Zara and Nick are soul mates, meant to be together forever. But that's not quite how things have worked out. For starters, well, Nick is dead. Supposedly, he's been taken to a mythic place for warriors known as Valhalla, so Zara and her friends might be able to get him back. But it's taking time, and meanwhile a group of evil pixies is devastating Bedford, with more teens going missing every day. An all-out war seems imminent, and the good guys need all the warriors they can find. But how to get to Valhalla? And even if Zara and her friends discover the way, there's that other small problem: Zara's been pixie kissed. When she finds Nick, will he even want to go with her? Especially since she hasn't turned into just any pixie. . . She's Astley's queen.
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Beth says 3.5 Stars…
I find this series difficult to describe… I really enjoy reading the books, but know they’re nowhere near amazing. The plots keep getting more and more complicated to the point of confusion. This plot bounced around from one thing to another without emphasizing clarity. I didn’t always know where I was in the story or how the action related to the endpoint of the novel; I actually got a bit fuzzy on the purpose of the story as well. However random the plot might have been, it still managed to be quite entertaining and engaging. The settings could have used a bit of improvement, although I acknowledge the brevity of the characters’ stays in a few locations. I also feel like I haven’t seen any growth in Jones’s writing style, which I rather expected. Not to say that there’s anything particularly wrong with it, but improvement can always happen.
Oh Zara. The angsty conflict that surrounds her grated mightily on my nerves. I really wanted her to make up her mind in her love life, which wouldn’t have had nearly the amount of drama but would have been more satisfactory to me. I also didn’t see an evolution in Zara’s character; she changed more in the first novel than in the second two combined. Nick’s absence caused a large amount of moping and pining, and that was one the biggest sources of angst in the novel. Astley started to grow on me, but I don’t particularly buy their relationship. There’s no heat coming off of the page when the two of them are together, which doesn’t exactly make for the most believable of love triangles. I still love the supporting characters and find them vastly entertaining. The Buffy references slid into the dialogue made me super happy!
I can only recommend this book as fun. It isn’t the greatest literature by any stretch of the imagination and at times falls into mediocrity because of the huge volume of paranormal/fantasy books flooding the market currently. However, I once I started the book I just couldn’t stop reading it. This is a fun and mindless summer series that could work well either on the beach or just sitting attempting to do next to nothing.
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