Possession (Blood Ties, Book 2)

Features

• Cover Type: Mass Market Paperback with 384 pages
• Published by: Mira February 1, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0778324184
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0778324188
• Book Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 5.6 ounces

Publishers Weekly on The Turning
". . . This fast, furious novel is a squirm-inducing treat."

Book Description
My father always said fear was a weakness. Well, that's easy to say when you don't have to worry about vampire slayers or holy water. I hate fear, but undead life goes on. In the two months since I was attacked in the hospital morgue and turned into a vampire, I've killed my evil sire, Cyrus, fallen in love with my new sire, Nathan, and have even gotten used to drinking blood. Just when things are finally returning to normal--as normal as they can be when sunlight can kill you--Nathan becomes possessed. And then he slaughters an innocent human.

Now it's my job to find Nathan before the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement does, because they're just waiting for an excuse to terminate him--and anyone foolish enough to help him. But it gets worse. It turns out that Nathan's been possessed by one of the most powerful and wicked vampires alive--the Soul Eater. And who knows what vile plan he's concocted?

With the Soul Eater and my possessed sire on the loose, I have a lot to fear. Including being killed. Again.



Reader Reviews
The second book in Jennifer Armintrout's Blood Ties series begins with the rebirth of one of the most wicked vampires the world has ever known, Cyrus Seymour. In fact Cyrus' dark deeds are exceeded only by those of his father, the sinister and powerful vampire known to others as the Soul Eater. At the end of the first book, Blood Ties: The Turning, newly turned vampire Dr. Carrie Ames killed Cyrus, her former sire, and Possession begins with a group of vampires bringing Cyrus back from the dead. When he comes back he's human, which he believes is a curse worse than death, and has no idea why anyone would go through the trouble to resurrect him if only to leave him as a mortal. Sheltered by a group of vampire bikers known as the Fangs, Cyrus is informed that the Soul Eater wants him alive but isn't given any detail about why. He begins to get used to his human body with the help of a teenage girl who the Fangs kept alive to take care of him. Initially, he resents her innocent nature and tries to be cruel to her as he would have when he ruled the vampires on earth. But slowly his human nature takes over and he finds himself wanting to take care of the little mouse who nurtures him, and to find a way to protect her from the wicked vampires holding them hostage... Meanwhile, Carrie is still living with Nathan Galbraith, her second sire. Though she and Nathan live together, they aren't a couple and can't manage to have a relationship despite their occasional romps between the sheets to satisfy the demands of the blood tie between them. When Nathan becomes possessed, the first thing everyone thinks is that it must be the Soul Eater. After he kills an innocent human, Nathan draws the attention of the organization he once worked for--the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement. Their rules state that vampires who kill humans and those who make new vampires are a threat to humanity and must be exterminated. They send an assassin to kill him and Carrie joins with Nathan's friend Max to try to save him before the VVEM's assassin can murder him. Like a lot of romantic series, Armintrout spends a good deal of the first few pages giving readers a quick rundown of what happened in the first Blood Ties book. With that in mind, you could read this book out of context--but why would you want to? Blood Ties: Possession has none of the gripping, edgy, romantic suspense that made the first book so enthralling and was, as a whole, a disappointment. After I finished The Turning, I marked my calendar for February 2007 and placed the book on my Amazon wish list so that I would be sure to pick it up the moment it hit stores. I'm mad I wasted the time. This book is a subpar sequel in just about every way a book could be subpar. First of all, one of the things that was so great about the first Blood Ties book was that it was a new twist on paranormal romance and had all sorts of new perspectives I hadn't encountered in the old Sherrilyn Kenyon/Laurell K. Hamilton vampire worlds. In Armintrout's vampire world, in order to be turned not only does a human have to be bitten by a vampire, but he or she then has to be given the blood of the vampire who bit them. This blood exchange, called a blood tie, links the two for life and binds them to one another's emotions, memories, and desires. In the first book, this was enthralling and watching Carrie's reaction to the blood tie--the way it could make her fall under the spell of quite possibly one of the most vicious "heroes" I've ever encountered--was intriguing and made for exciting reading. I finished the first book in a few hours and, as I said before, couldn't wait to pick this one up. But in the second book, all of the things that made the first book so successful, the way the tie could make even the worst person seem lovable, were allowed to just fall by the wayside as Armintrout went somewhere completely different with the story. In this book Carrie's character is not only annoying, she's a wishy-washy joke who has no idea what she wants. She vacillates between loving Nathan, missing Cyrus, hating Cyrus, mourning Nathan, needing Cyrus--pick a side! The way she just jumps head first into things without even thinking about the repurcussions of her actions may have worked in the first book, when she was a newly turned vampire, but it's two years later and you'd think a woman who graduated from medical school would have a bit more common sense. I couldn't like Carrie in this book which made it, as a whole, disappointing. In fact, about the only person I could stand in Possession was the same person who I couldn't stand in the first book--Cyrus. When he becomes human, he espouses the virtues of humanity and though he hates himself for it initially, he becomes a better person. When something happens about halfway through the book (that's Carrie's fault, another reason I can't stand her) that causes him to doubt his newfound humanity, it made things drag from then on. If you enjoyed The Turning, I suppose you should read Possession, but be prepared to be disappointed. In no way is this book as good as its predecessor and it's very clear at the end that we're being prepped for another sequel. A sequel I will not buy. I'm sorry but this one just wasn't worth it and I can't give up another $7 of my money for a series that doesn't know where it's going. Comments (3) | | (Report this)