Ari Bookzilla

It took me a week to get through this book. Not that it's bad, it's just when you put it down, it's very hard to get back into.First of all, kudos to the author for trying something different with an angel/demon story.There were a lot of things I liked about it. I loved the mythology.Loved Aethan. I can't tell you much about him because I would spoil the book, but basically he's from a race of mutant angels. I think?The other guardians - Blaez and Tyr, Michael and yeah, even Dagan - all great characters and I loved them. You could feel the brotherly love between them, they act like a small family.Echo annoyed me with her insecurities and just being a major PITA for the majority of the story.Aethan tells her he wants her, and she just doesn't hear it. I swear, I constantly wanted to smack her on the head. Nothing she did in this book made much sense to me, she was so irrational and hot-headed it couldn't make for a likable female character.And for the most part, her character was inconsistent.I just sort of ignored her.But Kira kicked ass. I loved Kira.It's major insta-love between these two - but then again, there's the whole concept of them being destined soul-mates so I guess it worked.The truth is, it's the writing that put me off majorly in this book. Sentence after sentence, the author uses the same pattern over and over again. It started to grate on my nerves by the end.There are a lot of POV characters. Some (Lazaar and Lila, Dagan) only get a few sentences, others get more (Andras, Tyr), and most are reserved for Aethan and Echo.I cannot begin to explain how much I disliked this. It felt like the author introduces a character and then you get a few sentences from their POV. It's just so you know what's going on on the other side, too. Makes you wonder how authors ever manage to tell a single POV story.There is some major overuse of words mate, female and male. Oh and claiming. I just wished anyone would claim her already.Another thing, I understood why Aethan would go on and on about mate, mate, mate, but all of a sudden she starts doing it too.And then you get the last ten percent of the story, and it's all very rushed. The story is really on the long-ish side, and I wished I had gotten a proper ending, not just hastily tied loose ends (and not all of them, either!)All of this being said, I loved the world Ms Hunter created. I always appreciate when authors take a recycled story and make something new out of it.There are a couple of mildly graphic sex scenes, for those who like to know these things upfront.Will I be reading the next book in the series? Most probably. There's a character mentioned once or twice in this book that I read should be the main character of the next one, and I was really curious about him (though I was also hoping for a Blaez/Kira story.)So yeah, I'd recommend it, just don't put everything else on hold to read it.Oh, and look at that gorgeous cover! So pretty.