Vicious Circle ( Persephone Alcmedi 1) by Linda Robertson

Hello to all!

              Since it's halloween i've decided to finish the month with witches first and the series written by Linda Robertson. This series was highly recommended to me so i've tried it and today i give you my opinion on it.

Enjoy!

Publisher: Pocket

Publication: 2009

ISBN:  1439154287

Genre: urban fantasy
Violence: strong
Language: normal
sex: mild
Public: 18+

Source: bought

Short description from goodreads :

 A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do....

Being a witch doesn't pay the bills, but Persephone Alcmedi gets by between reading Tarot cards, writing her syndicated newspaper column, and kenneling werewolves in the basement when the moon is full -- even if witches aren't supposed to mingle with wolves. She really reaches the end of her leash, though, when her grandmother gets kicked out of the nursing home and Seph finds herself in the doghouse about some things she's written. Then her werewolf friend Lorrie is murdered...and the high priestess of an important coven offers Seph big money to destroy the killer, a powerful vampire named Goliath Kline. Seph is a tough girl, but this time she bites off more than she can chew. She needs a little help from her friends -- werewolf friends. One of those friends, Johnny, the motorcycle-riding lead singer for the techno-metal-Goth band Lycanthropia, has a crush on her. And while Seph has always been on edge around this 6'2" leather-clad hunk, she's starting to realize that although their attraction may be dangerous, nothing could be as lethal as the showdown that awaits them.

My opinion:

          In this Urban fantasy we follow the adventures of a Witch and while it’s not the first book offering us this opportunity I still enjoyed it greatly because I don’t have a lot of them. It’s a complex universe and with the first book we are just scratching the surface.

The author introduces us to Persephone, a witch, who had not an easy childhood and lived with her nana, also a witch, now tables have been turned and she just took her in. She is not well versed in the witchcraft in the sense that she does it, now how it works, knows the rules but she is ignorant of the tales and legends and of some basics knowledge that could come in handy. We also discover that she knows nearly nothing about her parents and that she has a great sense of justice wanting to defend others like the waeres.

The waeres are made werewolves but in this universe it’s spelled waeres instead of were. That orthography element put aside we are learning in this book that they have a hard time. The existence of waeres, vampires and such is public knowledge but there is a great discrimination taking place. Human beings have become afraid and thus the ones being infected by the waere virus must keep a low profile. For example they don’t get the medical treatment they should because as soon as the infection in discovered in a patient the medical service send it in a special shelter supposedly taking care of them with a better equipment while in fact it(‘s just a prison where they are let to die. In the same way, as soon as a victim is a waere, the police drop the case judging the risks too high like they were not citizens with the same rights as others.

The fear comes from the fact that they are not born werewolves but were bitten and thus anyone could be bitten in turn (believable when we are looking in our history but so sad in my opinion)

They are, like often, groups formed by people who are either on their side: trying to help to make their rights respected, offer shelter etc. Persephone, more often called Seph, in one of them and before everything happened she offered them a shelter during the full moon to protect them, those safe kennels are kept secret from the outside world; she also write under a penname a column in newspaper about waeres to make them more acceptable in the public opinion.

On the opposite they are group of Anti, who think they are abominations, should be destroyed etc, those can be religious extremists or not.

About the vampires, we are not learning a lot yet, they are people against them too ( the extremists are not focused on only one magical species, as long as you are not human you should be annihilated in their opinion) but they also have followers and people who are under their charms and think them as no dangerous. There seems to be a hierarchy but apart that we still have to learn about them.

The characters are interesting, I loved to see Seph not being ready for everything and just trying to do well I also enjoyed her view on friendship. How she made mistakes by judging someone on his looks only but manages to put herself in question to change. The totems are also funny.

Johnny is really mysterious and dangerous, he is flirting with her a lot but he is also putting her in danger so he seems to have double standards. He is really secrets and now more about her than he told her. Their relationship is building in this book but they still aren’t sure where they stand.

I enjoyed this book but there are still to many unknown for me to be at ease with the series so I will be very happy to expend my knowledge of this universe with book two really soon. This book has some fun part ( Poopsies/ares is a cute surprise^^)but it’s also dark with a part of violence, the balance is well done though.

For a public adult and fan of urban fantasy.

Score:  3,5/5

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own and no compensation was received in exchange for this review

Challenges:

Book read for the 2012 TBR reading

 

This book enter in the Romance and Me Challenge