Spider’s Bite (Elemental Assassin #1)

My favorite thing about this book was the fact Gin was a pretty sexually aggressive woman who wasnt even close to the near virginal heroine that I usually see in a UF series. I appreciate that because while I usually dont mind that trope so much it is refreshing to have a woman who is really secure in her sexuality running around no matter if we need to read about how wet her who-ha is on multiple occasions. Besides most of the time she is running around killing people or planning on killing people so it is a fair trade in my book

***You’re late.”
“Sorry. I was busy talking about my feelings and killing people.***

This is a pretty basic introductory book. I have a pretty good notion of how the world works. There is Gin who basically can control/listen to rocks, has a heart of stone and kills people for a living. She is pretty likable right off the bat as she has a little bit of an attitude that she likes to throw around. I like that in a heroine

Gin comes complete with a horrible tragedy in her past and a kooky set of friends and work acquaintances to lighten the drama. Finn was one of my favorites. I love that they have a rapport like siblings.squabling and fighting in a fun way that shows all the love and affection they have for each other. Sure they might have gotten sweaty together in their youths but now they are the best of friends and family to each other.

There is also a smidge of romance.well sort of. There is at least a tall dark handsome and completely wrong man for Gin in this. It was enough to give us something steamy in-between all the mayhem but a cop and an assassinwell I just dont see that going much of anywhere in the long term.

***Maybe I find him…interesting. Attractive in an uptight sort of way. But that won’t keep me from killing him if he does something stupidlike try to double-cross us. That is something thats nonnegotiable, no matter how much f potential he might have.***

While I liked this book nothing really sticks out as extremely memorable about it. It is a good set up book and I enjoyed my time easily reading along but if I wasnt in a buddy read for the entire serieswell I might have waiting 3 months to pick up the next one. Still there is enough going on that I dont think it will be a hardship to continue reading along with some friends.

Reading this book was painful. While Estep is a decent writer, her research is grossly lacking. This torpedos the credibility of her characters. She obviously isn’t familiar with violence and combat, but her main character is an assassin?! And her obvious unfamiliarity with computer crime and surveillance is just embarrassing. I’m 1/3 of the way through the book and it keeps tripping me up with unbelievable and jarring mistakes. And not just the technical stuff. One of the main characters drivers is guilt, which is based on a very tenuous situation that her mentor encouraged her to quit and retire at some point, but she resisted. Lame.
Hopefully the rest of the books in the series is less bad, but I’m not sure if I can get past this to see. Meh.

Not my favorite book by Jennifer Estep, but I still found this intriguing. I didn’t find myself completely clicking with the main character at first, but by the end of the book – I was definitely rooting for her and invested. For a first book, I loved how deep the character development went.

I thought the writer handled providing an immersive setting, introduction of main characters and the story, while adding in bits of flashbacks to help build the basis of the series extremely well.

The world build is interesting, though I’m still getting used to the magic system and how it fits in with it all. Definitely look forward to learning more about it.

As for the other characters in the book – love her main supporting group though I have to admit her love interest is falling a bit flat for me. But, it’s Book 1. Can only fit so much in and why a series is a series 😉

Definitely plan on getting the 2nd book.

I likes Gin Blanco. Her ruthless unsentimental tough as nails attitude, her cold-blooded approach to murder, her motivational anger, her ruthlessness, her loyalties, her quips (when there are any). Most of all, I like the fact that she is not the stereotype heroine in your average urban fantasy novel.

I have read some of the comments that bemoan this fact, much to my chagrin. They were actually complaining that she was not “feminine” – whatever that is. Truly, I do not know what that is. I suppose female protagonists should act in a certain way, and when that does not happen, a lot of whiners start coming out of the woodwork. Suddenly, the protagonist is not “feminine”. Well, what the hell did you expect? Did you actually think that she should be squeamish? That she should have the virtue of a nineteenth century victorian virgin when it comes to sex or murder? Did you think that she should look in shock at the man she is attracted to and say, “I do nit know what you think of me sir but I am not that kind of girl”.
@@@ Slight spoilers ahead
She is a bloody assassin for crying out loud. She kills people… And what it comes to sex she likes it fast, hard and on her own terms. And here is the crux of the problem that made some reviewers get stingy when doling out the stars. This is the reason that she was labeled “not feminine”.

Give me a break. I would have expected that the book would be judged on its own merit… And it is quiet good. The action is fast paced, the characters have a depth rarely seen in the first book of your typical fantasy series: Gin… Cold, ruthless and loyal. Fin… smart, flirtatious and a womanizer. Mab… direct, vile and practical. The detective… Virtuous boy scout.

Bottom line. Read this book. Deserves a 4.5 stars rating.

…

This is the kind of book which seems good on the surface, but underneath there lie a whole heap of glaring flaws which totally spoil it (for me, anyway).

The story has promise: Gin is a magical assassin who gets framed and has to find out who framed her. Gin is kick ass and hard as nails, which doesn’t give you a whole lot to identify with but I liked how tough she was.

But the flaws- arggggh!

The opening scene seems cool on the face of it- Gin has infiltrated a mental asylum so she can kill one of the counselors there. Why go to all the trouble of masquerading as a patient? Why didn’t she just snag the woman when she was on her way home? The reason given is that people often get killed in asylums so the murder will attract less attention. But wait- after she kills the woman, Gin (the supposed patient) disappears. So what you have now is a murderous lunatic escaped from an asylum, which would cause far more uproar than just quietly offing the woman and dumping her body. Basically, I think the author thought of a cool opening scene (which it is) and decided to use it, plausibility be damned.

Gin is an elemental- as in earth, air, fire, and…ice? The book says that water is a derivative of ice, but surely it’s the other way round?

Then there’s the way Gin gets caught out by another assassin when she’s on a job, because she’s busy ogling a dude. She’s supposed to be a super-assassin, the Spider, but she lets someone creep up on her with a gun cos she’s checking out a guy. Apparently she’s only kick ass when there aren’t hot guys around.

The writing is also desperately repetitious: over and over Gin thinks about how hot the Detective is, how her family was burned, how she has grey eyes, and how she’s sad about Fletcher- gah, we get it, already. She looks at things with her ‘grey eyes’- who thinks of themselves like that? Then every time her gaze meets the detective’s, its ‘grey on gold’- or should that be hazel? There’s some inconsistency there. And the detective is constantly moving his eyes from her breasts to her legs and back again, like some kind of crazy bobble-head perve. Over and over. It made me want to throw my Kindle out the window.

The most original and interesting thing about this book in my opinion is that they use condoms during sex and the detective comes too quickly the first time.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say the book isn’t entertaining at all, but by the end I didn’t really care what happened or about any of the characters.

It’s a real shame because it seems like it’s going to be really good, but the holes. repetitions and errors in detail let it down. I’ve given it 3 stars rather than 2 because if you aren’t the kind of person who pays a great deal of attention to detail, or plausibility, the book is probably quite enjoyable.

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