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Sunday, January 9, 2011

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Title: Beautiful Darkness
Series: Caster Chronicles Book 2

Authors: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl


Release Date: 12th October 2010

My Rating: 3/5

Blurb:
One night in the rain, Ethan Wate opened his eyes and fell in love with Lena Duchannes. His life would never be the same.

Lena is a Caster and her family is locked in a supernatural civil war. On her sixteenth birthday, Lena made a terrifying choice, which now haunts her day and night.

As her seventeenth birthday approaches, Lena and Ethan face even greater danger. A Caster and a Mortal can never truly be together. Every kiss is a curse. Ethan's next heartbeat could be his last. It is their curse now...

My Review:
While I didn't enjoy this as much as Beautiful Creatures, I did ultimately like the way the story finished. It differs quite a bit from the way the first instalment flowed. From the very beginning, Lena is caught in a downward spiral of depression which I found frustrating, and also rather weak. While I understand why she is like this, I lean towards wanting female characters to be strong and independent so I was a bit disappointed in her. I didn't really want to read about how the love-sick boy tries desperately to save the girl who doesn't want to be saved. It was a bit whiny and this annoys me because I loved Ethan's character in book one.

In Beautiful Darkness, we are introduced to quite a few new characters, all of which I am fond of apart from the irritating and arrogant John Breed, although I believe this is how I am supposed to feel towards him. And revisiting characters from Creatures? I really like the way Riley's path takes a turn down the unexpected. We also travel into the Caster world, more so than in Beautiful Creatures, which is something I haven't decided if I like or not. While I do like the hocus-pocus aspect of things, other dimensions are sometimes just a bit too sci-fi for me, for some reason I find other realms less believable than someone having magical abilities (but this opens up a whole other discussion best left for another time).

All in all, by the end of Beautiful Darkness I was happy with how it panned out and am intrigued with what this writing duo will bring us in the as-yet untitled third instalment.

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