Succubus Revealed [Paperback]

Originally posted at Wicked Lil Pixie Reviews.
4.5 Stars
This is a spoiler-free review but assumes familiarity with the Georgina Kincaid series.

And here we are... The End. Succubus Revealed is the last book in Richelle Mead's Georgina Kincaid series and I cannot begin to tell you how bittersweet reading this book felt. I wanted to hurry up and read it, yet slow down and savor the story. Ultimately I settled on "screw it, full speed ahead!" and read it in one seating.

We find Georgina working as a Santa's elf at a high-end Mall, far away from her former ideal job at her beloved bookstore, which she had to leave after what happened with Seth and Maddie. Ugh Maddie. Blech, do. not. like! But that's another rant for another time. Georgie's been ordered by Hell to transfer her succubus services to Las Vegas, but when she goes out there to scope out the scene, things seem a little too intentionally perfect. With Seth Mortenson's sister-in-law still ill with cancer in Seattle, this transfer is yet one more hurdle in their attempt to be with each other. Sweet cheesus will Georgie and Seth ever be able to be together?! You'll have your answer by the end of Succubus Revealed and I get sentimentally teary-eyed all over again just remembering it.

I did find some parts somewhat predictable, which made the beginning a little slow for me. The first half of the book was slow-moving, but by the middle, things start Happening with a capital H. Some readers probably have figured out several revelations that are hinted at in the last book, Succubus Shadows, but it is the raw emotions Ms. Mead is able to evoke that make this book so fantastic. I think Seth and Roman fans alike will be pleased with the outcome and with how things play out. The plot twists involving Jerome, Carter, and Roman separately are quite powerful. While I would have liked to have seen a few more things addressed, maybe a little more things flipped upside down in true Richelle Mead fashion, I was pleased with the way this ultimate love conquers all series was drawn to an end. The Georgina series will continue to be one of my favorites and I highly recommend it. They are very very sexy, highly emotional books, and I am glad Ms. Mead had this end in mind for Succubus Revealed. The Georgina Kincaid Series reading order:

Succubus Blues
Succubus on Top
Succubus Dreams
Succubus Heat
Succubus Shadows
Succubus Revealed (The End!)

OK so the series is over. Was it any big surprise? No.

I have loved this series up until this end but for what it was & considering that it's a Mead book (so if you're familiar w/her other work you'll know she is very formulaic & also blatantly rips ideas & actual verbiage from cult pop culture), it was a decent ending with no real shockers. However, I enjoyed it as a whole & think it'll be better on 2nd read as a guilty pleasure b'c it's certainly no Gone With the Wind.

**SPOILERS**

Ironically, I've come to actually dislike Mead's writing after reading Dark Swan & Vampire Academy mainly b'c both series have main characters whose basic, logical deduction skills are inexplicably at a complete loss especially given their experience & abilities & the secondary characters you come to love, are generally reduced to nothing but two-dimensional props.

I was happy that at least In this series, Georgina is marginally better at owning her past & current choices of bad behaviour. In the last book (the 5th book) something happened to Georgina where she had to relive the most pivotal experiences in her long life. Obvious to the reader but not so much Georgina, it was to get her to realize something crucial about her life in regard to the choices she kept making.

What I appreciated was that it finally allowed me as a reader to get closer to Georgina. To feel empathy & compassion for her (finally) & put her life story into perspective by tracking where she came from to where she was now. To me, that was a very smart move & I'd hoped that there would be more resolutions to come in regard to how she handled her present day life in this book.

It gave me a hope that Mead was not acting ignorant of her own creation which she has done with her 2 previous series. What I mean by that is that Meads m.o. is to usually have big things happen to MC's which are intended to shock or keep the reader hanging & then swiftly resolve it by having her MC's or secondary characters (who usually need a good explanation) neatly sweep matters under the carpet in order to move things along. It's unfortunate b'c it's makes her leads come across shallow & insipid when you stop to really think about it. It also makes the story unbelievable b'c the pacing becomes ruined (at least for me).

Mead has an 'all is forgiven' approach which grates on my nerves to no flipping end b'c it's generally illogical to the point of stupidity at the readers expense. What happens is Mead does a pretty good job at building the story by writing in a spot on way which tends to pull the reader in & hook them emotionally. Yet when there should be an emotional epiphany, showdown or general acknowledgment/explanation of what the F just happened or has been going on, this is where I find she fails spectacularly.

In the case of this last book, Mead does allow Georgina to acknowledge her mistakes. Not in full but enough that I was able to get through series, accept it & think, 'you know, it is what it is & overall it ended up being enjoyable.'

This book had it's flaws. My biggest gripe was the use of Roman. What a con. He was the Spike to Georgina's Buffy. Literally. He used to want to kill her, came back & fell in love with her & followed her around like a puppy dog - truly seeing how 'remarkable' she was & then, sacrificing his soul to hell for the love & greater good (a.k.a Buffy/Georgina).

Bottom line, the way his story was messily wrapped up, I felt he was not given the gravitas the character deserved (again...she does this all the time with amazing secondary characters). She slightly rectified his hasty exit by having Carter step in at the end & poignantly explain the value about what Roman did for her. Yet overall it was lame.

And really - this lady needs to stop biting off other people's material for crying..out...loud already.

My friend on a book forum noticed her whole narrative intro about the Elf job, is actually almost identical to a David Sedaris monologue. You can YouTube it. I mean...isn't she embarrassed or afraid she's going to get called out by her audience? It makes me think she either underestimates them so much or she's just as in denial as her characters & is really a lazy hack.

Anyway, back to this book.

Mead wanted to write about an epic love & she did. I mean...it lost its impact for me b'c her foreshadowing is about as subtle as dog pooh on your shoe but you know, by book 3 most people figured (like it or not) that the story was about Seth & Georgina. It also lost its impact b'c it was an unhealthy relationship fundamentally based on consistently betraying each other & others but hey...no one's perfect right?

It was also lacking it's usual humor for me & the laughs fell a bit short.
And poor Jerome was shortchanged by being more two-dimensional than ever. He was like a paper cut out of the character we grew to know.

Yet what I missed most (& this was why I fell for Mead & this series in the 1st place) was her insertions of passages with extremely profound, poignant dialogs between characters without wasting words. I was always amazed at how she was able to succinctly impart an philosophical explanation without coming off preachy but better yet, to give her MC & the readers something to take away & think about.

It wasn't until the very end, did we get a lovely scene between Georgie & Carter which finally moved me to tears & it was that ending which probably redeemed the entire book for me & allowed me to just sit back & accept it for what it was.

Overall I can say the series as a whole was enjoyable if not a bit frustrating. It was a fun yet angst-y, contemporary adult romantic soap opera that pulled me along mainly by the emotional juglar. It had some interesting plot twists, great secondary characters who I wanted to be friends with, witty banter, laugh out loud moments, moral ambiguity & allowed me to have some extremely heated dialogs with friends.

Any book that succeeds at pulling such a strong emotional response from me that it stays with me for days on end to the point of effecting my mood deserves props.

What let it down was as I became familiar & disappointed with Mead's work, I knew where she was headed & knew it wasn't going to end up as strong as it's full potential.

And that's just it with Mead, I know her work could be so much better & that much stronger if she just continued taking the big risks she likes to start off with & truly tried to surprise herself & reader by trying something new instead of sticking close to the same body of work by someone else which, she keeps ripping off.

Following the events of `Succubus Shadows', our favourite Hellish hand-maiden has finally sorted her love life out. Her boyfriend and crime writer, Seth Mortenson, ended his engagement to another woman and burned a lot of bridges to be with Georgina . . . but theirs won't be a perfect coupling. They'll have to ration sex so that Georgina doesn't completely blacken Seth's soul, and Georgie still has to regularly go out and sleep with random men. But they're together, and that's all that counts.

And Seth's family need Georgina more than ever, with Seth's sister-in-law, Andrea, sick with cancer and a menagerie of daughters who need looking after.

Georgina couldn't be happier - so of course, Hell has to interfere. Just as Georgina and Seth get settled down, a transfer comes through and Georgina is ordered to work in the actual city of sin, Las Vegas.

But why is Hell so `hell-bent' on separating Seth and Georgina? What could be gained from the distance between them?

`Succubus Revealed' is the sixth and final instalment in Richelle Mead's fantastic `Georgina Kincaid' paranormal romance series.

I have been anticipating this book like crazy. Georgina has always been an emotional series to read, and Ms Mead has gone to great pains to build a complicated and damned love life for our girl Georige. Having said that, at the end of `Succubus Shadows' there was a light at the end of the tunnel - Seth (finally!) dumped that nerdy ho-bag Maddie and took his Thetis back. But the book also ended on a gasping cliff-hanger when Seth called Georgina by her ages-old original name, Letha.

I must admit, the cliff-hanger wasn't quite as cavernous as Mead usually likes . . . and for that reason (and for lack of a better metaphor) I didn't go into `Succubus Revealed' with a fear of heights. I (and many readers) had pretty much puzzled the mystery of this series a few books back - a mystery concerning reincarnation and Hell's contradictory contracts. So I went into `Revealed' already knowing what Georgina and Co. spend a good portion of the book trying to figure out. It takes a little of the gasp out of the big reveal, to say the least.

Having said that . . . I think Mead plotted this series beautifully, and there is a very romantic story arc running throughout the books. But because I already knew the cliff-hanger concerning the `mystery' of Georgina and Seth's pasts, I wanted something else from `Revealed'. Namely, I wanted more Seth and Georgina romance.

I still haven't forgiven Seth's actions in the third book, `Succubus Dreams'. I still have a burning hatred for Maddie. And for these reasons, I wanted `Revealed' to be all about Georgina confronting past hurts and Seth earning his place in Georgina's heart.

Unfortunately, I don't feel like we got that in `Revealed'. Seth and Georgina don't have many romantic moments, and it's hard having to keep thinking back to the first couple of books and remind yourself that they were, once, a rather sweet couple. Frankly, there just hasn't been much evidence of that lately. I'm still waiting for Seth to do something to out-weigh the past pain he inflicted on Georgina with Maddie.

Instead, `Revealed' is Roman's book. Roman, the Nephilim (half angel/half human) who swept Georgina off her feet in book one, but became a murdering menace in subsequent instalments . . . only to swing back to being a viable love-interest for our favourite succubus, and eventually her room-mate. I have always been rooting for Roman, and in this book he does make you pause and wonder why Georgina doesn't choose him. He does something so romantic and gob-smackingly sweet, I honestly wondered why she was wasting her time with Seth.

Romantic qualms aside, `Revealed' is more of the funny that Mead loves to write in this series. It starts with a vampire fondue party, and culminates in a demon bowling tournament. Priceless.

One good thing about `Succubus Revealed' is that it ends wide-open. I don't think Mead has any plans to continue the series or a spin-off series . . . but there is definite wink-wink possibility for Roman and everybody's favourite hobo-angel Carter to return. I am totally rooting for a Roman/Carter book series. How freakin awesome would that be!?

Overall though, `Succubus Revealed' wasn't the send-off I exactly wanted for Georgina. Honestly, after all the emotional turmoil she has gone through for hundreds of years, I wanted a BIG romantic finale, and instead we got wet-rag Seth Mortenson still being his surly self. Meh. Roman and Carter stole the show for me, and a series for them would be a dream come true. But for now, I guess fans are saying goodbye to Mead's Hellish Seattle and this wonderful series about a succubus with a heart of gold. Au revoir, Thetis!

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