Wednesday 14 January 2015

Review: Unclean Spirits by M.L.N. Hanover

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Title: Unclean Spirits

Author: M. L. N Hanover

Series: The Black Sun's Daughter #1

Publisher: Orbit

Publication date: 05 Jan 2012

Format: Paperback | 400 pages

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Goodreads




When college student Jayné Heller's uncle is murdered, she goes to Denver to settle his estate and mourn the loss of the only member of her family who has always been on her side.


She discovers that her uncle has left her quite a legacy: a string of property across the world, several very full bank accounts - and an extremely unconventional business. It turns out Uncle Eric has been secretly fighting to rid the world of supernatural 'riders' - demons, vampires, werewolves and all sorts of other nasty parasites - since before Jayné was born.


Now it's up to Jayné to avenge her uncle's death and continue his work - if she can survive her first week on the job.



My thoughts:


After receiving a huge fortune from her uncle Eric after he died, Jayné finds more than she bargained for when she heads over to deal with Eric's estate. Jayné's uncle lived in a world filled with spirits of werewolves, vampires and all the things that go bump in the night. These spirits, known as 'riders', wait for the right moment to take over and infect a human body to do with what it wills. Jayné has to decide between carrying on her uncle's legacy or packing up and taking the money.


I liked this read. There were some really great characters that I enjoyed reading about and getting to know. Especially Ex - to be fair, he wasn't featured as much as the others throughout the book, but he was one of the more mysterious characters and I just can't help but want to know more about him. He had moments that gave a little insight to his intentions or motives in the next few books I think, at least I hope so, and they were such sweet awww moments. I love Ex. Jayné was also a great character but she has a lot of growing to do over the rest of the series. I took Jayné with a pinch of salt just because it's usually the case in the first book of a series that the heroine doesn't reach her potential as a character and I really saw that here. She starts to realise what she's got herself into by the end of the book but at the beginning she was a whole different person. 


Aubrey on the other hand, I didn't get on with so much. It's not that I didn't like his character, I just found him a bit lacking in the personality department. He didn't really do anything for me or stand out enough that I cared about what happened to him. So far, unless it changes over the next books of course, I wouldn't care if he was pushed aside in the story and just disappeared. He didn't make a huge difference to the book in my opinion. 


As for the plot of the book, I thought it took a while to get going action wise but once it did I was completely captivated. I did think, at times, that some of the action scenes, especially towards the end, were too simplistic for what was supposed to happen. I don't want to give anything away but if someone's so powerful he shouldn't be too easy to get rid of. Aside from that, I liked the originality to the idea of 'riders' and I enjoyed reading another book where werewolves and the like are genuinely the bad guys no questions asked. There aren't too many of those nowadays. 


Overall I enjoyed this book and I will be sure to pick up the next in the series when I can, if only to get some more of Ex. I really do hope what I want to happen does in fact happen!


My rating: 7/10



M.L.N Hanover:

Goodreads | Website 

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