Dewayne Havens Havens itibaren Ganganadoddi, Karnataka, Hindistan
I thought this book was fantastic. It paints a great picture of war, and first love in the early part the 19th Century. Some people detest Hemingway for the lack of depth of his female characters, but I believe it holds true to the time. I found this book to be exciting, and fast paced. Hemingway is a master of showing not telling, which is a skill every writer needs.
My Review: This book had one basic problem for me...too much Kelly and not enough Joe. Kelly is Nicki's long-lost twin sister. Like Nicki, she sees dead people. Although she is the more plain, boring twin, she has a fascination with the supernatural and the occult. This leaves her more open for corruption. Kelly's character bugged the heck out of me. She simply refused to acknowledge the possible danger in the things that she is messing with. Between that and the fact that she was bi-polar in the way that she would be nice to Nicki one minute and then pick at Nicki's insecurities about Joe the next...it drove me nuts. I did not like her character at all. Unfortunately, in this book, Kelli's character was the main drive behind the story line instead of Joe so she had LOTS of time in the book. This definitely hurt my overall rating for this book. One thing that did make me happy was the appearance of Sammy, the Devil. The whole reason that I picked up this series was because of how much I loved him in the book Devil Without a Cause and he mentioned Nicki Styx a lot in that book. He had a minor part in this book, but I know that is going to grow over the rest of the series. While this book wasn't as good as book #1 in this series (in my personal opinion,) I am still enjoying the series and think that it's a winner as far as series go. There was a lot more to do with family in this book, and not so much about the other characters in this book that made the first book such a winner...like Evan, whom we barely saw at all in this book. Now that the family issues are somewhat settled, I think that the next two books will go back to more of the first book's format with Kelly being more of a side character...at least that is my hope. We will see as book #3 is on the agenda for today...