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Tuesday, May 6, 2014

DNF Review Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers



Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.
Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?
I started Grave Mercy because so many people read it last year and I stumbled upon it on my last visit to the library. It’s a huge book coming in at 549 pages, which honestly seems a little long for a YA novel…A paranormal romance at that. But I figured oh well, it got a ton of hype and a lot of my blogger friends read it….Maybe I should have gone back and checked out their reviews.

I DNF this novel at just over 100 pages, so you can judge this review accordingly and go ahead and please read it for yourself if you disagree, but here is why I could not bear to read one more page.

The first chapter is pretty good I enjoyed the character set up of a girl with the scar from her mom trying to abort her with herbal medication, seemed like a good premise…She’s a “daughter of death”, awesome, I mean I like dark, I like death…If I could have gone to school for  Death Mythology and Ancient Rites (and made money at it) I totally would have. She gets sent to a convent where the nuns train to be assassins in service to the God of Death, again, creative and interesting.

That’s where my enjoyment died….The MC is a whiney all powerful Mary Sue who (even though she isn’t) bemoans her fate as the ugly duckling. She also received the news she is now to be trained to kill people with joy and really easily, too easily.

“Hey so you’re a daughter of death and now you must learn to kill people, oh FYI I just tried to poison you.”
“What? That sucks! But like, wow, so cool, when do I start?”

You get the drift.

Dear Goddess is this a series!?  Ugh.

In the first 100 pages the plot line was totally laid out and the oh-so-obvious love interest introduced in a not-so-clever way.  Not to mention paragraphs where the MC talks about skipping certain classes she deems are uninteresting and beneath her only to find out later “Wow I really should have paid attention, I am going to need that knowledge later! Yikes!”

Whine, bitch, moan, complain... wah wah wah.... Oh this guy is hot but I totally hate him and uh...stuff.. I am super psyched to kill people without anymore explantation than a five minute conversation., just cause  guys suck and uh stuff.... 

On that happy note, as the “heroine” is whisked away to court as a pretend mistress I put this novel down, annoyed and bored with the concept and characters…. Maybe it’s just me, but man am I sick of YA right now.

Bright Blessings.