Review for Wilde’s Meadow (Darkness Falls #3) by Krystal Wade

TITLE: Wilde’s Meadow
SERIES: Darkness Falls #3
AUTHOR: Krystal Wade
PUBLICATION DATE: November 4, 2012
PUBLISHER: Curiosity Quills Press
PAGES: 314 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC
SOURCE: Publisher via NetGalley
RATING: 2 bows

It’s time for war. In the previous novel, Kate built an army to go to war with a god and it’s go time. Kate knows the battle will be hard and lives will be lost, but it must happen for Encardia to have light and happiness. Can she do what she was destined to or will she fail and doom her people.

I’ve been relatively nice in the reviews for the previous books in this series. None of them are bad, but they aren’t particularly good either. That ends here. I found this novel to be boring and just plain annoying. Had I not gotten an audio copy, I would have never made it threw this. I found myself listening at every possible moment not because I needed more of the story, but because I needed it to be over. I needed to be done with this and mark it off my list.

Kate is just as bad here as she is in the previous novels. I found her to be just plain annoying and I was wholly ambivalent to her situation. Had she died, I probably wouldn’t have cared. That, my friends, is saying something. We all know I hate character death. We all know that is one of my biggest pet peeves. If I can’t bring myself to care if the lead character lives or dies, we have a problem, a big fucking problem. But I didn’t care. I’m so sick of the special little snowflakes and their destinies. Plus, she’s as dense as a box of rocks. She doesn’t realize obvious things and her minor screw ups just had me rolling my eyes, instead of sympathizing with her, as I’m sure was the author’s intent.

Then we have Arland, Kate’s perfect love. That’s just what he is, perfect.

He is too damn perfect. He’s a goodie too shoes who always says the right thing and does the right thing and I just wanted to punch him. The man needs some flaws to bring him down to Earth and he just doesn’t have any. He’s a damned robot and I hated him.

Even though I didn’t care about most of the cast, I found the fact that almost everyone dies incredibly irritating. If you like any particular character besides Kate and Arland, don’t hold high hopes for their survival because there is a lot of death and “sacrificing.” Kate isn’t worth all this. One of my big issues with this series is that once Kate gets control of her powers, all she has to do is ask her magical god for help in fighting or protecting or healing or whatever she needs and he complies. He sends a bunch of magical sprites to help. This guys do everything from heal mortal wounds to terminate bad guys to lighting the way. Once you learn that, WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CONTINUE FIGHTING?

Why do you do anything except that? Get in the middle of the battle, ask for help, BAM. You win. Oh? The process drains her?

Give the bitch a sandwich, let her take a nap, and then proceed to the next damn battle! I had big issues with that. That is an insta-win for the battles.

Basically this novel annoyed the hell out of me and I’m glad it’s over. I can’t say I’ll be recommending this series to anyone. The first two are mediocre and this conclusion wasn’t particularly satisfying. Maybe you’ll like it more than I did, but I doubt it.

****Thank you to Curiosity Quills Press for providing me with an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review****

Review for Wilde’s Army (Darkness Falls #2) by Krystal Wade

TITLE: Wilde’s Army
SERIES: Darkness Falls #2
AUTHOR: Krystal Wade
PUBLICATION DATE: July 3, 2012
PUBLISHER: Curiosity Quills Press
PAGES: 317 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC
SOURCE: Publisher via NetGalley
RATING: 3 bows

Katriona Wilde’s life was turned upside down in the last novel. Now, she’s trying to live with that, rescue her love, and build an army to fight a war. She feels ill prepared, but pushes forward. She is forced into a shakey alliance with Perth, the man she is supposed to marry due to a betrothal beyond her control. That isn’t ever going to happen. She will be with Arland, as soon as she rescues him and Perth can either deal with it or not. But Perth isn’t really the problem. The feud between the people of this magical land is. She has to unite them. She has to have an army to fight a war. How will she ever make that happen?

Instead of doing my usual spiel about each important character, I’m going to…..


Well I don’t know what I’m going to do, but not that. I feel like I can’t really go in depth about any particular character because I don’t really care about any of them. Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe I’m just irritated about them. Kate has that special little snowflake thing going on, which is fine…except I’m incredibly tired of that. There’s one person who can save us all or we all die painfully. Oh? She fell in the tub and pushed her head and is now dead?
Well, fuck. I never truly loved them, but now there are so many that you can stand in a book store and point in any direction and I assure you there will be a book in that area about a special little snowflake.

The only character I really liked a little was Perth, which I don’t think was the intended reaction. He is the only one that shows growth. He is genuinely trying to help and improve even though it goes against everything and it could get him killed. He is also witty and funny and I felt so bad for him because we know he’s not getting the girl.

One of my issues, besides the special little snowflake thing, was the way it was written. This is the second book in a trilogy. I have read the first one, but it was a llllllllooooonnnnnnnggggggg time ago. This isn’t really written in a way that makes it easy to understand if you haven’t either just finished the first one or don’t have enough braincells to accurate remember the majority of the first one, regardless of when you read it. This is a problem for me. Upon finishing the first one, I found I didn’t like it overly much. That was back when I first started reviewing and I requested the second one mainly to give it a chance to improve and then the third one because, hey, might as well finish the series, right?

But then life happened and I got approved for more books and these kinda feel by the wayside because I wasn’t really overly enthused about them. My very convoluted point is that these can definitely not be read as stand-alones. You need the first one and since my recollection of Wilde’s Fire is fuzzy at best, I was more than a little lost many times.

I had to listen to this thing entirely on audio. Had I needed to actual read to get through it, I have a feeling it would have taken me a lot longer to get through. I feel like not only is it plagued with SLS syndrome, but it’s also got that middle book thing going on. Things happen, but not a lot….besides lots of character death. Which usually bugs me, but since I couldn’t remember who half the people where or Kate’s connection to them, I was mostly okay with them. There is some fighting and stuff, but nothing that felt like it mattered.

It gets three stars because there is nothing specifically wrong with it, I just didn’t care much for it on a whole. What I’m trying to say is that if you didn’t love the first book, this one isn’t going to be an improvement. It’s more of the same. If you loved the first one, I see no reason you won’t love this. I already have the audio for book three, so hopefully I’ll get to that sooner rather than later. I don’t hold high hopes that I’ll love it, but anything is possible!

****Thank you to Curiosity Quills Press for providing me with an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review****