One Foot in the Grave

Loved this book and am now hooked on the series because it ended in a cliffhanger, but while the voice actress did a fine job with the female main character and other supporting characters, the interpretation of the main male character was like nails on a chalkboard. Very disappointed to see that she is the same actor doing the rest of this series because now I can’t listen to them on road trips (which I take frequently). For whatever reason, she gave Bones a high-pitched nasal-y Cockney accent, but from the way she portrayed the other male characters, she is clearly able to do a deeper pitch and a much better British accent. Honestly, I had to FF the love scenes because it was a major turnoff. And then when I tried to pick up and read it on my Kindle, I couldn’t get that awful impression out of my head when reading his scenes.

Otherwise, a very innovative take on the vampire angle with strong world-building and a heroine worth rooting for!

One Foot in the Grave begins with Cat heading her own FBI team of vampire slayers. It has been four years since the end of Halfway to the Grave. Cat has been killing vampires and training vampire slayers for all of these four years. She has remained single, celibate, and has been pining for her lost live throughout our missing time. She drinks gin constantly, swears in every sentence, and has become somehow even meaner. Like HttG, I wanted to like OFitG more than I actually did.

The previous novel’s pacing of the romance didn’t work for me. Bones and Cat went from chaste intense eye contact to sex very quickly for a character with large amounts of romantic trauma that she was still healing from. With the Dear John breakup and a large time gap, the two lovebirds could redo their romance in a more convincing way. The tension between them would allow them to inch closer with hesitation that will ultimately pay off in spades. This didn’t happen.

Bones reappears and within four days the two of them are having sex again. Cat uses the first day to decide on whether she will reenter into a relationship with Bones. A single day. The rest is spent on dates with Bones that are beforehand mutually agreed to be chaste and slow. There is no real conflict here. Cat’s narration has made it clear that she will never be over her former lover and that she doesn’t really want to try. Enough time has passed for Bones to move on from any lingering anger at being left behind. He displays maybe one moment of hesitation at her saying in a later scene, “I’ll be here when you return.” There is no tension to their relationship which makes me wonder why the breakup needed to be so long? What was the point if Frost wasn’t going to do anything with it?

Cat at least has changed somewhat in that space of time. Her slayer skills have amplied significantly. It comes across as comical when her team fights with her. She can kill anything by herself with barely any sweat and takes on many many vampires with backup outside of the room and even the building. Meanwhile all Tate, Juan, and Cooper do is whine over unrequited feelings, sexually harass Cat, and stand around with zero personality, respectively. (What does Cooper even do? I don’t remember.) At one point, all three gorge on fresh vampire blood before trying to take down one without killing it and no one manages that within an hour. Four straight years of training and they all suck. Either Cat is at satire levels of strength or her team is.

Rapid Fire Cons:
-Juan the Hispanic former convict turned slayer who traded his remaining jail time into team slayer time. In case you ever forget that this man is Hispanic, his dialogue is overly peppered with Spanish phrases.
-Juan the Hispanic former convict turned slayer gets moments like this:
“We’re not blowing you up before I get a chance to show you my sausage.” Even Juan sounded worried. His innuendo was halfhearted at best.

Juan pulled me into his arms from behind. “Denise hired me to be your gigolo for the night. You tell me how many orgasms you want, and I promise to deliver. I’ll give you a whole new definition of the term smooth criminal, querida. Mmm, your ass feels like a round piece of–ooof!”

-Annette the slutty slutty skanky orgy enjoying tiny waisted big boobed slutty Child of Bones’ who is in love with him and his Mary Sue dick
-Everything? Everything.

I thought the first book was really roughamateur writing was highlighted by flaws in logic, unsteady pacing, shallow interpersonal conflicts, poor research, and underdeveloped characters.

This second book doesn’t change much about that. Cat is still pretty basic. She states directly what she feels, but then gets over her intense feelings with one word from Bones. All the women are awful. All the men want to sleep with her. She’s an alcoholic, she acts like a twelve year old about her boyfriend’s past love life, and she has no real friends. It’s pretty evident that she still deeply hates herself. She tries to combat this by constantly feeding her ego during the story, which … yuck.

The action is glossed over in about two paragraphs. The relationship is reduced to sex. Someone mentioned Juan as being a negative Hispanic stereotype, but I would go even further and say that all of the characters are over-sexualized. The ones that aren’tlike Donare then complete prudes. For example, a bloody, post-battle Cat has to cover up with a lab coat to hide her skin from him (and it’s not like her vagina and nipples were on display, either). I guess her uncle was afraid he’d sport a raging boner if she didn’t? Double yuck. Oh, and sorry if I just spoiled the part about his being her uncle, but he’s the only one in the book not lusting like crazy after Cat, so clearly there was a reason, right?

This book was just boring, frankly. There was almost no development of the government agency setting. Vampires that lived for hundreds of years were seriously stupid and unobservant.

I wanted everything to be smarter, harder, slower, deeper. It’s like being with a lover that thinks they’re great when, in reality, they’re just humping you like a blind rabbit. Even the butt play was unrealisticabsolutely spontaneous with an attitude like “Oh, I’ll just dribble a little KY and wam, bam, thank you ma’am!” Like, really?

I can not believe that I haven’t come across these books before. The two I have read have been superb. Some people moaned about the sex scenes I agree that they are not necessary but they don’t offend me either. Looking forward to the next book and more adventures with Bones, Cat and the rest of the team.

It’s been four years since Cat left Bones behind to protect him from her new life. Now Cat is head of an FBI team dedicated to hunting down the more homicidal vampires. However, Cat has a price on her head and each hunt gets her closer and closer to being caught. Only Bones can save her, but if he finds her he won’t let her leave again…ever.

This is the second book in the Night Huntress series (after

Halfway to the Grave

) and I was really looking forward to reading it. There’s a huge gap between the end of the first and beginning of this, but somehow the author manages to slip in all the relevant backstory without info dumping or getting off track.

The story is just as action packed as before, just with a wider cast as Cat’s FBI team now play a key role in her hunts and she’s made friends during her time away from Bones. Other characters from Bones’s past are also introduced leading to a better understanding of his character. The storyline manages to pick up threads from Cat’s past and combine them with her present in a way that creates a tale that sucks you in and doesn’t let go.

Cat has matured since the previous book and doesn’t react quite as instinctively as before, although she still gets annoyed easily and kicks serious butt. Bones has also become more open and got over his fear of losing Cat, which means there are some big revelations of how the vampire (and ghoul) world works which really adds to the realism of the books. Annoyingly Cat’s mother returns and is just as hysterical as before.

All in all, this was a great read and I’m really looking forward to reading

At Grave’s End

.

Plot: 10/10
Characters: 9/10
Ending: 9/10
Enjoyment: 10/10
Cover: 9/10

Overall: 47/50

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