Early Review: Tempest Reborn by Nicole Peeler
Tempest Reborn by Nicole Peeler
Jane True #6
Luckily for Jane, those who've given up on Anyan do not include those closest to her. Defying The Powers That Be, Jane and Company form their own crack squad of misfits, in whose hands the fate of the world may well rest.
With a little help from her friends, the Universe, and lots of snacks, Jane embarks on her greatest adventure yet, confident that with great sacrifice comes great reward. The question is, who will be that sacrifice?
Jane True has been dealt some pretty harsh blows recently, but nothing harder than seeing her lover overtaken by the White Dragon. Everyone else feels he is a lost cause as the White and Red must be destroyed at all costs. But Jane isn't willing to give up so easy. Luckily she has some pretty good friends at her side to help her in her impossible quest. Even so, it may not be enough as countless have tried and failed to destroy the Red and White. But none of them have been willing to lay everything on the line before Jane, and that sacrifice may just be the key to it all.
I'm finding that I have very mixed feelings about TEMPEST REBORN. On one hand, I enjoyed it and felt that it was good ending to this series that I have grown to love, especially since there really wasn't a dull moment. However, on the other hand, I never was able to fully connect with the characters like I had in previous installments. There was a good bit of loss and terrible blows dealt in this installment, but they just didn't effect me like they should have. For some reason, the emotions just weren't coming through strong enough this time for me to really feel everything along with the characters. Which really is a shame because there were a lot of moments that I know would have been incredibly impactful to me if I had been more attached. I couldn't even seem to really latch onto Jane. Honestly, she is so much different that the Jane we met in the early books. Now I realize she's had to grow and change due to everything that has happened, and I was incredibly proud of her for stepping up to do what had to be done. But in the same token, I felt she lost that spark of hilarity that pulled me to her in the first place. Sure she still makes some quips and outlandish thoughts, but they felt more forced rather than natural more often than not, making me really miss the older books, which is never a good sign. You always want to move forward in a series, and love each book more than the last, and unfortunately that just hasn't been the case for me.
Another issue I had was with the alchemy sections. To be honest, I did not enjoy this story line at all as I felt it unnecessarily complicated things that already were pretty complicated on their own. I mean when you have such a huge cast with so many players in the plot and so many different foes, adding in a convoluted method to overcome said foes, well it became too much. That's not even to mention the complication of the "universe" addition. That one really got to me, I mean wasn't the Creature always in Jane's head more than enough without having to add yet another large entity? And perhaps all of that is where my character disconnect came about as I was spending too much time trying to understand what was happening that I couldn't just sink in and enjoy.
I have to admit that series endings are a really tough bag for me. Now I appreciate that these books can't be easy to write, especially when you consider how everyone has different opinions about how things should end. So, that being said I try to be as open minded as possible, but more often than not series endings wind up falling short in my book. As far as TEMPEST REBORN goes, while I have to say it was enjoyable, it just didn't quite live up to my expectations based on how much I have loved this series. That being said, while TEMPEST REBORN may not have been everything I hoped, I'm still mostly satisfied with the way things ended, and would recommend it to avid fans of the series.
(Received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley)
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Previous Books:
- Tempest Rising
- Tracking the Tempest
- Tempest's Legacy
- Eye of the Tempest
- Tempest's Fury
