I loved the first two books in Julie Kagawa'a Blood of Eden series so I was super excited to hear there was a prequel novella. But...I was kinda disappointed.First of all, I really did not enjoy the main character Kylie. The story is told in first person from her perspective and I just found her to be very irritating. Throughout the story I thought she needed to get her priorities sorted out and I found she went back and forth on things she has said quite a bit. One of the main things that really bugged me about this was the romance... sigh... Kylie and Ben meet at the height of drama, with their lives, and Kylie's all important patients lives, in danger, the world is falling apart, Kylie has no where to go and it seems all she's worried about it how Ben looks with his shirt off. I'm sorry but that's just unrealistic. And even as the story goes on you'd think she'd have other things on her mind but all she keeps going on about is how "ruggedly handsome" he is. After only a few hours we realise that of course Ben is different from any other guys and she has feelings for him. Yeah, right.Along that same vein, I also had a problem with the extremely in depth sex scene. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for some sexy times in books but this just seemed very out of place. There was way too much detail for this kind of story, I almost felt like I was reading erotica at this point. And most annoyingly, in the characters mind they were making love and it was all very romantic. I had to remind myself that these people had only met less that 24 hours ago and yes, while it's believable that two people stuck together in this kind of situation would maybe have sex, why can't they call it what it is?! A real adult woman would have no problem voicing in her mind that she was going to have sex and yet that word was never used. So, as far as the romance and even the plot line of this novella, I kind of felt like it would have been MUCH better suited to being a full length novel. Then the characters would have had more time to make their feelings more believable and the plot wouldn't have come across quite so rushed. It really pains me to say such harsh things about this because I love this series and I had high hopes to learn more about how the world started out. Of course I still loved reading about the world and it was interesting seeing how things were back in the beginning but I just wanted more - to me this was solely a romance story. If you really love Julie Kagawa and you want to give this a go then do but to be honest I don't think it is at all necessary to pick up. I found this book very enlightening plot-wise for the first book. It really explained the origins of Rabids and the pandemonium that occurred after the initial outbreaks of Red Lung. However, what I would have really loved is more info about the genesis of the virus itself. The novella was extremely fast-paced, however the emotional connection between Kylie and Ben was completely credible and entrancing.
What do You think about Dawn Of Eden (2013)?
a vampire zombie hybrid … hmmm … should i continue with this series… shall give it a shot …
—theinz
I know a lot of fans didn't like this novella, but I enjoyed it!
—m1l3g1
