Good day all… as promised, here’s the review for the second of three books I read whilst on holiday in Istanbul, Turkey.
This time, I’m reviewing Jewel of Atlantis, a paranormal romance in Gena Showalter’s Atlantis series of books.
So here’s my candid review…
Jewel of Atlantis
Gena Showalter
All Atlantis seeks the Jewel of Dunamis, which legend claims can overcome any enemy. Grayson James, human agent of the ultra-secret Otherworld Bureau of Investigation, has orders to keep it from the wrong hands—or destroy it. What he doesn’t know is that Jewel is a woman, not a stone! But once he meets this precious gem, destroying her is the last thing on his mind…
Jewel, part goddess, part prophet, is a pawn in Atlantis’s constant power struggles. She needs Gray’s help to win freedom and uncover the secrets of her mysterious origins. Gray needs her wisdom to navigate monster-ridden Atlantis. But need blossoms into passionate love as they fight demons, dragons, vampires—and a prophecy that says the bond between them could destroy them both.
REVIEW
Jewel of Atlantis, book 2 in Gena Showalter’s Atlantis series, kicks off with Grayson ‘Gray’ James venturing through the forests of Atlantis and fighting to remain in one piece as he searches for Dunamis.
And from the word go, I just didn’t like him.
Having read and loved the first book in the series, Heart of the Dragon, I was eager to read the second to see if it would be just as good. Unfortunately, the hero didn’t appeal in the slightest. Gray is a walking hard-on, and it doesn’t make him manly like the author clearly wanted it to. He’s not sexy because his mind is always on getting into a girl’s knickers, or attractive because he’s oh-so-horny all the time. He was just… well… tiring. The first third of the book, prior to his meeting Jewel, he’s got a one track mind and it’s on repeat. I was so tired of reading through paragraphs of his thoughts about getting it on that I was tempted to skip ahead, or skip the book all together. When he finally meets Jewel, things get a little better. Well, he stops thinking about sex all the time and spends his waking minutes trying to get into her pants instead.
I have to admit, I didn’t really like Jewel as a character either. She was painted as someone strong and very powerful, but in reality she was weak enough to let everyone else boss her around and possess her, even though she had the power of suggestion and could manipulate thought to make people do her bidding/look the other way. It seemed odd that she wasn’t using those powers to stop people from capturing her all the time and using her when she was so obsessed with being free.
The whole story felt as though it was trying to be really sensual and erotic, and it came at the expense of a good storyline. The blurb reveals everything too. Nothing really new within the actual pages of the book. I think the story would have been infinitely better had we not known from the outset that Jewel was the jewel, and had the author kept it a mystery and had a big reveal. Knowing everything from the start just made reading it feel fairly pointless.
I think after the first book in the series, this one fell ridiculously short of the mark. I mean, Heart of the Dragon is up there, at the pinnacle of a mountain, as close to Heaven as it can get, whilst Jewel of Atlantis is slumming it in the valley, staring adoringly up and wishing it was up there with that dragon book too.
Gray wasn’t one tenth of the man that Darius in Heart of the Dragon was. He was just a walking dick. Or as my husband called him when I talked to him about the book: a sex pest. Also, are all the heroines in the books going to be virgins? Because that will get old real quick.
The writing lacked sparkle in places, with some weird word choices and some sentences that I had to read several times to understand, but I’m coming to expect that of Ms Showalter now. I think it’s the Harlequin way. There isn’t as much repetition in this book though, if you forget you ever read Gray’s endless thoughts about naked women, which is good.
The story benefitted greatly from the fact that I was trapped in an airport waiting for a delayed flight for several hours, and with another four hours flight time on top of that. If I hadn’t been a captive audience, I might have walked away from this one and placed it on my did-not-finish pile. What it didn’t benefit from was the fact that I read this book hot on the heels of finishing Midnight Rising by Lara Adrian, another fabulous instalment in her Midnight Breeds series (I’ll be reviewing that book too).
All in all, Jewel of Atlantis felt very flat and never really gripped me. I didn’t care about the characters, and the plot really lacked sparkle. It takes a lot for me not to finish a story once I start reading, but it was close this time.
Read reviews of Jewel of Atlantis by Gena Showalter on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6590320-jewel-of-atlantis
