Review: Queene of Light by Jennifer Armintrout

Title: Queene of Light Author: Jennifer Armintrout Format: MM Available Formats: MM, Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader Page Count: 375 Genre: Fantasy Publisher: Mira Books Pub. Date: September 29, 2009 ISBN-13: 9780778326625 Series: #1 in the Lightworld/Darkworld series Rating: 3 of 10

Summary:
Ayla, a half-human and half-faery, is an assassin for the faery realm. The faeries live in the underworld, but on the half dedicated to those creatures of 'light': dragons, faeries, and dwarves. In the other half of the underworld lurks those darker creatures like vampires, demons, and death angels... And of course, in the above world live the humans that forced all the magical beings into the sewers.

TL;DR Version:
Queene of Light has serious flaws: a protagonist who never makes decisions for herself, a love-interest who speaks almost exclusively in creepy rape-imagery, and a transparent plot. Steer clear of this one if you can.

Review:
What is it with all these bad assassin characters lately? I mean, okay, it sounds cool, but I am utterly sick of the 'super cool assassin chick' that every guy wants to get it on with and almost always is utterly horrible at being an assassin. Also, they're also always seemingly half-breeds... Then again, this is probably a personal rant--and most likely brought on by the ill-conceived Red-Headed Stepchild in conjunction with Armintrout's novel, rather than just Armintrout's.

The bad assassin pet peeve aside, I went into reading Queene of Light wanting to like the book. The idea was interesting. I thought that a divide between humans and magical realm and both aware or close to war with the other could only be fun. Especially with dissent amongst the magical beings. Instead, Queene of Light only has pale elements of what I had hoped for: political intrigue, fascinating (multi-paranormal race) characters. The political intrigue was a complete bust. And while there are many different types of characters, the idea is minimized abominably. At least for this first book, the idea of the separation of races and worlds is barely touched except to make the lovers seem star-crossed.

Armintrout's writing is pretty lackluster. Although it does even out as the book progresses, I had a hard time not rolling my eyes at many parts and descriptions. The writing extends to the almost ridiculously transparent plot. Political intrigue? I wish. Any attempt at plot and politics is almost laughably heavy-handed, transparent, and impossibly rendered.

More problematic are the characters. The main character, Ayla, is fairly much useless. She makes so few choices in this novel and otherwise just gets swept away by the decisions of those around her. I find such protagonists fairly annoying. I don't mind protagonists that make bad choices, but at least they make decisions. Ayla's lack of a spine early in the book makes her sudden growth of guts fairly implausible later since the characterization between was pretty damn thin. And as unlikable as Ayla is, the people that surround her are worse. They're cardboard structure characters more there to fill a role than anything. There's the evil mentor figure who wants Ayla for his own, but his reasons for that are (unsurprisingly) weak. Then there's the true love interest, who disturbingly speaks of Ayla with rape imagery for the first half of the book, is irritating and dull. In fact, the only characters that hinted of true fleshing out and thought were minor: Cedric and Keller.

Honestly, I can never salvage any positive feeling for a 'hero' who speaks in rape-terms about the protagonist. Even if he 'turns around' and professes love or whatever. But that's just me. And just in case I need to prove the creepy and skeevy quality of the love interest character, here's a short passage from page 139 (and please keep in mind that this is just one of many, many passages I could have chosen from):

"She is not a woman," Malachi growled, knowing the anger in his voice sounded ridiculous. If she was not a woman, why did he want her the way mortal men wanted moral women? Why did he no longer wish to kill her, but overpower her in another way?

I not only couldn't warm up to Queene of Light, but grew colder and colder to the book as I read on.

Cover/Title/First Line Critique:
The cover is one of the first things that drew my attention to Queene of Light. I rather like the black background with the radiant green faery wings, because it is eye-catching. The only thing I don't particularly like is that the title is just so small on the cover. Here's the first line:
"In the Darkworld, the filth made it difficult to fly."

Rating: 3 of 10 [Learn more about the rating system?]
I really couldn't justify giving Queene of Light a better score than this. I only hope that Armintrout's following books in the series are better.

This book was provided for the purpose of receiving a review courtesy of Amazon Vine.