Medusa's Middle Book Syndrome!

It's hard enough being the ancestor of Medusa and her sisters, but being monster hunters and the source of a very vague prophecy that has you ruining the world is just too much. For Gretchen, Greer, and Grace, the prophecy is just the start of their problems in Tera Lynn Childs' Sweet Shadows.

Now that the three sisters, triplets separated at birth, have found one another, it seems as though nothing is normal about their lives. Even Gretchen, whose life trained as a huntress was far from "normal" to begin with, longs for the easy days of training and hunting in between occasionally going to school. Now the girls are embroiled in a life altering decision that they barely understand: the prophecy. As the Key Generation, they are going to be responsible for either opening the door from the abyss to the human world which will unleash all monsters upon humans or closing the door forever, which, as it turns out, isn't such a clear win/win. 

Without Medusa's sisters, who have guided them disguised as mortals for years, and the oracle to confide in, the girls are struggling to decide which direction is best and who to trust. This becomes incredibly more challenging when they learn one faction wants them dead to keep the portal from opening and one wants them to open the portal and then kill them to keep it opened. Feeling like there is no place to run and an impossible decision to make, the girls find themselves torn in different directions. Grace knows something is going on with her brother Thane and her usually rock-solid relationship with her parents is being threatened. Gretchen finally allows herself to start liking a boy only to watch him sucked into the abyss and chooses to go tumbling after him where she learns more about the "monsters" she has been fighting all these years. And Greer must take a long, hard look at her lifestyle and how tea socials and high society events are just not possible within the life as a hunter. But the girls all have one thing in common: they have no idea which end of the prophecy they should be on.

I really like this series and love Tera Lynn Childs, but this was definitely a "middle child" in the trilogy. I am not saying it wasn't a good book, because it was! The struggle for me was that the action was held over from Book 1 and all the conclusions seem to be waiting (im)patiently for book 3. In my opinion, a trilogy should have three separate components that can stand on their own yet still all come together as one cohesive unit. This book had too many ties to its younger and older sisters, leaving it torn and without a real firm purpose on its own. For instance, the whole book we suspect something really horrible is happening to Grace's brother. He is oddly absent and not keeping in touch, and when he does come back, he is clearly hiding something. When the three girls come back together and press on to take care of a legion of monsters, he wants to come with them, then the book is done. You are left with no explanation for what is going on with him and no conclusion, just a whole lot of questions left to hang for another year until the final book. It was pretty frustrating!

This middle child syndrome is rather new for Childs. All her previous series (Oh. My. Gods. and Fins) are connected and continuations of one story, but they are strong in and of themselves as well. While it might bug you to wait a whole year with where this book left off, I hope you don't choose NOT to read this series because of it. Instead, I would recommend waiting until the final book in the trilogy is out and then to read them all in tandem. It will solve any of these problems I had with this book and you will probably get much more out of the story. The story itself is really quite wonderful, and in particular, the ambiguity surrounding the "monsters" is a real-life circumstance people face all the time- what happens when you realize the "bad guy" isn't really bad at all? This is a great mythological tale with real-life practical applications that make this a stellar series. Even if the middle child has a couple of small flaws!

Athena Won't Know What Hit Her

Greek Mythology is so full of interesting stories and characters. The Gods alone are full of material to play off and manipulate into new stories with familiar faces. Kelly Keaton did just that with her first book, Darkness Becomes Her where Athena was an almighty beast of a Goddess who had no problem torturing and killing beings for her own enjoyment. Now, in A Beautiful Evil, we watch Ari, a gorgon girl who hasn't yet come into her own, give Athena a run for her money.


Now that Ari knows what she truly is, the mixture of a gorgon (offspring of Medusa) and Son of Perseus (hunters sworn to kill gorgons and other magical monsters), she realizes how unique she really is. But her impending doom of soon becoming a monster who cannot even be touched without turning people to stone is not what troubles Ari... It is the fact that Athena has her father and Violet, one of the kids who took her in when she found herself in the destroyed Garden District of New Orleans. Ari knows she is no match for a God like Athena, but that won't stop her from hunting Athena down.


Sebastian and the rest of the kids who live with Ari are determined to find Athena, but they have to do so with the help of the Novem, the elite of magical folks who own and run the city of New Orleans. Ari is granted access to the secret library which is stored in Pandora's Box (but not really a box) and holds the secrets of the universe. It is there that she gets the idea of locating Athena's temple and hitting her where it hurts, but the only problem is, the entry to her temple isn't so easy to locate or to open. Hidden in the middle of the wasteland of beasts and soulless creatures of New Orleans, the location of the door might be just as dangerous as what lies on the other side. But there is only one way for Ari to get her father and Violet back, and she has no intention of leaving them to Athena's murderous rage. Even if it means releasing the gorgon inside her.


I really loved the first story, Darkness Becomes Her, but this sequel fell a little flat for me. I did like it, but not as much as I liked the first book. At times the story seemed incredibly rushed. A character would be attacked and die in the course of four paragraphs and *poof* just like that the action had moved on around them. The pace of the book left me a little confused at times, and more than a little frustrated at other times. The way things ended in the final showdown(s) was also symptomatic of this bizarre pacing and I had to reread it to make sure I understood everything that had happened. My other criticism was the supporting characters. In the first book, they were just as awesome as Ari, and you couldn't get enough of them. In this book, they really are secondary characters and their charm is lost in how rarely they appear. I am not sure if I want this series to continue to a third book after reading this sequel, but the author definitely left it open for another book.


This series is age appropriate for young adults and has a good heft of choice language. The story lost its way a little in this second installment, but if a kid enjoyed the first book, they would most likely still enjoy this one. The mythology in it is interesting and I love the twists on old "tried and true" stories. The reading level is fairly simple, but combined with the language, it might be best for a low-skilled older student who needs something accessible to read. 

Old Mythology with a New Twist

Thought you knew Medusa? Mean, old hag who wanted to turn people out of stone out of anger for being romantically spurned? Not so much. As Tera Lynn Childs has done in the past, Sweet Venom takes an old story and makes it exciting again. You won't want to miss the new take on Medusa and her gorgon offspring!


Gretchen accepts her fate in life. She is a huntress, descendant of Medusa, the first huntress. Mythology was tainted by vengeful Gods and Goddesses who wanted the history books to portray Medusa as an evil monster, but in reality she hunted monsters, keeping mortals safe. And her legacy lives on through her generations long after her death. Medusa and her two sisters' children carried their talents and their need to kill monsters. And so Gretchen kills monsters. But when her mentor, Ursula, goes missing, and Gretchen bumps into a girl who could be her twin, she knows something is up... that is besides the fact that all of a sudden there are a lot more monsters on the street.


When Gretchen sees Grace, she is taken aback. But when Grace reacts to the monster Gretchen is trying to finish, she knows Grace is a huntress as well. She takes off with Grace, saving her from the venomous claws or fangs it is trying to sink into the unsuspecting new huntress. At first Gretchen just wants Grace to go away, but when it becomes clear the monsters are not going to stop chasing Grace, Gretchen agrees to train her. In the midst of their training, they realize they are part of something bigger than they both could have imagined- even bigger than all of newly realized Greek Mythology. And the scariest part is they aren't twins... they are triplets.


Tera Lynn Childs usually writes fun, witty, silly books that make you giggle and you enjoy just because they are so fun to read. They aren't the deepest stories in the world, but they certainly entertain. But this book is different. Interesting and exciting, yes, trivial and silly, no. I was surprised by the new tone Childs wrote in, but I liked it! I liked it a lot! And the story was really interesting with the three girls separated at birth to protect their legacy from being destroyed by their deaths. Plus, who could possibly dislike the kooky monsters skulking about the city?


The story is a little darker than her previous novels, but this could be a good transition from the obvious middle reader books into more young adult titles. If readers liked Childs' previous books, but they are growing a little immature for them, pass this on! Plus it is clearly going to be a series (Thanks, by the way Tera Lynn, for leaving me TOTALLY hanging!), and can keep them hooked for much more reading to come!

Darkenss Lit Up My Day!

Greek Gods? Love 'em! Shape shifters? Can't wait to see what they'll "pop" into next! Vampires? Oddly intrigued, but hate to admit it. Witches, wizards, and warlocks? Put a spell on me baby! New Orleans French Cajun culture... oui! Put it all together and what do you get? No, not seven separate books, silly. You get Darkness Becomes Her, by Kelly Keaton, and you are going to love it!

Ari had a strange childhood. Given up at the age of four, she was bounced from horrible foster home to horrible foster home until she was taken in by loving bail bondsmen, Bruce and Casey, who not only love her, they teach her to kick some butt (and full weapons training of course). But Ari needs to know what happened to her mother, so she tracks down the mental institute her mother was committed in when she died. It is there she learns her mother committed suicide shortly after giving Ari up. Ari collects her mother's possessions and in the box, she find a letter from her mother telling her to run, and run fast. Ari ignores the letter at first, but when a big scary man speaking another language attacks her and is impervious to bullets, she knows her mother wasn't crazy after all.

Barely escaping with her life, Ari is determined to find out what really happened to her mother. So she ventures into New 2, what is left of New Orleans. Around the time Ari was given up, a wave of hurricanes all but destroyed New Orleans. The US wanted to abandon it entirely, but a group of 9 New Orleans families came together and bought the city from the country, making it the only privately owned city in North America. New 2 is rumored to be lawless and a paranormal haven, but not many people dare to enter (except a few silly tourists). The culture still exists, but as Ari arrives, she realizes so does a whole population of "freaks"- strange people who turn out to be as paranormal as the rumors said they were. Apparently the 9 families who own New 2, Novem, are made up of vampires, witches and warlocks, and shape shifters. They work together to take care of the city and keep it safe from the real nasties out in the ruins.

When Ari arrives, she is "adopted" by a group of freaks who live in an abandoned house. Sebastian, the leader, agrees to help her find information about her mother. Instead, they find Sebastian's grandmother knew Ari's mom and even paid her hospital bill when Ari was born. When they go to the Novem, of which Sebastian's grandmother is part of, they find there is a terrible curse on Ari's family where the women in her family all die by 21, but not before delivering a baby girl. Sebastian's grandmother agrees to help her fight the curse, but before she can, Ari is kidnapped by a supernatural soldier and taken to a hidden prison. It is there she learns the truth of who she is. She manages to escape and help the other prisoners- a harpy, a shapeshifter woman/spider, and even Sebastian's father, who he thought was gone forever.

The prisoners tell her it is the petulant Greek Goddess Athena who imprisoned them, and it is Athena who cursed Ari's family. It turns out, Ari's curse goes farther back than she or anyone else expected. Now she has the Novem who want to keep her as a weapon, an angry goddess who is simply a jerk, and Ari finds out she can be a real danger to everyone, her friends included, when she comes of age. But Ari won't just give up. She is determined to take control of her life, even if it means showing a Greek God who is really the boss!

This was SUCH an interesting book and it took so many twists and turns I had no idea what was going to happen. I read it in one sitting and was really annoyed when anyone interrupted me because it was so addictive! The interwoven myths and supernatural creatures are so cool, and the truth behind Ari's curse dates right back to Greek mythology. There is another book planned for next year, and I have already pre-ordered it! I can't wait!

There is some forceful language in the story, but most of it is totally deserved (wouldn't you throw out a curse word or two if an awful goddess cursed your family for countless lifetimes and is trying to cook your brain?!). The content can be violent at times, but is nothing gratuitous or violent for the sake of being violent. Instead, it is just the nature of such a story with life and death situations around every bend. This is a great book for almost any student, as it is fast-paced, exciting, and the characters are awesome. You won't be sorry if you pick up this book... but you might be trapped where ever you do because it is too good to put down until you reach that last page!