Book Review: Ember

Title: Ember

Author: Jessica Sorensen

Genre: YA Paranormal

Review:

Ember, written by Jessica Sorensen, is a unique blend of several different novels I have read before...yet it also has a touch of its own magic.  The author thoroughly researched the content regarding the mythology and folk lore mentioned within the novel (ie. Grim Reaper, Grim Angels and Angels of Death.) Even though parts of the book was rather chaotic and hazy to read, everything came together at the end.

The pacing if Ember was somewhat mixed; sometimes the pacing was too slow, sometimes too fast and sometimes just right.  Usually when the plot was moving to slow for my liking was because there was too much background information about the supernatural being dumped onto the reader at once.  Spacing out the information more evenly throughout the book would've helped a lot because I needed some time process all of the new information.  Ironically, some of the too-fast sections of the book also resulted from information overload.  When presented with a lot of information all at once then quickly followed with a series of high intensity action...let's just say it makes my head spin.

The ideas and  concepts used in this novel were very interesting.  The contents of this book screams "paranormal".  This was definitely one of the better researched book in the paranormal genre. A lot of its content are all based on facts or legends. On the other hand, the way the author presented the facts could've been improved (as mentioned before.) 

My favorite character in the book was Ash because he was the most interesting--I mean, you can't cooler than being the Angel of Death, could you? Other major characters were Cameron, Raven and of course, Ember. Raven is a bit of an outlier...and it's not just because she spends much of her time in cemeteries; Raven is being haunted by the Grim Reaper. Even though Ember is the main character, to me she was just, well, too average.  There's nothing to really make me dislike her, but there really isn't any reason for me to love her either.

But I think the part about the book that bothered me the most was the "love triangle" cliche.  It seems as if there isn't a YA book without some type of love triangle situation.  With all that said, there were good points in the book too. For action scenes, the writing was excellent and intense.  I could easily imagine the chapters unfolding before my eyes.

I enjoyed the book over all and probably will read its sequel when it comes out; the Death Collector series has great potential to be something great.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes dark fantasy or paranormal books and doesn't mind some writing cliches.

Likes:

*concepts used in this book

*action scenes

*has a lot of potential

Dislikes:

*Raven's character was very unrealistic

*info loading

Rating: