Movie review: The Host directed by Andrew Niccol and viewed by my fair lady Blodeuedd

Welcome Blodeuedd from Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell !!!

She agreed to review a movie for my blog and it is a movie I would never dare watch: The Host based on an infamous book of Stephenie Meyer, woo-hooo! She is a brave girl. What does she think of the movie? Was it better than the book? Let's check out!

Ana asked me to review The Host after I told her I watched this sorry excuse for a movie. And well if Ana asks you have to do what she wants.

It's not that the movie sucked, ok sure I sighed, rolled my eyes, laughed at it, but the scenery was nice and it had....sort of a good premise and potential. Oh and it was 100 million times better than the book. I tried to read the book but gave up at page 1 and tried to skim, but even skimming was boring. So the movie rocked the book.

Now what went wrong...everything! The story is about an alien and a human sharing a body and oh oh falling in love with different guys *head desk* Worst love triangle with 3 bodies and 4 minds ever. At one point the voice is all no no do not kiss him...eh, it's still your body stupid and you are still there, in a way you are kissing him. But yes I could go on and on, it was silly.

Right, so these are aliens who are so smart and have the best tech ever, but do they find the resistance? No. Instead they look for them. Oh god, let me laugh, looking with a flashlight. I would expect better technology searching for them. You are smart, figure it out.

Melanie Melanie, she is a special little snowflake. She has the strength to scream in Wanderer's head and even use the body. Isn't she the most special of them all. Then we have Wanderer, another little snowflake it seems. Sure we learn there is at least one other person but still. Special snowflakes lalala.

Melanie and Wanderer, 2 TSTL idiots. Wanda just blindly wanders off cos she is stupid. Yes let's go to the humans who want to kill you. And Melanie, does not want people to know she is inside Wanda..eh..excuse me? That makes no sense. The humans are stupid too, kill her at once! No, take her prisoner instead *head desk*. That they sure didn’t do with anyone else, but then Wanda is a special snowflake. She does not tell anyone that Mel is still inside her, instead a human falls in love with her. I still do not get it, I know it gives something to the sorry excuse of a plot to hide this fact but let's not forget that it makes no sense.

The world, le sigh. I had so many questions! More about the aliens, like who did they first take over? Sure they are logical but they take over and it means death. Are babies made? How will the world survive without babies? Are they like locust? They take over, eat everything and move on? But then I realized this was a Meyer book, so there is no world building.

The endings shows that yes maybe they humans will win. How the fuck they will manage that is another plot hole. They should not be able, but then the aliens are TSTL.

Wanda was also very forgiving. She had her lover boy so yes after being upset for a bit after the humans killed a bunch of aliens she moves on. The thing is I never saw the aliens as bad. They made perfect sense. This is a crap planet, we kill each other and destroy our world. The aliens made it better. The minute they are gone we would destroy each other again.

What to say then. If you liked twilight you will like this one. I would not recommend it though, it had too many roll your eyes moments and wtf? events. But I had to see it anyway, and I do not regret it, I always watch crap movies with this friend I have. It's our thing. So it won the bad awards. Congrats.

Mind Fuck by Manna Francis (The Administration #1)

Synopsis:
There are no bad guys or good guys. There are only better guys and worse guys. One of the worse guys is Val Toreth. In a world in which torture is a legitimate part of the investigative process, he works for the Investigation and Interrogation Division, where his colleagues can be more dangerous than the criminals he investigates. One of the better guys is Keir Warrick. His small corporation, SimTech, is developing a "sim" system that places users in a fully immersive virtual reality. A minnow in a murky and dangerous pond, he is only beginning to discover how many compromises may be required for success. 

Their home is the dark future dystopia of New London. A totalitarian bureaucracy controls the European Administration, sharing political power with the corporations. The government uses violence and the many divisions of the feared Department of Internal Security to maintain control and crush resistance. The corporations fight among themselves, using lethal force under the euphemism of "corporate sabotage," uniting only to resist attempts by the Administration to extend its influence over them. Toreth and Warrick are more natural enemies than allies. But mutual attraction and the fight for survival can create unlikely bonds

I thought about giving this book five stars.

As the days and weeks went by and I failed to write a proper review, I realised I’d made the right decision. Mind Fuck is a really good book but it’s not extraordinary.

In the dystopic future there’s the Administration. There aren’t really any nations, just regional Administrations and corporations that control people’s lives. This is a world where everything is monitored unless it’s not—to protect business secrets—and where torture is legalised.

That’s where Toreth works: In Investigation and Interrogation, I&I. He goes through mountains of paperwork, adjusts drug dosages and on an occasion handles the more precise tools of the trade. He also has irregular one-night stands under assumed names in hotel rooms he charges his employer for.

All in all, it’s a good life. Then he meets Warrick.

Just as Toreth has sold his life to the Administration, Warrick has tied himself to the corporations. He’s brilliant and just as emotionally challenged as Toreth is, albeit in his own way. These two men, they get under each other’s skin and can’t quite get rid of one another. Logic and life experience dictates that they must, but a convenient murder mystery ensures they can’t.

Mind Fuck is as light on the erotica and BDSM as it is on the world building. Still, I got the feeling everything had been thought through and that the author is asking the reader to trust her while she properly introduces the characters. Looking at the long list of The Administration series novellas and novels there’s a lot left to explore. Still, I wouldn’t recommend this to the fans of pure dystopia as much as to the fans of slow-burn m/m. The world and the predictable mystery only serve as a pale background to the characters.

And the characters are wonderful. They’re neither perfectly healthy, normal, or anyone I’d want to know in real life, but they are interesting. Their relationship is interesting. Their struggle to discern reality from the artificial and will to survive their circumstances is interesting. This story is interesting

If you don’t mind a narrative where the third person limited voice occasionally slips into first or that the story draggs from time to time, this is a book worth reading.

Review: The Diabolist by Layton Green (Dominic Grey 03)

Book info:

Form: e-book, pdf format

Genre: paranormal thriller\crime mystery
Target audience: adults

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

In this gripping thriller, the bizarre murder of a Satanic priest in San Francisco draws Dominic Grey and Viktor Radek, private investigators of cults, to the scene. Witnesses claim a robed figure, seemingly able to appear and disappear at will, set fire to the priest. When the leader of another Satanic cult in Paris dies under similar circumstances, the case only grows stranger… and more dangerous.

Convinced that a charismatic New Age prophet is behind the murders, the investigators undergo a perilous journey into the world of the occult as they try to penetrate the prophet’s inner circle. From the catacombs of Paris to London’s nefarious East End, from the haunted walls of York to a monastic fortress in the Sicilian wilderness, the case plunges Viktor and Grey into a vortex of black magic, ancient heresies, and the dark corners of their own pasts.

The Diabolist is a chilling novel that not only pulsates with action and suspense, but also mines a trove of fascinating historical, philosophical, and paranormal research to probe some of our closest held beliefs. From the opening pages to the astonishing conclusion, this latest installment in one of today’s most original new thriller series is not to be missed.

My impressions: 

It is my third review of a Dominic Grey book and, although the novel is a perfect standalone, I do recommed reading the previous installments. If you are interested here are my old reviews of The Summoner (01) and The Egyptian (02) posted on this blog.

All of them feature the Czech religious phenomenologist Viktor Radek and his resourceful colleague, Dominic Grey. Think Sherlock Holmes and Watson, but in the Grey series, Sherlock prefers absinthe to cocaine, and Watson is an expert in jujitsu and lock picking. First two novels were self-published and very well-received. Personally I concidered them one of my best indie finds when it comes to paranormal thrillers. Now the author got a publishing deal with Thomas & Mercer - I admit I was curious whether it made the next installment better or worse, with the author enjoying (hopefully) a professional editorial help.

The Diabologist is a novel about two things - the nature of belief, and the dichotomy of good versus evil. Yes, it's a rip-roaring, pulse-pounding adventure, but actually I loved the most parts dealing with philosophical divagations about the concept of evil, and how it's defined (or justified) within the bounds of faith and belief in our society. It all begins with the mysterious deaths of two prominent religious figures but do not let the adjective 'religious' fool you - one is the head of the House of Lucifer and the other of the Church of the Beast. Both are condemned as heretics by an unknown magus and burnt. It turns out the public perception of a 'Satanist' is just as troubled and diverse as that of a 'Christian' faith and our two protagonists must navigate that maze in order to find the culprit because a murder is still a murder even if the victim had a rather unsavoury (and fully deserved) reputation.

The best, absolutely best parts of this novels are closely connected to professor Victor Radek, a 60-year-old Czech gentleman who loves absinthe a bit too much for his own good and is a religious phenomenologist. Every time he entered the scene, either reminiscing about his past or dealing with the ugly present, the whole book got more intelligent and interesting. He had so many awesome things to say about so many topics: Alastair Crowley, Zoroastrianism, the cults of Satan and/or Lucifer, definition of good and evil, theodicy (so divagations how come evil exists in a world created by a God who is an epitome of goodness and fairness) and whether real magic, black or white, exists.

The parts narrated from the pov of Dominic Grey were not bad either (he is the kick-ass guy who used to live in Japan so small wonder) but here I can repeat practically everything I wrote before: time and again I caught myself wishing our sweet hero had a bit more sense of humour, that healthy irony and distance which make people, real or fictional, so likeable. Unfortunately in this novel Dominic sounded as dour and boring as in the previous ones; sometimes simply boring, from time to time even stupid but never ever funny. There wasn't any other character provided for the balance and I wonder why. Would it be so difficult to make our Dominic fall for a moderately cheeky, funny girl, full of ironic wit? And as I've already mentioned falling in love...Anka, the Romanian beauty by his side, was my biggest disappointment and, in my opinion, the weakest character of this installment. In fact I think she is the weakest female character written by Mr. Green so far - mind you the previous two were hardly great. My main complaint? Apart from other things Anka sounded simply artificial. I felt as if the author, not knowing what to do, gathered several incongruous traits, threw them in together, shaked a bit and hoped they would result in an interesting female. Unfortunately they didn't want to glue together.

Ok, so we have a girl from Romania, a homeless orphan to boot, who feels in the UK at home and speaks fluent, idiomatic English. She says it's because she was raised by English-speaking nuns in an orphanage until her super-powers kicked in and she was proclaimed a devil worshipper and thrown out. Oooo-kay. Still it was just an orphanage…and she never mentioned how many years she spent there.

Then allegedly she moved to a small town and found a post of a librarian (sic! without practically any education!). During that time she self-taught herself a lot about occultism and other paranormal abilities (because small-town libraries, Romanian or otherwise, have so many occult books on their shelves, right?). And, of course she polished her English (speaking and practising with whom, I pray? A butcher? A baker? A homeless drunkard for the lack of the candlestick maker?). Mind you Anka was very beautiful, simply stunning, even compared to those elegant, pampered London ladies (and I do beg the author to show me where he found such ladies in London) but, apart from one evil man called Simon (or Darius) Azar, nobody got interested in making use of exceptionally good appearances of that girl. No goody-goody stranger, no mafia, no neighbour pimp, no model agency, not even a hopeless romantic. Were they all completely blind?

Finally the ending. It was the silliest, most schematic and Dan Brown-esque part, especially with Anka being disqualified from the position of a Dominic's girlfriend because: a) she lied to a complete stranger about her role in a certain cult (how dared she, this stranger being Dominic himself!) b) she killed with a knife another character (not saying who because it would be a spoiler, let me just assure you he was one manipulative jerk) c) she was looking remarkably ugly during the act of killing d) she was manipulated, probably even coerced, by a sociopathic cult guru into having sex with certain individuals while being videotaped (how dared she!). *Le sigh*. Such sins cannot be forgiven, right?

Still I loved some of the settings - Paris catacombs! Sicily! Cambridge! London! The cover is nice as well - I love those blue walls and sidewalks.

Final verdict:

Despite unreal female character one of best occult thrillers I've read this year. If Dan Brown was able to write such a book he would crow about it for the eternity and award himself a medal. It was fast-paced and decently researched, fully enjoyable. Yes, it had flaws but find me a flawless book.

Rameau's Revie Archive: Taxes and TARDIS by N. R. Walker

Rameau's ramblings: Apparently according to Goodreads this edition is no longer available. Hmm. I wonder why. Originally posted on Goodreads on December 19th 2012. 

Synopsis:
Brent Kelly is a laid-back tradesman whose only concerns are drinks with friends and which man to bed next. In need of a new accountant to sort out his nightmarish shoebox of tax receipts, he's referred to Logan Willis. He doesn't expect to be intrigued by the science fiction-loving, geeky guy with dark-rimmed glasses and a TARDIS-blue shirt. So his fascination with the soft-spoken Englishman surprises him, and their mutual attraction is completely unexpected. He most certainly never expects to fall in love. One a jock and the other a geek, both men know the differences between them are vast and could cause problems. But in this opposites-attract erotic drama, maybe it's the differences between them that make staying together worth the fight.

Taxes and TARDIS by N.R. Walker

I liked the Tardis coloured shirt and nothing else. Even the occasional witty lines were depressing because, obviously, everything else had been sacrificed for them.

Brent and Logan meet, they have sex—a lot—and they apparently fall in love. The only reason I know this is because they say so at the end. I couldn’t detect any sort of character development or sketching in between every single romantic cliché imaginable and the fanfiction-like writing.

What’s it called when a porn-without-a-plot story tries to introduce and is ruined by brief plot-like scenes? Whatever it is, this book suffers from it. And to add insult to injury the smut isn’t even that good.

I’ve read my share of original romantic stories revolving around Doctor Who fandom, and some of them were even good. This wasn’t.

Review: Soul Meaning (Seventeen) by A.D. Starrling

Book info:

Form: pdf format

Genre: paranormal thriller

Target audience: everybody interested in the genre I suppose

Synopsis:

Lucas Soul…an immortal like no other. He’s been hunted and despised for centuries just because he is a ‘half-breed’ – born of a Bastian mother and a Crovir father, apparently a major boo-boo among both immortal factions. He’s been shunned and forgotten – mostly. His seventeen shots at death have been serving him well enough to keep him alive and kicking unitl modern times. Now the years of relative peace and quiet are coming to an end.

All of a sudden Lucas finds herself mercilessly chased by the Hunters – elite Crovir killers- and dies twice during one week, kind of grim record for him. Being on your last life is no fun – Lucas and his completely human partner, Reid Hasley, must find out why the Crovir decided to change their policy so abruptly and discover many other secrets while touring Europe in a truly extreme style.

My impressions:

It was one of those stories you can enjoy while being in an appropriate set of mind. It reminded me of Indiana Jones movies – full of action, with a dash of info about this or that, a whiff of romance and a lot of running, shooting, killing and escaping while the characters were trying to save the world and their hides. Don’t take them too seriously and you’ll be fine – entertained, amused, even distracted from the ugly reality for an hour or so. Did this book managed to work its magic? Partially.

My first general remark – the author knows a lot about different machines and she loves describing them. Cars, motorcycles, helicopters, guns, computers and such seemed to play an important role in the adventures of Lucas & co. Apart from that she knows biology, chemistry and human anatomy quite well (yes, her background shows).

My second remark: there were many historical events and figures mentioned in this one, among them Miyamoto Musashi, one of the most famous samurai of Japan and Jan Sobieski, a Polish hetman and then the king of Poland who saved Vienna from the Turks in the 17th century. Despite the fact that those tidbits were sometimes presented in the form of small infodumps I was more than ready to forgive it just because they existed. I also liked the fact that the majority the book were set in different European countries.

Of course there were things I didn’t like.

What made Indiana Jones movies so popular and watchable? After all they were pretty stupid productions which you could easily accuse of different transgressions against the laws of physics, common logic and history. However one thing made them stand out – the fact that the protagonist and also some supportive characters, e.g. Indiana’s father, were as three-dimensional and funny as it was only possible in such films. What about Lucas Soul? 

I do hope deep down he is one nice guy but I think in this book he simply didn’t have time to present his colourful personality. In other words for me it was too much action too little character development. I liked Reid and Lucas' banter, they added the much needed comic relief between all the fighting and dying that was going on but it was too little. Our poor immortal had to slash and duck and shoot and run and give chase with little or no respite from the beginning to the very end - I felt tired just reading about it. A HALO jump? No problem. Shooting grenade launchers in the middle of a university campus in broad daylight ? What fun! Jumping from burning helicopters onto skyscraper roofs? A piece of cake! Slaughtering a bunch of Hunters? Give me a minute or two and it is done...

I understand it is an action-driven novel but still I think a bit more balance in the narration would make it better. What’s more, Agatha Vellacrus and Felix Thorne, the two main baddies, were as thin as cardboard – you could count their lines using only your fingers and they existed solely to be vanquished. Ok, it is just the first installment, perhaps it will be better. To tell you the truth I prefer a weaker first part and stronger rest than the other way round – it is really painful to watch a series going downwards.

My other carpings?

Let me start with a direct quote:

“I left the car, crossed the shallow fore garden and knocked on the front door. It was opened by an elderly gentleman.‘Je peux vous aider?’ said the man in a frail voice, blinking in the porch light.”

‘Je peux vous aider?” Hmm…very informal bordering incorrect. I think in the context (an old man inquiring a complete stranger of the purpose of his visit) it was a mistake. It should be „Puis-je vous aider?” Or if you wanted to avoid a bit dated and stiff verb form (but hey, it was un vielliard speaking!) he could say: “Pourrais-je/ Est-ce que je peux vous aider ?“or simply “Que’est-ce que vous souhetez ici, Monsieur?”

It would be also nice if different characters, Lucas among them, could restrain themselves from saying or commenting something ‘drily’ or ‘wryly’ throughout the narration – if I drank a shot every time they did it I would get completely sozzled after the first half of the book.

One more thing and a serious spoiler, highlight to read or skip:

Anna Godard and Lucas Soul are each other’s love interest. They also happen to be close cousins – as close as you can get. Their mothers were sisters and their fathers were brothers. I know they are immortals and soul mates so perhaps different rules apply here but…ick.

Final verdict:

Not bad for a debut novel, a high-octane paranormal thriller to boot. The epilogue really made me curious about the whole immortal business but the lack of proper character building kind of ruined this one for me. I do hope the next installment will be slower and better. Because it can be slower and better. I think the author has a lot of potential for that. :)

Rameau's Review Archive: Galley Proof by Eric Arvin

Rameau's ramblings: Originally posted on Goodreads on March 21st 2012. 

Synopsis:
Fiction writer Logan Brandish is perfectly happy in his peaceful small-town routine with his best friend, his cat, and his boyfriend—until he meets the editor of his next book, the handsome Brock Kimble, and the lazy quiet of everyday living goes flying out the window. Faced with real passion for the first time, Logan becomes restless and agitated, and soon his life and his new manuscript—a work in progress he’d always thought would be completed—are in a shambles.

But as Logan is learning, you can’t always get what you want… at least not right away. To take his mind off the mess, he takes a trip, but even the beautiful Italian, um, scenery can’t keep his thoughts from his erstwhile editor for long. Logan just might have to admit there are some things you can’t run from.

Galley Proof by Eric Arvin

Everybody has read those books–usually they come with horrendous cover art–that start with an apparent self-ironic scene that tries to justify using a cliché. It's some trope that has been beaten, hit, struck, battered, hammered, trashed, pummelled, and flattened to the ground ages ago. And for a while it works.

The author works his ass off and makes the first person past tense voice of his character sound like something hilarious, something new, refreshing, and witty. Then he crosses the line from a fine comedy to unadulterated spoof and ruins the effect. If you, the reader, are very lucky the narrative still sounds entertaining enough to carry through to the end and lets you finish a book instead of feeding your DNF pile.

If you're very, extremely, exceptionally, not-that-uncommonly-at-all unfortunate, you'll end up with a WTF face and whole lot of wasted hours. Hours of your life that you'll never be able to reclaim. At which point you either decide to move on and give this author a wide berth in the future, or you decide to give something back to the reading community and write a longwinded review that starts with a handful of meta-paragraphs sure to annoy innocent review readers.



Welcome to my life.

This book reads like an autobiography trying to be self-ironic and falling short by miles. It's like the author decided to skip coming up with anything original or fictional and instead document his day-to-day life in the publishing world. Maybe his editor told him to throw in a few outrageous characters and give them the kind of urban legend lives you only hear around the water cooler or wherever the workers go to smoke illicitly. Maybe the author was bored and decided to imitate a handful of his idols–in one book.

Whatever led to the creation and publication of this book, is everything that's wrong with the publishing industry today. This book is unbalanced, tactless, and inane. If it had to be published, why couldn't it be an in-house newsletter to amuse the people who are able to recognise and appreciate the publishing jokes. If it had to be published as a gay romance novel or erotica wannabe, why not write one. If this had to be published at all, why not just do it and NOT market it as something it's not.

This book is mislabelled as a gay romance. It's mislabelled as a romance. There's no romance here. There is simply a string of sex scenes and fuckbuddies without anything resembling a plot.

Also, Arvin went there. He had the ex-editor-fuckbuddy-friend attack-comment on a one star rating-review. How is this any better than the author–still talking about the book characters, just want to make it clear for Goodreads staff–himself commenting on a negative review? Just having it in the book is like condoning bad behaviour and I've had my limit. I would have given this book one star regardless, this just removed any guilt I might have felt.

Had Galley Proof been shelved under general fiction I might be more forgiving to the abrupt style changes and the utter lack of the thin red line that connects it all, but it wasn't and I'm not. If only Arvin had said what he made his character say:

"I have decided it's not worth my time to write nor is it worth her time to read."

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

You can also read this review on Sandra's My Fiction Nook-blog.

Review: Shaedes of Gray (Shaede Assassin 01) by Amanda Bonilla

Book info:
Form: pdf, e-book
Genre: paranormal romance, urban fantasy
Target audience: adults

 Synopsis (from Goodreads):

"I'd learned the hard way that love is nothing more than the sharpest blade, and it can easily be turned against you. I refused to let anyone have that kind of power over me ever again."

Darian has lived alone for almost a century in the shadows of the night. Made and abandoned by her former love, Darian is the last of her kind—an immortal Shaede who can slip into darkness as easily as breathing. With no one else to rely on, she has taught herself how to survive, using her unique skills to become a deadly assassin.

Darian finds herself struggling to keep her employer, Tyler, at arm's length, especially since his seductive smile makes her want to break her rules about love. The work he offers is necessary to protect the innocent—and a welcome distraction. But when Darian's next mark turns out to be Xander Peck, King of the Shaede Nation, her whole worldview is thrown into question. Darian begins to wonder if she has taken on more than her conscience will allow, but a good assassin never leaves a job unfinished.

My impressions or rather...a list of sins with the appropriate quotes to illustrate my points better :

1.
"I wore my signature black—tight pants, low on my waist; long-sleeved black nylon turtleneck that clung to every curve of my body; black boots (of course); and, to top it off, a long black duster. I admit, the coat was a little over the top, but I love dramatics."

Dear Darian- are you an assassin or a fashionista ? Who cares what you wear to work? A tip – not me. Wardrobe descriptions are so boring, especially in fantasy action books, that they should be banned unless they actually contribute to the plot. Not your case, I presume.

2.
"God, he smelled good. Comforting, like fresh-baked cinnamon bread or something equally delicious and loaded with rich spices. His unique scent swirled around in my head, and I wanted nothing more than to lean into him, feel the weight of his arms around me as I breathed him in. But then my common sense gave me a swift kick in the ass."

Olfactory overload alert – honestly, Darian, I don’t need and I don’t want to know how you think Tyler smells. I wish your common sense kicked your ass much earlier – if a guy smells so much his personal grooming level must be abysmal.

3.
"Ty never overdid it in the clothing department. He was a jeans and T-shirt guy all the way, but he knew how to make the simple garments complement his lean, muscular body. Tyler’s not even a notch below Calvin Klein underwear-model physique, and has a tousled mop of goldand-bronze-streaked hair and strange hazel eyes—green with a brownish star surrounding the pupil. A garbage bag would’ve looked like an Armani suit on him."

No, not fashion again, please, I promise, I will be good from now on, I’ll tell you everything, just don’t torture me with fashion…by the way that’s the best characterization of Tyler you can get. He is like a paper cut, heavily photoshoped male model who can’t exist because the evolution wouldn’t be so dumb to allow him to – it would be a complete waste of oxygen.

4.
"He needed to forget about me and find himself a pretty human woman to grow old and die with. And then I’d be truly alone. Wouldn’t I? 
Rain pattered against the round toes of my thick-soled boots, and I watched the drops splatter like the tears I refused to shed."

There is nothing worse than an assassin talking fashion – unless you can find an emo assassin talking alternately fashion and self-pitying rubbish chapter after chapter. Darian, I am looking at you right now.

5.
"I looked like a Goth kid’s wet dream, sitting in my black sex-kitten outfit, sipping a rum and Coke, exuding little to no emotion on the outside while my insides writhed like angry vipers."

My first general remark: your ego, dear girl, needs some pruning asap or one day you will die under it, literally crushed by its weight. My second general remark: if you wear a black sex-kitten outfit to work then you are not an assassin, you are a prostitute. My third general remark: you seem to be having diarrhoea and you aren’t aware of it– my commiserations.

6.
"Even from across the apartment, his eyes held me captive. Melted caramel flecked with gold, possessing the bright glow that I knew mine had, though his were more brilliant. The smell of him permeated the air, filling my studio with a sweetness that would put a field of wildflowers to shame. His lips curled up at the corners, hinting at an arrogant smile."

Meet Xander Peck, an overripe hottie Darian failed to murder; another jerk who will invade and foul clean air around you like an unpleasant air freshener in a dirty car. Put on your gas mask, quick!

7.
"Abandoning my signature black, I was decked out in white from head to toe. My white-on-white striped blouse buttoned up to the swell of my breasts, with my white bra visible underneath. I’d tucked the shirt into a white pencil skirt that reached to my white satin heels and hugged my hips perfectly. Business attire, to an extent."

Business attire? With a visible bra and satin heels? Unless, once again, you mean THAT kind of business…with an additional wedding-themed kink.

8.
"Despite his outrage, Tyler knew I was no delicate flower. In fact, once he’d said that I could probably take on an entire company of Navy SEALs and kill them before they knew I was there. He was right, of course."

*rolleyes* And who is a shameless, stupid braggart again? Darian of course. Honestly if your main character says such things about herself you can't help despising her.

9.
"But I kept my standards high, refusing to take any job that involved an innocent. The men who paid me eventually met their ends. Once or twice at my hand. I’d worked for a Russian mob boss for years, and just like the others, his luck had run out. That’s when I met Tyler."

Who do you think you’re fooling, Darian? High standards, no innocents involved, and a Russian mob? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. By the way who died and made you God to distinguish between innocents and guilty?

10.

All the sins have been taken from the first part only, mind you. Add to those: an insufferable love triangle, insta-lust, nonexistent female characters other than the heroine, a very awkward, 1st person limited narration which can be put to shame by many fanfic authors, woody dialogues, infodumps galore, a freakin’ katana and you get something I mistook for a novel and is, in fact, a collection of dumbest, most obnoxious cliches. 

Final verdict:

An unintelligent being with an overinflated opinion of herself gets beat up by anything not human, still never learns, and is annoyingly vulnerable to masculine good looks. And forget about the Bechdel test because who needs company of other women when there are GUYS around. Your life should completely revolve around guys even if you are that kick-ass assassin chick, right?

A DNF, nuff said.