Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Betwixt by Tara Bray Smith

All their lives, Nix, Ondine, and Morgan have known they are different. They each have different "powers" that they don't know anything about and aren't in control of. When they go to a rave on the summer solstice, they each learn the startling truth about what they really are. The three of them are a ring of Fay who are guided by Moth, a local drug dealer, and whose main goal is to reach their exidis without having their human corpuses die. When Tim Bleeker, a Fay gone wrong, steps into the picture, he tries to use each of them to make a more powerful version of Fay so that he and his group of his "cutters" can have ultimate power. His aspirations put all of Nix, Odine, and Morgan's friends in danger. They must learn about themselves and about what their purpose is in order to keep "Bleek" from eliminating their race.

I had high expectations for this book. I really thought it was going to be good! The plot is complex and original and the characters are believable and easy to relate to, but overall, the story really failed to deliver. Throughout the course of my reading, I had mixed feelings. Some parts would be good and would move fast, but other parts were just plain confusing. I think it was a big undertaking for the author to write a story in which she has to create this whole new species and have an interesting plot line at the same time. I do admit, that the idea of the story is intriguing and interesting, but I think it was just a little too much. I felt that the author was trying to cram too much story into too little of a book. One of the redeeming qualities was that the characters were explored in depth. Each of the three main characters had creative, defining characteristics and their reactions and emotions were plausible. That's one of the few good parts of this book. Overall though, it was a drag to have to trudge through it and I'm glad it's over. I guess I will be reading the sequel when it comes out just to see if it can bring anything more to the table than its predecessor did; which I'm hoping it will. I wanted to like this book, but I wouldn't really recommend it because, all in all, it failed to draw me in and didn't hold my attention.

2 comments:

  1. That is a LOT like I felt about this book! I thought it would be weird in a good way, but it turned out just being bizarre and I was glad when it was over. I'm not sure if I'll read the sequel, but maybe the author's writing style will have improved by then.

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  2. aww, i loved this book. oh well. it was a little confusing, but i would still read a sequal

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