Rachel Vincent

Chilling. This book is hands down chilling. Not in a bad way, in the suspenseful, edge of your seat what the heck is going to happen next way. I liked Nash's Reaper brother Tod in My Soul to Take. He was certainly morbid, but considering his job, I don't blame him. I didn't quite understand Nash or Kaylee's father's objections to her being friends with him, at least not until this book.

Tod is a curious blend of selfish and selfless. It almost seems like he has a hierarchy where everyone he show more is friends with or cares for is placed on a certain rung. Unfortunately Kaylee doesn't matter quite as much as his ex-girlfriend Addison, so she pays the price to get Addison safe again.

Not that I blame him, Kaylee volunteers herself (and Nash since she knew he wouldn't let her go to the Netherworld by herself) against a lot of opposition. I admire Kaylee for the fact that she's willing to risk everything to help save Addison's soul. Do I wish she had asked more questions before venturing into a place that could lead to her death? Sure, but she went in with the best of intentions.

The pacing of this novel is faster than the first book--once the ball gets rolling on the group's game plan things continue to happen one after the other like dominoes. I sometimes wished we could have seen into Tod's head, especially as his actions seem to get shadier and shadier. What we as readers notice about his behavior, Kaylee doesn't. The gradual change in Tod's personality was more apparent to the reader, since we are on the outside looking in.

Nash seemed less on top of things in this book, less sure of himself and how to do things. He obviously still wants to believe in Tod, despite the inherent animosity between Reapers and bean sidhe, but is finding it harder and harder. Part of it seems to be jealousy, because Tod pops up and will talk to Kaylee but not show himself to Nash, but some of it is also his protective instincts.

The uber-Reaper, Lily, is a hoot. I want to see her again more than any other character.

The end is bittersweet, with plans being foiled for everyone. Like the end of My Soul to Take, the answer to the problem seems easy, but the end result is devastating. Its painful to think about what happens to the souls honestly, the ones that are bought/bartered/sold to hellions. With the third book, My Soul to Keep due out in June 2010, I'm glad the wait isn't so long. I want to see more of Kaylee and Nash as well as the consequences of their time in the Netherworld. show less

First ThoughtsIch denke, dieses Buch ist der lebende Beweis dafür, warum ich Rachel Vincent hasse und liebe. Gleichzeitig. Wie kann eine Autorin es schaffen, mir immer und immer wieder das Herz zu brechen, mich heulen lassen zu wollen wie ein Schlosshund und das Ganze dann so zu verpacken, dass ich nicht genug davon kriegen kann? In My Soul to Steal werden zwei relativ neue Charaktere, Sabine und Alec, eingeführt. Andere Rezensenten scheinen Sabine zu hassen, aber ich finde, sie hat show more Potential. Außerdem macht sie immerhin einen Groß- bis Hauptteil des Plots aus, der unglaublich ist. Alec ist mir absolut sympathisch und ich freue mich schon, mehr über ihn zu lesen.Nach all den Geschehnissen in [b:My Soul to Keep|7476122|My Soul to Keep (Soul Screamers, #3)|Rachel Vincent|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1268059270s/7476122.jpg|6847345] müssen Kaylee, Nash und der Rest erst einmal wieder zueinander finden und lernen, miteinander umzugehen. Wie ich schon ahnte, müssen Em und Kaylee auch an ihrer Freundschaft arbeiten, denn die leidet eindeutig darunter, dass K. Emma viel verschwiegen hat. Mich persönlich hat Kaylees Attitüde etwas.. genervt. Nein, ich weiß nicht, was genau ich gemacht hätte, aber es gibt bei ihr eindeutig Kommunikationsschwierigkeiten und ich muss Sabine zustimmen, irgendwie hat K. einen selbstgerechten Touch.Wie immer hab ich Brendon, Kaylees Onkel vermisst, aber vielleicht wird er ja im nächsten Band auftauchen.. Und Tod, was soll ich sagen. Er ist halt Tod. Ein bestimmtes Gespräch geht mir nicht mehr aus dem Kopf und bis September scheint es noch ewig zu sein.. -sigh-Ach Ms Vincent, wieso nur? show less

The series that started with a roar goes out with a weak, acquiescent whimper.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for violence, including rape and forced abortion, pregnancy, and birth. This review contains clearly marked spoilers.)

“I cry foul. Humankind doesn’t deserve a sword and shield. Or even a plastic spork. Not after everything they’ve done to us. You should be fighting for us.”

If Menagerie - the first book in this trilogy - show more was a 2020 Democratic Presidential hopeful, it would be Bernie Sanders. Fury, on the other hand? More of a Joe Biden. Pete Buttigieg, at best.

Look. I absolutely loved, cherished, and adored Menagerie. Reading it was a rapturous moment for me, and for reasons that something like 97% of my fellow readers just won't get. While the plight of the cryptids in this parallel universe created by Rachel Vincent has several obvious and unmistakable corollaries in our world - the treatment of Muslims in post-9/11 America, the demonization of brown immigrants, especially (but not exclusively!) under a Drumpf presidency - at the time I argued that the most obvious one was also the most apt: simply put, "Menagerie reads like a thinly veiled animal rights revenge fantasy." Was that Vincent's intention? Probably not, especially given how the later books played out. Like Oreos, Menagerie was accidentally vegan. But that doesn't make it any less delicious.

My main gripe with its follow-up, Spectacle, wasn't that Vincent walked back the animal-friendly undertones, but rather that she failed to tread any new ground. By swapping the site of Delilah's enslavement and oppression from Metzger’s Menagerie (a struggling traveling circus) to the Savage Spectacle (a place where cryptids are rented out for basically anything, from canned hunts to rape), it seemed like she meant to up the stakes:

***

Establishments like the Savage Spectacle were whispered about in hushed, fearful tones from behind the bars of Metzger’s Menagerie. They were the boogie men that Metzger used to keep his captives in line: act up, and you’ll end up at a place even worse than here. But is it? Really?

While rape in the form of sexual trafficking is rampant at the Spectacle, rape also occurred at Metzger’s: he forced “exhibits” to breed so that he could sell their offspring. Instead of forced abortion, as at Spectacle, Metzger’s had forced pregnancy and birth. Captives were not intentionally murdered at the carnival, but they were neglected and sometimes shipped off to places where they would be killed, such as research institutions or game preserves.

Is it really possible to rank oppressions?

I feel like Spectacle is Vincent’s attempt to up the ante, to create a world more shocking and appalling than even Metzger’s. And I don’t think that’s possible, because again: how do you compare atrocities? It’s all terrible and horrifying and makes anyone with an ounce of humanity not want to live on this planet anymore.

***

Fury, on the other hand, represents a serious (and seriously disappointing) deviation from the much more radical and subversive Menagerie. Also, very little happens. Something like 75% of the book involves the main characters hiding out in a remote cabin, or sitting in their cars drinking slushees for the free incognito wifi. I shit you not.

Fury picks up nine months after Delilah & Co.'s escape from the Savage Spectacle. After they disabled Vandekamp's ability-inhibiting shock collars and high-tailed it out of there, the government bombed the facility. The unlucky cryptids and abusive guards trapped inside were written off as collateral damage. On the upside, they have no idea how many cryptids survived - and escaped. They do suspect that Delilah and Gallagher are out there, BUT they remain blissfully unaware of Delilah's pregnancy. Which is pushing ten months and might end with her demise at the chubby little hands of a fear dearg baby.

Delilah, Gallagher, Lenore, Zyanya, Claudio, Genni, Rommily, and Eryx are all hiding out in an off-grid cabin in the deep woods outside of DC. Lenore sirens people into giving them cash monies to survive, and she and Delilah - the most human-looking of the group - go into town once a week to check the news feeds. They mean to be searching for the missing members of their group - Lenore's husband, Rommily's sisters, Zyanya's brother and children - but it's hard to get anything done when you're a notorious fugitive.

And then a spate of mass murders whips everyone into a frenzy. Teachers kill students, nurses kill patients, police kill civilians, soldiers kill everything that moves. Some begin to fear that this is the beginning of a second reaping. Cryptids are scapegoated all over again. Though it seems that things can't get worse for nonhumans, the bottom drops even lower: checkpoints are set up, with orders to shoot loose cryptids on sight.

And then things really go off the rails when Delilah wakes up one morning covered in blood and grime. It seems she killed someone in her sleep; but with two badasses taking up space in her body - the furiae and her fetus - it's anyone's guess who the murderer is...or why the victims' faces all look eerily similar in death. One thing we do know: she can't stop won't stop.

All this plays out against the backdrop of the first Reaping in 1986, as told from the POV of fourteen-year-old Rebecca Essig, one of the few kids who was lucky enough to survive the mass slaughter by virtue of having other plans that night. She was at a slumber party, only to skip out early and find two of her three younger siblings dead, and her parents covered in blood. Eventually, the government would take her six-year-old sister Erica - really a changeling, or surrogate - into custody, never to be seen again. Rebecca's story centers on her search for the real Erica, and converges with Delilah's in unexpected (and often confusing) ways.

*** So here is where the book goes terribly wrong (and where the SPOILERS start). ***

It turns out that, of the hundreds of thousands of surrogates that the government rounded up in 1986, five or six thousand survived. They have been kept in a Guantanamo-like facility, under the control of Vandekamp's collars, presumably for research and interrogation. However, when Delilah and her friends disabled the collars, they disabled the whole lot of them, allowing the surrogates to escape.

Now in their mid-thirties, the surrogates aim to kickstart a second Reaping, this time by turning authority figures against the very people they should be protecting and serving. Hence: teachers vs. students, nurses vs. patients, cops and soldiers vs. civilians. I think - hope! - you can see where I'm going with this.

This plot like leads to some pretty cringe-worthy exchanges between the MCs. To wit:

“Authority figures.” My voice hardly carried any sound. “Instead of parents. The surrogates could be using authority figures this time. Anyone we’re supposed to be able to trust to protect us.”

“And now—maybe—they’ve found a new way to get to us,” Lenore said. “To make us suspicious of the people we should trust the most.”

and:

"They’ll keep feasting on our pain and chaos for as long as possible. They’ll keep turning teacher against student, nurse against patient, soldier against civilian. Stealing trust and security from us. Making us fear the very people who should protect us.”

Soldiers and cops, really? "People we should trust the most"? You can tell that a white person wrote this, the privilege is blinding. And in a story that's ostensibly about the othering and oppression of marginalized communities, to boot. Like, I'm a middle-class white lady and even I get nervous around people with guns who can use them with near impunity. Crazy, that.

Put another way: anyone who's paying even the slightest bit attention is already suspicious of militarized authority figures like soldiers and the police.

The ending, though? OMG, the ending. I can't even with this appeasing centrist bullshit.

Because Delilah is tangentially responsible for the escape of the surrogates, the furiae has taken it upon herself to send out a sort of homing signal, luring all the escapees to Delilah's doorstep. Once they meet, the furiae assumes control of Delilah's body and straight-up slays them; there is no self-inflicted poetic justice here. (Hence the sleep-killing.) But killing them one at a time is a slow process, so Delilah hatches a plan to get thousands of them in one place and induce mass slaughter - with a human audience, so that they can see that we're all on the same team. Gross, vomit, no want.

"I cry foul. Humankind doesn’t deserve a sword and shield. Or even a plastic spork. Not after everything they’ve done to us. You should be fighting for us.”

“Lenore, I’m not choosing humankind over cryptids. This isn’t us versus them. The surrogates are the enemy. And the only way humankind will ever understand that is if we show them that the rest of us are all on the same side.”

Uh, but you're not. And this won't work. Let me tell you why.

In the wake of 9/11, many Muslims denounced the actions of the hijackers; 6,024 self-identified American Muslims fought in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, fourteen of whom were killed overseas. Yet none of this has stopped countless right-wing politicians and commentators from condemning, vilifying, and marginalizing all 1.8 billion Muslims in the world because of the actions of a few. (Meanwhile, domestic terrorism largely remains the purview of white men, and yet you rarely hear calls for white men everywhere to disavow John Timothy Earnest or James Alex Fields Jr., lest they be guilty by association.)

Immigrants have a lower incarceration rate than natural-born citizens, yet the facts don't stop 45 from saying things like "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Hell, some immigrants even put their bodies on the line by serving in the military, only to be deported once they return home. "Same team" my ass.

I could go on but this is depressing.

Bigotry is born of fear, sure; and this fear is often misplaced. But this assumes that people are open to education and growth, and often it's just the opposite (deplorables in the house!). Bigotry is stubborn and entrenched, y'all. Sometimes people are just fucking horrible. Also consider that oppression is profitable. We're not afraid of most nonhuman animals, yet we continue to exploit them; and, in this AU, cryptids are a big busine$$. Circuses and carnivals, research facilities, controlled hunts, unpaid labor, rape and forced birth, exotic meats, the military-industrial complex. Political capital and mobilizing the base. Humans have so very much to gain by keeping this system of dehumanization and oppression going.

Delilah's sacrifice, the denouement of this story, is more tragic than noble. Menagerie had me hoping for total animal liberation: nothing more, nothing less. What we got was some half-assed, "hearts and minds," if we cut off a limb for them, maybe they will deign to acknowledge the basic humanity in us, bullshit.

As far as I'm concerned, her story begins and ends with Menagerie. Spectacle is just kind of meh, while Fury is legit a slap in the face to everyone who rooted for Delilah and her adopted family of cryptids (and, by extension, the marginalized populations they represent in our own world).

Additional quibbles:

Gallagher's only method of communication seems to be growling.

I do not like that he and Delilah hooked up; it feels like a really gross and icky taboo violation, and besides, can't men and women ever "just" be friends (or champion and cause, as it were)?

Finally, Eryx. Oh, poor sweet Eryx. You and Rommily deserved so much better. We all did.

/rant

http://www.easyvegan.info/2020/01/11/fury-by-rachel-vincent/ show less

Reviewed by: Rabid Reads

In true Rachel Vincent fashion, Oath Bound weaves a complex tale where relationships go from every day complicated to an unravelable tangle of blood oaths and family ties. A small oversight quickly snowballs into the biggest blunder in Tower Syndicate history and Sera gets swept away into a world she’s spent her whole life hiding from and knows absolutely nothing about, and that’s only chapter 1! The romance is understated yet equally as significant as the show more action-driven plot which makes this book a well-rounded read that’s immensely satisfying on all fronts.

Kris’ first love was a Seer and even though she passed away years ago, he’s convinced that the predictions Noelle made in her sleep were meant for him and him alone. So ever since her death he’s been trying to change the future and beating himself up over every failure even though Elle’s late night ramblings were about as clear as mud. He sees Sera as an opportunity to make amends for all the lives that he failed to save and when things go horribly wrong he can’t help but feel responsible. I really liked Kris because he’s the epitome of “nice guy” with an interesting mix of badass gunslinger thrown in for good measure. He has a lot of men-are-from-Mars moments which frustrated me at times but he never fails to come through when it really counted and, at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

I liked Sera’s innocence and the fact that her morals take precedence over everything, even money and power, which are two very tempting lures. Experiencing the story from her POV was a great refresher to Vincent’s Unbound world too because of how new Brandt is to the Syndicate way of life. Revisiting the differences between Skilled and unSkilled was as helpful was it was interesting. She’s also a fighter in spite of her past and I admired her refusal to give-up no matter how impossible the task. Kris and Sera’s relationship progresses at a natural pace and also mirrors the plot well without ever overshadowing the latter which is exactly what you want in a well-written Urban Fantasy novel.

Liv/Cam, Kori/Ian, and Kenley/Van all have their roles to play in this installment as well and I loved that Vincent gave readers one last chance to say goodbye to these beloved characters. I’m surprised and a little saddened that Rachel decided to make Unbound a trilogy because there’s still so much story to tell. What about the Cavazos Syndicate and Liv & Cam? Oath Bound is complex, gritty and original; a definite must for all Urban Fantasy readers. But as much as I enjoyed Sera and Kris’ HEA, I wish that Liv and Cam had gotten theirs too. show less