Review: Spider’s Bite {Elemental Assassin, #1} by Jennifer Estep

 

 

 

 

 

 

"'’My name is Gin, and I kill people."
My name is Gin Blanco. They call me the Spider — the most feared assassin in the South (and a part-time cook at the Pork Pit BBQ joint.) As a Stone elemental, I can hear the whispers of the gravel beneath my feet and feel the vibrations of the soaring mountains above me, though I don't use my powers on the job unless I absolutely have to. Call it professional pride.
After a ruthless Air elemental double-crossed me and killed my handler, I'm out for revenge. And I'll exterminate anyone who gets in my way. I may look hot in a miniskirt, but I'm still one of the bad guys. Which is why I'm in trouble when irresistibly rugged Detective Donovan Caine agrees to help. The last thing a coldhearted killer needs when she's battling a magic more powerful than her own is a sexy distraction ... especially when he wants her dead just as much as the enemy”

From Goodreads.

• Publisher: Pocket Books

• Release Date: January 9th, 2010

• My Copy: Paperback, personally bought.

• Pages: 395

• Series: Elemental Assassin

• Genre: Urban Fantasy

• Author's Website

• Buy This Book:

Spider's Bite (Elemental Assassin, Book 1)

 

I love it when a book comes out that just brings the perfect mix of the old, the new and the weird. You get elements you are used to and right along with it you get to read a story that takes place in a world not so different from ours, but that the differences are enough to make us sit back and take notice.

Gin Blanco is an assassin and a damn good one at that. She is also our heroine, so basically the woman we are supposed to relate to and follow through on this series has all the making of a villain. It might sound farfetched but Jennifer Estep makes it work and in style.

After her family was killed in an awful manner, Gin went to live in the street when she was only 13. A while later a man named Fletcher, owner of a barbecue place called The Pork Pit, took her in and thought her everything she knows and made her into the assassin she is now, The Spider.

Getting tired of her job, Gin has been considering retirement with her handler seal of approval, but she get greedy and decides to take one last job and that’s when things go south, really fast.

Spider’s bite is dark urban fantasy at it’s best with a heroine that could be the villain but that you can’t help but love and root for. The book is a wild ride and non-stop pretty gruesome action not for the faint hearted. Gin’s sense of humor definitely helps keep things light at times, though admittedly her sense of humor can be a bit morbid.

There is also a romantic interest for our girl Gin and that is police detective Donovan Caine. Perhaps the last honest cop in Ashland police force, Caine has been hunting the murder of his partner who is no one else than the Spider. When he finds himself in a situation where he has to work with her instead of arrest her and where his attraction to the woman might get the best out him, he starts questioning what he has always thought was right.

Even though I did really enjoy Spider’s bit, I had a couple problems with it. Gin’s internal voice got annoying and repetitive at times, with her explaining something that had just happened a couple pages before. It also bothered me the constant use of the same adjectives to describe Caine’s scent and her “mmm” in approval whenever she got her sight on him.

Don’t get me wrong, none of that got in the way of me enjoying the book, a lot, but it did annoy me from time to time. All in all Spider’s bite is a great addition to the Urban Fantasy genre and a series I really look forward to read more of. I’m happy that I waiting until I got both the first and second before I read it, because the ending got me really excited about the sequel.

If you are an Urban Fantasy fan like me I totally recommend this series to you!

  Smut meter says:

 

Next in The Elemental Assassin Series:

“Web of Lies” is out Right NOW!

“Venom” Comes Out on September 28th, 2010!

  & “Tangled Threads” Comes out April 26th, 2011!

 

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