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A review by katyanaish
Electric Storm by Stacey Brutger
2.0
I really wish that I liked Raven.
I love everything else about this book, seriously. But Raven sucks, and she sucks so much that it is hard to gauge the other characters. Like, they walk all over her like she's a doormat. Does that reflect more on them, or her? I don't know, so I can't gauge them.
Raven is a pretend badass. She talks tough, she seems to have strong powers (seems, because that's another flaw to this book - there's little detail or structure given about her powers, so I don't know what she can REALLY do, and I'm suspicious that's deliberate so she can do anything the author needs her to do, frankly), people she's known for a long time seem to respect that she does indeed have strong powers, and her inner narrative has a baseline setting of "take no shit".
That would ordinarily be great - that's the basic ingredients for Kate Daniels, one of my favorite UF heroines ever. But it's all a lie. Literally everyone she encounters in this book walks all over her. She lets people bully their way into her life and her job with only a token pushback - Jackson even goes so far as to fuck up her work relationships and leak info about her cases, and she blusters about it a teeny bit but ultimately does nothing. People stand in her kitchen and call her a whore, and she doesn't kick them out of her house. She rolls over and accepts everything. It is fucking disgusting.
Then, for the last quarter of the book, the only thing she had going for her - seeming to be competent at her job - falls apart as she makes one stupid decision after another. The bad guy is so fucking obvious he's practically twirling his curly mustache in her face. She walks into his trap. She then proceeds with the world's most hare-brained plan, to catch the hunters. It predictably falls to shit. There seemed to be lots of opportunities to salvage the situation - seemed, because her powers are so ill-defined, but there's stuff we have seen her do before that I don't understand why she doesn't do here, like suck people's energy out - but she doesn't do any of it. Then, in the most laughable moment of the climax, she's running from a murderer in the woods and she stops running to yell at the person running with her. And then murderer then jumps her. I rolled my eyes so hard that I actually gave myself vertigo.
The backstory elements are cool, but that may only seem to be the case because they are so nebulous. Who knows. I'm going to read one more in the series to see if it gets its shit together, but I'd say there's maybe a 10% chance of me continuing beyond there.
**2.5**
I love everything else about this book, seriously. But Raven sucks, and she sucks so much that it is hard to gauge the other characters. Like, they walk all over her like she's a doormat. Does that reflect more on them, or her? I don't know, so I can't gauge them.
Raven is a pretend badass. She talks tough, she seems to have strong powers (seems, because that's another flaw to this book - there's little detail or structure given about her powers, so I don't know what she can REALLY do, and I'm suspicious that's deliberate so she can do anything the author needs her to do, frankly), people she's known for a long time seem to respect that she does indeed have strong powers, and her inner narrative has a baseline setting of "take no shit".
That would ordinarily be great - that's the basic ingredients for Kate Daniels, one of my favorite UF heroines ever. But it's all a lie. Literally everyone she encounters in this book walks all over her. She lets people bully their way into her life and her job with only a token pushback - Jackson even goes so far as to fuck up her work relationships and leak info about her cases, and she blusters about it a teeny bit but ultimately does nothing. People stand in her kitchen and call her a whore, and she doesn't kick them out of her house. She rolls over and accepts everything. It is fucking disgusting.
Then, for the last quarter of the book, the only thing she had going for her - seeming to be competent at her job - falls apart as she makes one stupid decision after another. The bad guy is so fucking obvious he's practically twirling his curly mustache in her face. She walks into his trap. She then proceeds with the world's most hare-brained plan, to catch the hunters. It predictably falls to shit. There seemed to be lots of opportunities to salvage the situation - seemed, because her powers are so ill-defined, but there's stuff we have seen her do before that I don't understand why she doesn't do here, like suck people's energy out - but she doesn't do any of it. Then, in the most laughable moment of the climax, she's running from a murderer in the woods and she stops running to yell at the person running with her. And then murderer then jumps her. I rolled my eyes so hard that I actually gave myself vertigo.
The backstory elements are cool, but that may only seem to be the case because they are so nebulous. Who knows. I'm going to read one more in the series to see if it gets its shit together, but I'd say there's maybe a 10% chance of me continuing beyond there.
**2.5**