Hallowed Circle ( Persephone Alcmedi 2) by Linda Robertson

Good evening to all,

                                    i should be sleeping for hours but the weather being what it 's night is the safer moment to be in front of a screen without melting so it's the time to give you another book including witches like i promised... i hesitated between starting a new series or read the next one in a series i've already introduced to you...at the end the following up book won so here comes the second book in the Persephone Alcmedi series.

Oh and by the way, don't forget to enter the giveaway for an ebook by Debra smith you still have a few days: enter here

Happy Reading

Publisher: Pocket Books

Publication: 2009

ISBN:  1439156786

Genre: urban fantasy, paranormal, romance
Violence: strong
Language: mild
sex: strong
Public: 18+

Source: bought

Short description from goodreads :

 And you think beauty pageants are scary?

Persephone Alcmedi has been persuaded to compete for the position of High Priestess of the Cleveland, Ohio, coven — now that the former priestess, Vivian Diamond, has strangely gone missing. Unfortunately, there are a few small problems with the idea. Not only does Seph know rather more about Vivian's disappearance than the other witches realize, but the epic struggle she's just survived has left her with some highly unusual powers — ones that could be dangerous to reveal. Despite her reluctance, she agrees to participate, if only to prevent snooty Hunter Hopewell, an obnoxious but talented witch, from ending up in the winner's circle. Can Seph hide her secrets — including her connection to the master vampire-wizard Menessos — from the terrifyingly wise judges? Plus, there's her rock 'n' roll werewolf boyfriend, Johnny, and some angry fairies to deal with....


Once the competition begins, a finalist turns up dead. It looks as if one of the contestants is willing to do anything — including murder — to win. Suddenly Seph has even more on her plate than she thought: from solving a murder to working out what her new powers really are...and exactly why they're creating so much havoc in her love life.

My opinion:

          It’s a good book a story more than interesting but i had some difficulties to get into it…perhaps it’s because i’ve read book 1 some times ago already but let’s be honest this wouldn’t work as a stand alone at all….i would even recommend to read this series (or at least up to this point) back to back or you are going to feel lost and have the impression you are missing something important. I did remember book 1 in general but that wasn’t sufficient.

 Now it was harder to get into the book yes but i still liked and i was surprised to learn so much about the witches and about the lustrata but also to discover fairies and how they were linked to the witches.  Persephone is starting to understand and accept her role but it’s still difficult to her, adding to that a romance complicates things. She is starting to accepts and act on her attractions to Johnny but Menessos is also on the line and it’s a strange love triangle even if we learn more about her relation to him now. What I regretted was to see her still judging people on appearances..; she did it with Johnny at first now she is judging Hunter…  also I found strange she to swear to obey someone when she is accepting to be the lustrate who should be above everyone to stay fair…those part bothered me

Now the story had action, lot of it, steamy scene but also sweet romance, different kinds of paranormal creatures which, as you probably know by now, I love. I will continue reading this story while avoiding to wait to long between books^^;; and I hope it can only get better. This book answers questions but still set stages for the next one so satisfying ending.

 If you want a good paranormal, urban SERIES you could try this one but I can only recommend to read the books in orders and not to stop after the first one.

Score:  3/5

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

Challenges:

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