Seraphim

This was the first review I ever posted online--back in 1994 on Amazon:

I've been keeping up with the Luna imprint for a friend interested in submitting. I love fantasy, like a well-written romance. No hardship I'd have thought. If it weren't for that, I would have stopped reading "Seraphim" at the prologue.

From the start, the prose was riddled with jarring point of view shifts, tense shifts, and the purplest of prose. There is much use of words like "'twas," "magick," "damsel" "yonder" and such overwrought mixed metaphors as "[He] shot cupid's arrow through her heart, where the iron branded a new scar onto her soul." The hero's eyes are "violet" and the heroine's is often described as "sapphire." This kind of writing is especially show more evident in the explicit, graceless major love scene. It's the kind of book it's more irresistible to MST than read.

I won't spoil things for those insistent on trying it anyway, but it's filled with the most implausible plot twists in creation--I guess they are twists except in the case of the heroine and antagonist their very names makes them seem clueless not to realize their own natures. It's not giving much away though to relate this is based on the hoariest of fem fantasy cliches--rape and revenge. Only so many have done it so much better.

I've never even submitted a review here before, I don't live to tear authors' works apart. On the whole, I've liked the Lunas. I enjoyed Lackey's "Fairy Godmother" which had the best world-building, was disappointed with Asaro's given her rep (but it wasn't as bad as "Seraphim"), truly loved Zettel's "In Camelot's Shadow" which managed to make that legend fresh, and was charmed by Hale's "The Wizard's Ward" which had perhaps the most appealing hero and interesting character arc. But skip "Seraphim"--which I can only hope is an aberration in this line of books. show less

The names are obvious and the story of fighting a group of brothers who get increasingly more difficult to battle is a little cliched. Readable but sometimes too much detail and the next moment not enough.

I've found this author to be readable but not impressive.

This is a book about revenge, as a woman takes arms to avenge her family.

I loved Seraphim with how she was described and how she lived things. It's a tale that I re-read over many times

TBR