Ami's Hoard

** SPOILERY REVIEW; I FEEL TOO LAZY USING SPOILER TAGS; YOU'VE BEEN WARNED **

First of all, I must give credits where credits due -- I know that Goodreads' recommendation section could be real wonky (how they came up with MF book for my MM shelves, I had no idea). BUT sometimes, they do just right. I would never find this book if I wasn't browsing through GR recommendation based on my urban fantasy with male protagonist shelf. The title and blurb mentioning "necromancer" just pulled me in -- I hadn't read a lot of UF with that character. So I went ahead with it (plus it matched my personal reading challenge theme for May 2014)

... and it was GREAT!

** The Story **

I thought it was fun, crazily good, and quite horrifying at the same time -- I mean, come on, Sam found out that his friend was murdered and her head was delivered to his door as a message?!? How was THAT not scary?! But it was also fun because somehow the tone of this book made it fall into the engaging fantastic reading joyride instead. Yes, Sam suffered in the hand of that psychotic Douglas ... yes, Brid was caged and her blood taken for experiment ... yes, Brooke was dead (although she did return as a ghost ha!) ... but somehow, I didn't feel like it was depressing.

What I also enjoyed the most was that Sam never suffered from that martyr syndrome that I sometimes found in an urban fantasy series. Sam realized that he was out of his head with Douglas's threat, so he set to get more knowledge by going to people he knew and he was willing to receive help. I loved reading the secondary characters; Sam's friends and family helping him. I loved reading about how Sam slowly finding out truth about himself and the power he had within him -- as he tried to defeat Douglas.

The final battle was awesome -- the way Sam used the knife like that, stabbed Douglas' throat, while the army of dead was fighting with weres and other creatures? Totally rocked! I was a bit worry with the fact that Douglas left no corpse though -- and judging from blurb of book #2, Douglas could be one of those villains that kept coming back from the dead.

** The Characters **

I loved ALL of them -- really, I did. Maybe except for Douglas, though he was quite a worthy villain. I just wished his characters were more developed though, I still couldn't really understand about his motivation for the experiment ... but anyway, everybody else was great. I liked how Sam could still be snarky and he really quite a kicking ass hero.

I loved the loyal Ramon. I loved the smarty mouth Brooke. I loved Brid, the hybrid werewolf (although attitude wise, she was a bit too similar with Sam). I loved the weird harbinger Ashley, who used Blackberry and had penchant for waffles. I loved Sam's mother, Sam's little sister, and Sam's neighbor, Mrs. W. I was intrigued with Sam's uncle, Nick, and I hoped I could read more of him in the next book. All in all, it was a great round-up of characters.

Now, I did have complaints ...

** The Writing **

Yes, the snarky comments and one liners were great. BUT, I wasn't a huge fan of the 1st and 3rd POV structure of this book. I never really a fussy girl when it came to point-of-views in books, and I read some books before with different POVs (1st and 3rd) that work. However, in this one, it was distracting and made the story rather disjointed. I appreciated being able to see the whole situation from other characters' perspective but it was probably better if Sam was also written in third person rather than first. Also there were more than one flashbacks that kinda slowed the story down.

The fact that I still could give this 4-stars showed that plot and characters charmed me more than the issues I had with the technicality / writing. Good to know there is book #2 already. This might be (another) series I can follow...