Acheron, by Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'll start off right away by saying that I'm not a huge fan of Kenyon's writing style. She obviously has an amazing imagination and clearly knows her mythology and history, yet she persists in creating cookie cutter characters and situations designed only to bring two characters together.

This is me maybe expecting a little too much out of a paranormal romance (heavy emphasis on the romance) series, but I'm disappointed all the same. Kenyon taps into this rich vein of mythological knowledge and still creates lackluster characters that are hard to differentiate between, with a few notable exceptions. This is not the only book of hers that I've read either, so I'm not just commenting on Acheron alone.

That being said, it took me about two weeks to slog through Acheron. The first part of the book, Acheron's past, was downright depressing. I enjoy depressing books, but this was just heaping painful experience on top of painful experience. I wanted to shout at Kenyon, "Alright! We get it! He's been abused! He's had a terrible past! We get it! Move on, please." And finally, after about four hundred pages of agony (for the reader as much as the main character) she does.

The second part was a little more compelling, bringing in Tory, who was semi-interesting. The most memorable character out of the whole book, however- I kid you not- was Simi. Her take on everything was just immensely amusing. Artemis was a boring bitch, Acheron's friends were one buff, dangerous-but-in-touch-with-his-feminine-side dude after another. The daimons felt recycled off of the CW network.

Even with all this negative stuff though, I will say that Kenyon writes a decent manga and has a few characters worth remembering (ie: Jaden, Asmodeus, Simi). It will be interesting to see how Acheron turns out in manga form.