Alright... I'm feeling way too much right now after reading this one. Trying to get my head together..
I gotta be honest and say it took me a minute to actually become invested with what was going on here. I wasn't feeling all the technical aspects/jargon with this one. It felt in certain areas , for me, to be throwing me out of the flow of the story; even though it was central to Ryu & Ava's story. But because of this fact, I quickly got over it. Especially when the pacing of everything began to pick up. I knew it was a point to all of it, and that's what kept me going :D
I fell in love with the way Ryu's story unfolded. Past and present. How it was all woven so well together. There were some hard truths here that had me physically & emotionally unbalanced. I was crying ALOT of tears here. Tears of heartbreak. Tears of pure joy, & tears of anger & impotent frustration with certain things that occurred. There was an instance where my Husband actually closed the book and was like "That's it Babe. We're done. You need to step away for a bit" So yeah, I was extremely in my feelings with this one. I'm a sensitive soul anyway, but when an Author can cause me to feel every emotion across the spectrum, whether I come away loving the book or not; I feel the writer has done their job. When doing this they force me to face it. Roll with it. Figure out how I'm feeling as I'm being swept away. This is an AWESOME thing & if you don't know by now, I love this story because of it.
I LOOOOOOOVE Ryu & Ava together & individually. Their interactions with one another just had this sort of raw, pureness to it. It was on an elemental level that you literally got to see and feel as it occurred. Watching how things unfolded and progressed with them, broke my heart & put it back together beautifully all at once. It was great.. I loved how throughout this they remained who they were to their core, while trying to figure out how to be what they needed to be for one another. I'm a big fan of loving completely without losing yourself in the process. So this spoke to me on that level.
That Epilogue *sighs* I am just beside myself.
Hubby and I got to read this one together, so below are his thoughts and experiences while reading this with me..
Well, I am agreeing with majority of what my wife said about this book. Except I had no problem getting into the story immediately. It all intrigued me from the beginning. There weren't any slow moving aspects of this story for me at all. I especially enjoyed all of the fight sequences concerning Ryu and the shadow ninjas. I liked seeing how things were coming together for Ava when she was working in the Labs. Her trying to understand and figure out just what her role is in all of this, when it became apparent to her that something just wasn't quite right. I'm a science buff to a degree, so getting that aspect here was refreshing for me.
There were some very intense hot scenes in here with Ryu and Ava. This I enjoyed immensely because I benefited from some of those encounters ;) What can I say? They were written well.
Seriously, the writing with this book was done incredibly well. I am very invested in this series now. I think that this story solidified that for me. I am intrigued by Inanna's father. I think the suffering that I saw here was just the tip of the iceberg with this guy. I am eager to know more of his story and if retribution is granted for him.
My wife gives this one 5 stars, I am going to go with 6 stars on this one.
Well done Ms. James. -AJ