Poison Fruit (Jacqueline Carey)
** this review contains spoiler, read at your own risk, too lazy to use spoiler tag **
Well, as the last book in the series, I will say it was pretty much decent (if not so-so).
Let's see, almost the first half of this book Daisy was dealing with The Night Hag that had been terrorizing some of Pemkowet's people in their nightmares and ended up killing an elderly (who was literally scared to death). We also had Daisy musing about her doomed relationship with Cody and worrying about her fate of destroying the world. The second half of the book, we had Pemkowet being sued with a class-action lawsuit for damages that happened during events in the previous book. It was basically a ruse, conducted by hell-spawn lawyer Daniel Dufreyne, who acted on behalf of Persephone.
So, the thing was, I thought the whole war thing (which started with the lawsuit) was just a waste of my reading time. I mean, Persephone wanted Pemkowet for herself because she wanted a resort; a summer home for herself. I mean, really?? AND, since that brought down Persephone in war with the whole supernatural beings of Pemkowet and Hel's army ... which supposed to be kind of epic war ... Daisy ended up claiming her birthright, only to ... uhm, strike a deal with God.
And angel came down from Heaven to fix the whole thing.
Yes. A deal with God. And Angel came down from Heaven...
Look, I like angel and demon myth in urban fantasy. I really do. But bringing an angel to fix everything in this context was like bringing a rocket launcher to a knife fight. It was laaame. It just emphasized my thought that Daisy was incompetent. I was kinda hoping that Daisy stepped up and be the heroine of the day, to do something impressive (well, she did beg Persephone before, which already made me lose my faith in her) to prove to me that she was suitable for her role as Hel's liasion. But nope, it took God to fix everything.
Sigh.
And don't get me start with the whole Daisy-Cody-Stefan thing. It seemed that Daisy paid more attention to her love problems. Oh, Cody couldn't be with me. Oh, maybe I had a chance with the immortal. Oh, but I still had feelings for Cody, so complicated... I mean, the whole time that Daisy could investigate Daniel, she was busy romancing Stefan because Cody couldn't be with her. Uhm, excuse me, hell-spawn lawyer there!! But all Daisy did was asking Daniel "Who are you working for?", then Daniel refused to answer, she didn't really do anything (she did throw tantrums at Stefan because of her complicated feelings towards Cody). She definitely didn't win any points with me all through this second storyline.
I would still give this 3-stars because I actually LIKED the plot with The Night Hag. I thought in this plot at least Daisy was trying to find out what happened. She was looking for clues, answers on how to get rid of The Night Hag. She went to multiple sources. Then when it was clear she needed to have a nightmare of her own to invite The Night Hag, she did it. So the first half of this book, I liked Daisy.
The rest.... well, not so much.
It is a decent series but I'm glad that this one is the end because it is not a very memorable one for me.