REVIEW: Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead
B Reviews / B Reviews CategoryFirst-Person / Richelle-Mead / Seattle / succubus13 Comments
Dear Ms. Mead:
When I pulled up your book out of the stack to read, I thought that if I had to read one more female first person narrated paranormal that I I may poke out my eyes and never read again. Then I began to read and remembered why I had read so many female first person narrated paranormals in the first place. When the lead is charming and unaffected and the alternate reality is richly drawn, it is easy to escape into the author’s world.
Georgina Kincaid is a succubus who draws life energy from having sex with mortals. She sold her soul to Lilith many thousands of years ago to rectify a mistake she made and she now pays for it with her life. Georgina does not, in any way, feel sorry for herself. She has made the best lemonade she can from her situation but the hundreds of years that have passed have only heightened her state of loneliness. She cannot love because every intimate touch draws life away from the mortal and who kills the person that they love the most? [rhetorical question, of course]
Georgina is currently inhabiting a cute redhead’s brunette’s body and has made a life for herself in Seattle as an assistant manager of an independent bookstore. She obviously has no love life. Her looks are unimportant as she can shape shift. Her John Cusack look alike boss, Jerome, wants her to seduce more men. There is a succubus quota that Georgie’s not quite filling. She’s kind of a slacker succubus. Plus, someone is going around hurting Georgie and her friends (an incubus and a couple of vamps) and it may lead to an immortal throw down of some epic kind.
Georgie’s personal life heats up with the arrival of her favorite author, Seth Morgenstern, in the bookstore for a signing, and the appearance of a very attractive stranger, Roman. Roman aggressively pursues Georgie and while she enjoys the attention, she knows that she cannot be intimate with him. Meanwhile, she and the very shy Seth begin developing a relationship which can also go nowhere.
Georgie’s dissatisfaction is completely believable. She wants a personal connection but her nature denies her. Her life is spent hanging out with her guy friends and reading books. She’s a bit neurotic but she’s had centuries to refine her seduction tecniques to perfection. The shy Seth contrasted with the bold Roman was a great touch.
The problems are that the story is completely devoid of any other meaningful women. There are passing appearances but Georgie has not even one immortal female friend. It seemed odd. A cast of a thousand men appear in this book and many of them could be future love interests for Georgie which makes me leery of future books. [I like to call this the Anita Blake effect]. There was also an issue I had with an event at the end of the story which I felt was unexplained but in clarification I will state I thought while it was explained it seemed weak and contradictory to the fundamental rules that had been built up for Georgie and her world.
Having said that, Georgie is very appealing. The dialogue is smart and the story sped by. I will definitely be aboard for another book. B
Best regards,
Jane
Thanks for the lovely review, Jane. It’s much appreciated!
Although, I should add, she doesn’t have red hair. That’s the cover artist’s doing–she’s a brunette. Just felt I had to clarify that. I’m not writing myself in here… :)
Ms. Mead – Thanks for the correction. The heroine’s hair color did become red to me, based on the cover, and when I looked at the picture on your website, I did think you looked quite close to your cover model. I didn’t know if it changed from the ARC to the finished copy or not.
Yeah…my family thinks I look like the cover model too, which I find disturbing on a lot of levels. I can assure everyone I had no input on that cover…or any of my other covers thus far, really. Sigh.
Thanks again!
What contradiction in mythology, Jane?
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I thought that the end of the book which featured Georgie sucking the life out of Seth but him being hale and hearty after that was a contradiction.
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Jane, it’s not a contradiction. It’s explained. (I don’t want to post more because of spoilers. But believe me, it’s there. I thought it was one of the best moments of the book.)
I thought it was a bit of a cop-out – as if all those issues could be so easily solved. Dunno.
Oh, and it’s not that I didn’t like the scene. I did think it was very touching. I just thought that the explanation was weak.
It’s been awhile (months I think) since I really read SB. But I don’t remember it bugging me.
I think I interpreted it as being like a blood donation. You feel really tired right after it, but then you get back to normal. Except this time your normal life’s been cut short by a few years.
Page 329. Paragraphs three and four.
:-)
completely devoid of any other meaningful women
Ack!!! Is that automatically a bad thing for you? I’m not judging. I just wondered, in part because my upcoming release only has one female – Annie, the heroine. I did that on purpose and can explain why at some point. There are other women mentioned…but, yeah, they’re all pretty much dead [did I mention this is a contemporary romance with moments of humor and not a romantic suspense?]. It never dawned on me that someone might think a negative of the book was the lack of female characters.
HelenKay (who is now in a panic and fighting off the urge to vomit repeatedly…)
I enjoyed this book. It was a different treatment of the good-v-evil element … i liked the dimension of the more human aspects in the supernatural characters – they had their angst and issues. I also liked the tension in Georgie between the ramifications of her current situation and the reflection on why she made that choice – especially when confronted with Seth in a similar situation. I also see potential for her hinted by Carter … he’s hanging around the “bad” side for a reason … time will tell!