which mage was trying to kill Sabina in New York City, but in my opinion it wasn’t a very successful mystery because the listener sees it coming.  Not so in Green-Eyed Demon. The resolution to the mystery in this audiobook is what I call an “Oh!” moment.  That’s when the audiobook presents enough suspects with enough motives that you don’t see it coming, but there is also enough foreshadowing specific to the perpetrator that you kind of should have.  The result is that when the book reveals who’s responsible, you actually, audibly, say “Oh!”  

On Narration:

I’ve previously reviewed Cynthia Holloway’s reading of this series here. There’s not much to add.  I still feel that Cynthia Holloway’s voice is great for this series, although not as spot-on as with a few other popular series in the genre.  I also think that the voice is young and feminine enough to makes the Sabina Kane series appeal more to a younger audience than the one probably targeted, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Mage in Black – the Sabina Kane series, Book 2

 Books:

1.                  Red-headed Stepchild (April 1, 2009)

2.                  Mage in Black (April 2, 2010) – 3 out of 5

3.                  Green-Eyed Demon (March 1, 2011)

Author:  Jaye Wells  

Narrator: Cynthia Holloway  3.5 out of 5

Summary:

Sabina Kane, a rare half-vampire half-mage assassin, spent the first 53 years of her life living in L.A., doing the dirty work of the Dominae, the governing body for vampires led by her maternal grandmother.  Her world is turned upside-down when she finds out that her grandmother barely tolerated her existence, considering her nothing more than a useful abomination. At the end of Red-headed Stepchild, Sabina discovers that her paternal side of the family – the Mage side – did not disown her at birth, but were kept ignorant of her existence until Sabina assisted Adam, a sexy mage, in shutting down the Dominae’s operations of kidnapping mages to steal their blood.

At the beginning of Mage in Black, Sabina arrives in New York City to live among the mages if only as a form of revenge against her grandmother.  Along with her for the ride is Adam, whom she would date if he was only not a mage, and Giguhl, her demon familiar.  Sabina discovers powers she never thought she’d learn, and forms a relationship with a twin sister, a reflection of what she would have been had she grown up loved.  But shortly after Sabina arrives in the Big Apple, it becomes apparent that someone wants her dead and that it has something to do with the Hecate Council about to declare war on the Dominae.

An Adult Book for a Young Adult

Is it wrong to recommend a novel with so much sex and violence to young adults?  I hope not, because I highly recommend this one to the late high school, early college listener. This is one audiobook I would have absolutely loved at 18.  Why? It’s fast.  The pace is not even a gallop, it’s a full throttle. You just hold on and go for the ride.  Sabina arrives in New York, someone tries to kill her. She goes to the park, someone shoots her, and then she gets attacked by wolves.  She goes to a nightclub, meets an old flame, and punches him in the face.  There are ebbs in tension, but the flow changes every ten to fifteen minutes, which is too fast to become bored with any one scenario.

Another reason why I would recommend this novel to the younger audience of the urban fantasy/paranormal reader is the tone of the book.  Sabina Kane and her twin are 53 years old, but they are consistently referred to as “child,” “girl,” “brat,” and other terms that make them sound like they are 16.  And Sabina lives up to it. She is brimming with good old-fashioned teenage angst and related abandonment/acceptance issues. Her internal dialogue is pretty advanced, but everything in quotations comes right out of high school.

On Narration:

This series is read by Cynthia Holloway, who has a very feminine, young-sounding voice with a teenage cadence to it.  Cynthia Holloway also narrated the Karen Chance’s Cassandra Palmer series and Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires series.  She has a light sound to her voice that adds to my perception that this book would appeal to the young adult listener.  Personally, I was much more impressed with her reading in the Morganville Vampires series.  Her voice as Claire, Eve, Myrnin, and even the vampires, was spot-on.  For some reason, the voices in this novel seemed too similar at times, even between male and female voices.

Other Comments:

This is a big improvement on the first novel in the series stylistically.  Jaye Wells keeps the wonderfully quirky and hilarious characters, like Giguhl, the demon (who can change form into a hairless cat and gets shot in the ass among other similarly embarrassing injuries), and keeps the deliciously twisty and turny unexpected plot revelations.  And best of all, she ditches most of the unnecessarily elaborate and passive internal dialogue that was present in Red-headed Stepchild.  It still shows up from time to time in Mage in Black, but must less so. 

I did not enjoy the cliff-hanger ending.  Cliff-hangers are not that uncommon in this genre.  They are found at the end of the first books in the above-mentioned Morganville Vampires series, and also in Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning. However, in those books, the cliffhanger was for a secondary plot development with the primary plot for the book being completely resolved.  I suppose Mage in Black is similar because we find out who was trying to kill Sabina toward the end of the book.  However, the cliffhanger has to do with the war between the dark races, and it seems that this was something the book was building up toward from the beginning of Sabina’s arrival in New York. I would have liked to have seen it through to the end.  Luckily, Green-Eyed Demon was released yesterday.