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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780061583216
ISBN: 0061583219
Label: Avon
Manufacturer: Avon
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: July 28, 2009
Publisher: Avon
Release Date: July 28, 2009
Studio: Avon
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Her deadly dreams leave her in grave danger
Since half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her undead lover Bones met six years ago, they've fought against the rogue undead, battled a vengeful Master vampire, and pledged their devotion with a blood bond. Now it's time for a vacation. But their hopes for a perfect Paris holiday are dashed when Cat awakes one night in terror. She's having visions of a vampire named Gregor who's more powerful than Bones and has ties to her past that even Cat herself didn't know about.
Gregor believes Cat is his and he won't stop until he has her. As the battle begins between the vamp who haunts her nightmares and the one who holds her heart, only Cat can break Gregor's hold over her. She'll need all the power she can summon in order to bring down the baddest bloodsucker she's ever faced . . . even if getting that power will result in an early grave.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This series is by far the best vampires series to say the least and this book tops it all off. I read this book in one day because I could not put it down (there goes one sunny day for me). If I gave the other three books a five star, this book should get a 10 star. There is so much excitement and suspense the emotions just keep running. If there was ever to be movie or TV series, this series should be it. Sign me up for CAT!!!
Rating: -
This book is a great edition to the story line. I don't want to give anything away, but I truely felt like everything that I wanted to happen to the characters in the book happened in this book. It had a great plot, and I didn't want the story to end. I can't wait until her next one comes out. She's starting a new book soon including two of the characters from this series, but I am just not sure if it will be able to live up to this great story line.
Rating:  -
As the fourth book in a series with a tight story arc, *Destined for an Early Grave* devotes a high percentage of text to explanations of events, characters and relationships established in the previous three volumes. Frost does a bit too much explaining, slowing her narrative down and making me impatient. But this isn't the only reason that I feel the current book lacks substance. The entire plot of *Destined for an Early Grave* revolves around only one real conflict: the crisis in Cat's and Bones' relationship precipitated by an aggressive element from her past. Cat bounces around from ally to ally and hiding place to hiding place, but very little actually *happens* beyond Cat's unraveling the convoluted truth about Gregor's claim on her, and repairing her strained relationship with Bones. In order to care enough about Cat's personal issues to stay involved with the story, a reader has to care a lot about Cat as a character, and I found that difficult. As is often the case with these series, Cat is too much of a "Mary Sue" character. She's stunningly beautiful, unique, gifted with special powers and abilities, maneuvers skillfully in a world of ancient immortals and god-like supernatural beings, and everyone who sees her loves and desires her (even ghosts). Her falling out with Bones leaves her with a number of alternative friends and would-be lovers with whom to take refuge, and her chief worry is that Bones will be jealous, driving them further apart.
On a more serious note, several aspects of the characters and their relationships disturbed me. If *Twilight's* Edward Cullen is "controlling," he has nothing on Bones, Vlad, Gregor and the other male antagonists in the Night Huntress world. Cat is locked up, bodily carried around, abducted, refused information, lied to, manipulated, and threatened with death, and for the most part, forgives all of it without a qualm. The only thing that distinguishes her from a ravished heroine in a bodice-ripper romance is that she's tough, has powers and is capable of killing and beating up nasty critters, but she's still pushed around and controlled by the men in her life (there are almost no women, besides her embittered mother). In personality, Bones constantly reminded me of Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell's *Gone With the Wind.*
Jeaniene Frost's Night Huntress series is easily digestible entertainment that doesn't demand much from its readers. Fans of *Buffy the Vampire Slayer* and *Vampire: the Masquerade* will find Frost's universe comfortably familiar, and will probably enjoy her series.
Rating:  -
The plot seems absolutely implausible, cheesy, and totally avoidable, had Bones and Cat just had a discussion like adults. The author really flattens out Cat in this book and stretches the story line--spooky dreams, pyrokinesis, unicorns, etc. The plot twists and dialogue are really uninspired. Cat's wailing and yelling and crying is utterly unlike her, and it made me grimace several times while reading it. The plot was overbrimming with Cat crying in her ice cream and her gin and tonic.
That, and Cat's shift from half human to undead, totally disempowered her. The series had me hooked on it; Cat's compelling personality and power practically hinged on it in the first three books. Now she's perhaps deflated the series by being just another undead--but don't worry, she's still unique and special, so we can still live vicariously through her.
And how do Bones and Cat solve their estrangement and significant relationship foibles? Just a lot of weak sex. I felt absolutely unconvinced and unfulfilled. This book made complex, unique, and tangible characters two dimensional.
It's worth reading, in so far as preparing you for the next book, which I'll be looking out for. But the series was subverted to just another bad sex filled genre book teetering on a supposably dark and pretty heroine.
Rating: -
OK, let me say at the start that I keep wanting this series to be Urban Fantasy instead of Supernatural/Paranormal Romance even though I *know* intellectually that its not. That means that I have to accept the conventions of the genre like the neglect of secondary characters and the obsessing over the "relationship", so I'll try not to carp about that here.
My problem with this book even within the parameters of SR is that I could not believe in the main hinge of the plot: Cat's time with Gregor in Paris. That came out of nowhere, and was one of those "everything you know is wrong" moments that just did *not* gel for me. I felt as well that by playing around with events in Cat's past to generate a plot, Frost was signalling that the natural progression of the series was in doubt, and that she had written herself into a corner as to where to take Cat & Bones next.
I also felt that having Cat & Bones at odds with each other so often did not serve the book well. Cat & Bones as a team is the core of the series, and messing with that hurts it.
**SOME SPOILERS BELOW*****
I also could not believe, even within the confines of SR conventions that Cat still had enough pull with the government to get lives risked for Bones and I *totally* failed to believe that Don would let her kill a human in his facility, especially for purely personal reasons. And I didn't like how we were hit over the head with the fact that Don is dying (and refusing to be turned) while Cat totally failed to pick up on it.
I did like the Cat/Vlad relationship, and wish that some of the other supporting characters would be fleshed out as well.
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