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1.0 out of 5 stars
I'm a Glutton for Punishment., Jun 11 2004
At the end of my comments on Realm of Shadows, I said I would never read another Shannon Drake book again. I'm such a sadist that I decided to try this one when I found it in a used book store. ACK! I was never a fan of Shannon Drake to begin with (though I read all of her vampire romances and parts of her historicals), but I can see this is book where she really jumps the shark. It seems that she has slowly been moving away from romance in her last couple of books and more towards general fiction or horror. Frankly, that's really going to alienate the romance fans that have been following her over the years under this name and as Heather Graham. I doubt she's going to find a very receptive audience among horror fiction readers. Drake proved in her first vampire romance book Beneath a Blood Red Moon that she can be a fair romance writer, but the last couple of books have shown that as a horror novelist she is pathetically, hideously bad.
The book isn't a complete waste of time if you're into the stupid camp horror that you find in 70's B-flicks. Then again this book lacks the gore factor to please that audience too. The Awakening trots out the ding-bats caught in a Conspiracy of Darkness plot that Drake is so fond of again. This time some Satanists are manipulating this overly-complex web so they can resurrect a demon to suit their one-demensional motives. It certainly is a nice change of supernatural window dressing compared to her increasingly silly and tired vampire yarns.
To set the scene, Drake pulls out every horror cliche she can think of: fog, looming darkness, cursed graveyards, troubling dreams, an old man who pratically screams "It's evil! Evil I tells ya! EEEEVIIIIILLL!" Too bad none of these elements are used effectively. Thought I am impressed they she didn't try to work the Necronicon in here somewhere.
The characters are another problem. They lack distinctive personalities. The main characters are Finn and Megan. They are a young married couple. They love each other, but they've been having some marriage troubles. What kind of troubles? I don't know. Seeing as Drake is trying to make some statement about how love and trust overcomes obstacles- even pure evil- it just doesn't work when the conflict that threatens to tear them apart isn't fleshed out. Megan is cardboard flat, and only trait that compelling sexy Finn displays is his ability to be a condescending butthead. In the last quarter of the book, Drake tries to cram into all the characters from his last four books to help fight the great evil. If you haven't been following the series you'll have no idea who these people are and they seem to be there without rhyme or reason. The secondary characters' personalities are so monotone that if you just read the dialogue bits, you'd be unable to tell them apart.
But the books biggest problem is that it is nearly 500 pages long, but it's padded to heck and back. The proses are longwinded and repetative. The details of the Salem witch trials are hashed and rehashed. Megan insists that Wiccans can't do evil at least once a chapter. And Drake won't let you forget that men do evil. Maybe the biggest thing that irked me, is that very little happens in the way to warn the characters that something bad is on the way. Maybe an unexplained murder or too would have done the trick, but Drake wants us to buy into her premise because it's scary and foggy and we feel it in our bones. The people who want Megan and Finn to believe in this demon resurection thingy but offer little in the way of proof, and just say that because a handfull of superstitious nitwits believe or once believed in demons, hey, it must be true! If not for Drake hammering again and again about fog and evil, I would just think that many of these characters are fools who got sucked into some Halloween fantasy gone too far.
This is a bad,bad book, but strangely enough, I'm curious to see if Drake's next one is even worse!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting addition to the series, May 28 2004
Shannon Drake's series has been building a community of vampires, werewolves and other psychics who work together to fight evil in the world. I love these books! Highly reminiscent of the Witches Series by Anne Rice more than the purely romance vampires in the Christine Feehan books.The suspense elements and how these "monsters" and those who love them work together for good are fun to read. I can't wait for more!This is the info from the Publisher FYI since Amazon has not included it: The tree-lined streets and mystical shops of Salem, Massachusetts resonate with a seductive and brutal history. New Orleans musician Megan O'Casey has returned to the home of her ancestors to perform , with her husband Finn, in a weeklong series of concerts, culminating on All Hallow's Eve...and to renew her connection with the past.
But from the moment they arrive in Salem, Finn seems different-sensual beyond belief one moment; cold and ruthless the next. The locals-even Megan's relatives-regard him strangely, with a distrust bordering on hatred. Megan must soon face the fact that something powerful is rising, a malevolence that may have already claimed Finn for its own... As the full moon approaches, Megan senses that she, too, is in great danger. Sinister forces seem to be bringing her closer to darkness in a centuries-old ritual that music cannot tame...and time cannot conquer... Shannon Drake is a pseudonym for New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham. She lives in South Florida, where she grew up, with her husband Dennis, five children, and their cats and dogs. After majoring in Fine Arts at the University of South Florida, she performed in dinner theater and bartended until her third son came along, at which time she turned her love of entertainment into a writing career. She enjoys travel, books, music, theater, movies, and everything to do with the water, especially scuba diving. She remains ever grateful to be able to tell stories for a living.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
a disappoinment, Mar 1 2004
Normally a huge Shannon Drake fan - this book dragged on. Contrary to another reviewer I didn't start to enjoy the book until some familiar characters came back into play. The main charcaters in this book did not have enough to carry this story on their own. This was a big let down.
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