Just Finished Reading: Haunted by Kelley Armstrong

Eve Levine is dead and has been for three years. This however hasn’t stopped her obsessing about the safety of her daughter or the relationship with her partner (also dead). Eve desperately needs purpose in her afterlife and is given it when the Fates task her with bringing an escaped demon spirit back to Hell. But this demon knows more tricks than Eve and has its sights on Eve’s daughter as its next victim. Eve must choose between the spirit world, her partner and possible angelhood in order to protect her child and each choice has its own deadly consequences.

After being very disappointed with Armstrong’s last book in this series Industrial Magic it’s taken me quite a while to pick up another of her books. Haunted certainly started out well with an interesting baddie (called The Nix) and some fairly interesting characters – most of which I’ve come across before in her previous 4 books. Unfortunately the book quickly lost coherence and began to ramble. Tightly plotted it was not, as the reader was led all over creation searching for The Nix as well as searching for a solution to capturing her. Haunted was at least 100 and possibly 200 pages too long and at times I did find myself skimming over pages just to get it over with. Fortunately at least it was a fast read as it lacked any real substance. I’m afraid that Armstrong has disappointed me again. Unfortunately I have already bought the next two books in the series though I suspect they won’t be read anytime soon!

So yet again I suffer though a disappointing book. This is not good. What I need, I think, is a change of tack. I’ve already (you may have noticed) instituted a scheme where every fourth fiction book was neither SF nor Fantasy which seems to be working out quite well. I’m also reading non-fiction exclusively on Sundays (which hasn’t worked it’s was into the reviews yet). But what I need to do is go further than this if I’m to improve my game. So, more non-fiction reading I think – especially in subjects I know comparatively little about. Also more non-SF/Fantasy I think as I seem to be enjoying them more that the other genres at the moment. Also more classics – both non-SF and non-fiction. Lastly I need to increase my reading of more substantial books and definitely cut back on the fluff! We’ll see what 2009 brings. Hopefully it’ll be a better year for literature.