Amaranth: The Preterhumans Book 1 (edit title/settings)

• Rated 3 stars

“*spoilers* As a lover of fantasy of the epic kind, with lots of quests, swords and wizards, I always was reluctant to pick up anything with vampires, werewolves and with the label 'urban' in it - mostly because I thought it was cliché, contrite and just not worth my time. This book proved me wrong though, that there are at least some stories around that won't fall into the cliché "I need your blood and am lusting after it" vampires or "mysterious goth like" characters that are so smartass that their level of supposedly badass oneliners are just annoying and missing the point. Lizzy Drake is a smartass too, but she has flaws, wonderful flaws that keeps her out of the standard cardboard cutout character region. I like the casual way her society is the regular society as we know it, with Preterhumans (gods, demons, vampires etc) co-existing with us normal humans (albeit on a careful, easy-to-distort balance). The thought of actual demons being professors and witches who don't look like stereotypical witches but could be your next-door neighbor, is quite fun and presented in a realistic way. The book is good to read for anyone who doesn't have English as their native language, and is quite action-packed. However, there are things mentioned that promise a lot more for the future (hopefully in the sequel), as especially Mister Murdock remains a little undeveloped and the sudden return of Lizzy's eldest brother left me a little flabbergasted, that certainly was unexpected and I'm not sure if that was for the 'surprise!' factor or if it has implications for the future... All in all, for someone (me) who has barely read anything in this genre and was pretty biased, this was quite a refreshing relief to read, with an interesting heroine (with amusing patron Gods) who holds even more promise for the next book.”