Hill, Joey W. - A Witch's Beauty

[oyceter]

Ha. And of course after I post saying I can't keep up with LJ, I spam you all with book posts. I am sure the deluge will stop as soon as I stop procrastinating!

I liked this a lot more than The Vampire's Claim, probably because the worldbuilding involves heaven and hell instead of vampires.

And mermaids.

Actually, wait. there are vampires too.

I mentioned Joey Hill's cracktasticness before, right?

This is the sequel to Hill's angel-mermaid romance A Mermaid's Kiss, which I did not read because it looks like one of those "beautiful angelic (but not actually an angel) mermaid heroine saves the actually angelic but bitter and guarded hero" things. Also, reports of pixie/normal-sized-angel sex scared me.

I picked this book up because the Dear Author review notes that the heroine is the sea witch Mina, who is half Dark One (read: half-demon). Also, she has tentacles and half her body has been eaten away by fish thanks to a childhood incident. The angel David has been sent to guard her and to keep an eye on hher, as no Dark Spawn (I want to be Dark Spawn!) has ever been not-evil before. The angels are afraid that Mina will join the Dark Ones and wreak havoc with her very considerable power.

I love Mina. She is grumpy and not good and determinedly neutral. She hates pretty much everyone and subscribes to the Sanzo school of showing affection via putdowns. And although Hill changes her a little by the end (which I dislike), she remains herself through most of the book. Also, she makes declarations of love by asking David to kill her if she goes evil! I also love that even though David uses his dominance in sex to help Mina control her Dark Side, he generally backs off and lets her set her own pace and her own terms. Also also, even though he has substantial angst, most of the book is about Mina.

Other cool things/cracktastic bits: Even though there are angels, the main deities are the God and the Goddess. The Goddess seems to be the deity most in play. There are wounded wings AND eye loss! And! My favorite: ZOMBIE DINOSAURS!

The plot finale is spectacular and epic; I actually wished at times it were manga so I could get the visuals. However, despite the coolness, I'm not quite sure what happened, a la Yuki Kaori. That said, I am fairly certain there was a lack of zombie angel embryos. Unfortunately, the way Hill solves the problems presented by the finale reversed a lot of things I liked about the book, and the epilogue features a baby.

In conclusion: I liked this better than The Vampire's Claim, especially when it came to the characters, but it's still flawed. On the other hand, so much crack!

Comments

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Sadly, A Mermaid's Kiss is indeed a beautiful, doomed virgin saves the bitter and world-weary warrior book. It's a story we've all seen & read before featuring a heroine we've all seen and read before.

Mina, on the other hand, wasn't. I lurved her crankiness! I loved the fact that the power of lurve didn't go and make her all sunshine and light and sweetness who wanted to put flowers in everyone's hair. Nope! Instead, she's all WTF are you all staring at?

But yeah, the ending... There were definitely zombies and Dark Ones and angels but I'm also unclear as to how it was all exactly resolved other than knowing that Mina pwned everyone.

Oh, and I'd like to mention that I like Lucifer's character a lot. I see what you mean about wanting the manga visuals. At the point where they all think Mina's gone over to the dark side, I totally could see Lucifer come roaring out of his underwater cavern with scythe in tow. It was epic in my head, anyway. ;)

oh!

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

And I also liked the part where Mina got ticked, turned into a dragon and rampaged through heaven, destroying the buildings. It was so loltastic and yet, the mental visuals!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

half her body has been eaten away by fish thanks to a childhood incident

BWA-HA-HA! Best childhood trauma ever! That even tops zombie dinosaurs!

PS. In a fit of tastelessness, I just created a new body parts tag which might be appropriate for this book. (Tumescent tentacles.)

[heresluck]

I think Joey Hill's books would probably irritate me to no end, but wow, I am having fun reading your reviews of them. *g*

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

The mermaid book sounded absolutely batshit, and it's nice to see this is in the same theme!

[daedala]

OMG have you seen the premise of the sequel? WTF