Friday, November 29, 2013

Review: Dreg City #1: Three Days To Dead

Title: Dreg City #1: Three Days to Dead

Author: Kelley Meding

Date of Publication: November 24, 2009

Formats Available: Paperback, E-book

Buy This Book: Amazon

Synopsis: They’ll never see her coming. . . .

When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue—in a stranger’s body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there—her troubles are only just beginning. Before that night she and the two other members of her Triad were the city’s star bounty hunters, mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives but also convinced the city’s other Hunters that Evy was a traitor—and she can’t even remember what it was.

Now she’s a fugitive, piecing together her memory, trying to deal some serious justice—and discovering that she has only three days to solve her own murder before the reincarnation spell wears off. Because in three days Evy will die again—but this time there’s no second chance. . .

My Review

While I wouldn't exactly call Three Days to Dead an awful book I wouldn't call it a good one either. Unoriginal and underdeveloped it was a hard novel to get into and slow to get started, however once the novel got started it wasn't a necessarily difficult one to read.

Evy was an alright character; a fairly typical urban fantasy heroine she's got a huge chip on her shoulder and enough guns to back it up. The most original thing about her was the fact that she was brought back to life and came back in a "Gifted" body, meaning that she is one of the few humans who can control magic. Wyatt, another "Gifted", was a unremarkable male lead. His romance with Evy lacked chemistry, probably because she admitted several times that she didn't love him but then proceeded to think about him like she did, and his character just wasn't developed enough for me to start to feel a real connection with him.

Likewise the plot was nothing new to the urban fantasy genre. Since it's all been said before I felt like the author was a little lazy and cut some corners because she assumed that the reader would fill in the blanks. I was able to but at the same time I felt like the world and characters weren't nearly developed as they could have been. While the novel was exciting, there was definitely no lack of action, there were times (especially at the end) where the answers came too easily with absolutely no explanation.

My biggest complaint about this novel was the pacing. Though it wasn't exactly a struggle to get through, the first 200 pages of this book were pretty dull and I had a hard time keeping myself focused on the book. The author does a terrible job explaining the dregs (or vampires, werewolves, goblins, ect) that roam the city and for the first 50 pages or so I was terribly confused. Once I got past the first boring 200 pages the novel picked up considerably and the last half went pretty quickly. Unfortunately the world was so underdeveloped that I had a hard time keeping myself engrossed in the novel.

Overall Three Days to Dead wasn't a terrible book but it was a unremarkable one. I wouldn't completely write off Kelly Meding yet, as this novel had some potential but I'm not in a hurry to pick up the next one either.  Someday if I have a lot of time on my hands I may consider taking a look at the next one but it's not high on my to-read list.

3/5

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