Three Days to Dead (Dreg City #1)

The story itself is nothing special as far as fantasy novels go, but its entertaining and I liked it well enough

the huge “but” that goes along with that is that this author knows absolutely nothing about many of the things she writes about. She makes reference to “juijitsu fighters” being amazing at throwing high kicks, but apparently terrible at joint locks, which is backwards, she constantly refers to revolvers as having “clips”, by which she seems to mean “magazines”, which is something revolvers don’t have, literally every single gun in the book is a revolver, which is weird but whatev, and then she describes certain revolvers as being “Glocks”. Glock doesn’t make a revolver, in any caliber. Also bizarrely she seems to think that if you twist someone’s arm behind their back you are then in the perfect position to “punch them in the heart”, killing them instantly with one blow

Literally anyone who spent 5 minutes researching this stuff would know better, and every single time she says something that’s so hilariously wrong it takes you out of the story.

Something else that takes you totally out of the story are a number of scenes where the author allows the characters to do something that is just flat out impossible. For instance, in one scene we are told that 2 people are in adjoining jail cells. there are 1″ wide bars every 4 inches. The male can’t even get his arms through the bar to touch the female, but she can get hers through to touch him. After being told that, we are then presented with 1) the male giving the female a back-rub somehow, 2) the male kissing the female on the head, and 3) the female slapping the male in the face, hard. None of those things are physically possible in the situation as its presented

on top of that this book suffers from a common problem in fantasy novels in that various monsters are introduced and not really fleshed out because we’re expected to just know what they’re like from other novels of the same genre. I find that to be super lazy and it makes the book come off like some kind of monster hunter’s greatest hits collection, but that may not bother the rest of you

Anyway the book was ok but I would definately think twice before I bought anything else written by this person, because the odds are pretty big that it will be just as sloppily researched and written

This was an interesting, new world and I enjoyed reading this book. I don’t feel like it had a lot of world-building at the beginning, but it didn’t really need it. The book’s world is very similar to our own but instead of gangsters, they have vampires. The author uses a good trick by having our heroine introduce the world to another side character and by proxy, the readers. I thought this was very clever and didn’t feel too much like an info dump.

I liked the tone of this book. We learn much of the background in real time, which was very effective. Ms. Meding used a mix of present-tense flashbacks and past-tense narrative that really worked. It was a little jarring at first, but the present-tense voice allows you to connect to Evy and experience her emotions as she is recovering her memories.

Evy herself is a likeable character. She is thrown into a strange situation right of the bat and she confronts it with quick thinking and a bit of humor. She’s also damaged and I think Ms. Medig did a good job of letting her just be instead of trying to “fix” her immediately. I did feel like she let go of the guilt about Alex a little too easily, but that is one small gripe that isn’t that important. I really enjoyed reading her voice overall.

Wyatt is her romantic foil and he’s kind of hard to pin down. Sometimes he seems almost passive and others, he’s barely containing his rage and aggression. He is a good counterpoint to Evy; soft where she is hard, thoughtful where she is impulsive. I like the dynamic they have but I wonder a little bit about it turning from friendship to romantic. It is easy to see that he cares for Evy deeply, but I feel like their romantic attachment might have been born from the dire situation they were in, at least from Evy’s POV. Only time will tell if they are really meant to be together.

The other characters in this world are very diverse: vampires, weres, gargoyles, goblins, gnomes, and fey among others. It makes for some interesting relations between the races. I hope to see the Fey Council and their impact on the human world discussed more in future books.

The plot developed at a good pace and, as I mentioned before, I thought the combination of narrative tenses was well-done. My only gripe was that I think some plot points came a little too easily. Occasionally a solution would come out of nowhere and it was just a little too convenient. Aside from this, I enjoyed this novel and thought it was a stellar starting point for the series. I will definitely be picking up the next installments.

I love the ideas behind the book, but in practise it falls short. Evy says repeatedly that the other two members of her Triad were her family, and yet at the beginning of the book in particular, there is very little from Evy in the way of grief. And there is the potential for a good sub-plot with two personalities in one body, but there isn’t nearly enough to make it work. The male leads in the book fall flat too and they’re all pretty similar. There just isn’t enough to really get your teeth in to personality wise with the characters. And though I wanted Evy to succeed, I wasn’t really pushing for her, willing her on like many other protagonists.

There is also far too much going on. There are many, many different species of creature in this book, and it gets a bit tricky trying to keep all the different creatures and their alliances straight. The story jumps from one thing to another with little explanation and trying to keep all of it in order and remember it all isn’t easy either. And whilst the world building was pretty good, the overall tone wasn’t as dark and gritty as it could have been, leaving a slightly lighter tone than it really needed.

Knowing that there is a time constraint is one thing, but the pressure of it didn’t really come across well in this. There were times when you felt Evy had all the time in the world to do whatever it was needed doing. There were a couple decent twists but nothing out of the blue, but the ending was reasonable anyway, even if a few things were left open ended.

However, despite all it’s flaws, I liked this book. Yes it’s not as good as it could be, but I still think it’s a reasonable read and one I’ll pass along to friends. Evy has some good moments, and there are points where things are explained enough and the characters show real emotion you can relate to, there’s just not enough of it to truly bring the characters to life. But sometimes it’s nice to read a reasonable book that’s not going to leave you hanging for more or make you wish you hadn’t bothered with it.

Our protagonist has to solve her own murder in three days, someone has paid a hefty magical cost to bring her back. She ends up in a recent suicide victim Chalice, suffering memory loss & being hunted by her own people & all kind of ‘other’.
Evie is a bounty hunter, confused emotionally but burning with revenge to get to the bottom of the mystery of her death so she can clear her name.
Each chapter is time stamped, counting down to the inevitability of her dying again. What I loved about this book after I got past a laggy, slow beginning (which is more than made up for later on) – was the world K.M depicted, her imagination regarding all type of other (Trolls, Gargoyles, Sprites, Elfs, Vampires, Goblin,),their characters, political motivations, and backstabbing machinations had me hooked.
There’s some romance, a complex storyline, a dark undertone with original content, which got i immersed until the last page, I for one will be reading book two in the series, enjoy… Also just to add, loved Smedge the bridge troll, more please…

I loved it!!! “Three Days to Dead” is a fun and addictive thrill-ride from beginning to finish, and I could barely put it down … :o)

The story is original and unpredictable, the characters are great, and the writing is really good, too. I am glad I bought this one despite some of the negative reviews on Amazon, and I can’t believe I let it sit on my shelf for three months before actually reading it … ;o)

Definitely looking forward to the next book in the series!!!

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