Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Dangerous Creatures ~ Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl (earc) review [@lbkids @kamigarcia @mstohl #DangerousCreatures]

Dangerous Creatures (Dangerous Creatures #1)
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
May 20, 2014
384 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depo/or Amazon

A new series returns to the world of Beautiful Creatures. Some loves are cursed...others are dangerous.

Ridley Duchannes will be the first to tell you that she's a bad girl. She's Dark. She's a Siren. You can never trust her, or even yourself when she's around. Lucky for her, Wesley "Link" Lincoln can never seem to remember that; quarter Incubus or not, his heart is Mortal when it comes to Ridley. When Link heads to New York City to start a music career, Ridley goes along for the ride-and she has her own reasons. As if leaving small-town Gatlin for the big city, trying to form a band, and surviving life with a partially reformed Siren isn't hard enough already, Link soon learns he has a price on his head that no Caster or Mortal can ever pay.

Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthors of Beautiful Creatures, are back and casting another magical spell. Their signature mixture of mystery, suspense, and romance, along with a dash of fun and danger, will pull fans in and leave them begging for more.

Wesley "Link" Lincoln and Ridley Duchannes were not the main characters in the Beautiful Creatures series. In the Dangerous Creatures series, however, the story is focused on Ethan's best friend (Link) and Lena's cousin (Ridley). It's time to get their story.

The enovella "Dangerous Dream,' a prequel to the Dangerous Creatures series, serves as a great introduction. If you read it, you will know what happened that has lead to where everyone - and their relationships - to where they are at the start of Dangerous Creatures. It's not a necessary read, but will give a fuller picture of things mentioned and what transpired.

The novel does a fantastic job expanding Link and Ridley's characters. They are both still the characters we met and (hopefully) enjoyed in the Beautiful Creatures books, yet they're also so much more. With Ridley's character especially, we learn more about them as individuals, their past, their thoughts and emotions than we possibly could have when they were the supporting characters. I love that the more we learn of them, the more developed the characters become, the Ridley and Link from the first series aren't lost. The characters stay true to who they were as secondary characters while becoming fantastic, worthy main characters. It's not a struggle here to move supporting players into starring roles.

While I can't imagine you would want to, it seems possible to read this spin-off series without reading the other. Some things - Casters, the world that was built over four books - are not given as much explanation here and some characters, relationships they have with each other, or past events are stated only briefly. So much is focused on Link and Ridley, though (this is their series) that their story can be enjoyed on its own.

With Ridley and Link at its center, the story has quite a different tone. It fits the characters very well.

In Dangerous Creatures we discover still more of the Caster world and its dangers. The new discoveries and the new characters function very well alongside Link and Ridley's relationship. This first book in the new series was incredibly enjoyable. Now that I enjoy the characters even more, I cannot wait to see where the series goes (especially after how it ended)!


Rating: 9/10





Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles) series:
Beautiful Creatures
Beautiful Darkness
"Dream Dark"
Beautiful Chaos
Beautiful Redemption

Dangerous Creatures series:
"Dangerous Dream"
Dangerous Creatures 




thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my ecopy for review

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