Duty Bound (Angelbound #0.5) by Christina Bauer
ARC provided by Netgalley for a fair review.
Publish Date: February 27, 2018
Prince Lincoln not only is a skilled demon hunter, but also will do whatever it takes as his role as prince that his duty calls. That includes marrying someone he has hardly even spoken to to form an alliance, though he has always known that he will not marry for love. In the midst of his own political scheme that risks his own life, but could potentially save many other demon hunters, he finds himself distracted by a half human half demon warrior girl.
The Story
Okay, I am going to be honest. I don’t remember requesting this book at all from Netgalley. I haven’t read the Angelbound books prior to this, so I probably have no place reviewing a novella. None the less, I still read this and enjoyed it enough. since it’s a novella it’s rather short so I was able to get through it in a single sitting. The only problem is that since I hadn’t read the other books I found myself a little lost on some elements within the world. That all aside, I could honestly say that if the rest of the books were written in the same manner as this one, I probably wouldn’t read them, even if the world is intriguing enough.
Why? Because it’s written in that first person point of view style where it’s read like someone is telling a story or you’re reading their thoughts. Lines such as:
“My heart lightens. Can it be?”
“It’s a mystery, but it’s one that’s proven unsolvable. It’s certainly nothing I’ll figure out right now. Besides, I have far better things to do…”
“After Walker leaves, I start doing….things. I believe reviewing paperwork and meeting some of the Earls is involved.”
I personally just don’t like this style of writing and find a lot of it to be just filler. In fact, I find that it takes away from the plot and world building, which in this case I found lacking.
The World Building
Honestly, it’s my fault I probably found this lacking. This is what I get for reading a novella for a book series that I haven’t read. Again, I didn’t realize I had even requested this, but what am I to do?? I can’t let the publisher down now! I am guessing this is supposed to be a urban paranormal fantasy?? There was mention of Twinkies and parks that close at dusk, so that was really my only guess to that. Aside from that, I was put into a world with ghouls, demons, thrax (whatever that is?) and quasi demons, etc. There wer some small little world building bits sort of thrown in as a side comment, like why guns don’t work on demons (another hint to the urban paranormal bit). Anyway, a little less personal thoughts in the writing and a little more scenery description could have gone a long way and been a lot more use of page space/word length in my opinion. But you all know how much I like to mentally escape in my fantasy novels.
The Characters
Lincoln seems like he is set up to be the ideal guy, and I guess that’s okay, but I personally like a guy with some flaws. Then again, maybe that comes into play in the rest of the series.
