Review: Spider's Revenge by Jennifer Estep

Title: Spider's Revenge (Elemental Assassin #5)
Author: Jennifer Estep
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Heat Index: 2 out of 5 (meaning there’s smut, but not the hardcore scenes you’re going to be thinking about at a later point in time)
Release Date: September 27th, 2011
Word/Page Count: 400
Format: Purchased

Old habits die hard. And I plan on murdering someone before the night is through.

Killing used to be my regular gig, after all. Gin Blanco, aka the Spider, assassin-for-hire. And I was very good at it. Now, I'm ready to make the one hit that truly matters: Mab Monroe, the dangerous Fire elemental who murdered my family when I was thirteen.

Oh, I don't think the mission will be easy, but turns out it's a bit more problematic than expected. The bitch knows I'm coming for her. So now I'm up against the army of lethal bounty hunters she hired to track me down. She also put a price on my baby sister's head. Keeping Bria safe is my first priority. Taking Mab out is a close second.

Good thing I've got my powerful Stone and Ice magic - and my irresistible lover Owen Grayson - to watch my back. This battle has been years in the making, and there's a chance I won't survive. But if I'm going down, then Mab's coming with me... no matter what I have to do to make that happen.

Arai's Review:

I know that I have been looking forward to reading this book since discovering this series about two months ago, especially since reading the summary. Finally, we get a resolution to the Mab and Gin war. And I'm happy to say the book fulfills on the tense action showdown that has been building since we first met these characters in book one.

Estep does a great job of continually building the anticipation, keeping the ball rolling around in your stomach until the bitter end. There are moments in the book when, as the reader, you're so tense that you're second- and third-guessing the decisions made by Gin. Not only that, but you're practically ready to yell at her because Estep has you jumping at shadows.

While I enjoyed this addition to the Elemental Assassin series, it does take about 100 pages before you get past Estep's tendency to repeat and rehash everything that has happened in previous books. As an author, Estep seems to have a tendency to underestimate the ability of her readers to quickly put the pieces together and, as a result, some parts of the book can feel a little too dragged out while you're waiting for Gin and company to catch up.

The first 100 pages also continually make you feel like you're picking up the series for the first time because Estep will drop in paragraphs of world-building information that has been established in the first book. Actually, the first four books. You’ll learn that Gin keeps her knives with one up each sleeve, in the middle of her back, and in each boot. You learn that in the first book on her first assignment. You subsequently relearn this information at least 10 times per book. It’s like that one random factoid that your professor keeps repeating and repeating and repeating in class, making you think it HAS to be some insanely important point for how much it’s repeated only to find out it isn’t even mentioned on the test. While Estep might try to keep it to a brief summary, it drags down the first couple chapters, especially when you can spot those sentences that have been copied and pasted from previous books. Or previous chapters. Sometimes previous pages. Never previous paragraphs though, at least. Win?

With the conclusion to the overarching story with Mab, along with the wrapping up of a couple other stories, it feels like this book should have been the last in the series. I mean, it’s like Steve Carell leaving “The Office;” you know that there can be other stories told, but it isn’t the same. You lost that elephant that’s been looming in the room for the past four books and you’re not quite sure how to proceed without it. Granted, there are still a couple loose threads with Gin and the gang, but it will be interesting to see what Estep does in the next book to keep the series fresh and invigorating instead of making the next book seem like an afterthought to the conclusion.