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Amazon Ink by Lori Devoti
Amazon Ink by Lori Devoti is a new urban fantasy series dealing with Amazons. I was VERY excited to see Amazons being the "paranormal" in a genre that is largely dominated by vampires, were-wolves or the fae. 

Book description:

"It's been ten years since Melanippe Saka left the Amazon tribe in order to create a normal life for her daughter, Harmony. True, running a tattoo parlor in Madison, Wisconsin, while living with your Amazon warrior mother and priestess grandmother is not everyone's idea of normal, but Mel thinks she's succeeded at blending in as human.

Turns out she's wrong. Someone knows all about her, someone who's targeting young Amazon girls, and no way is Mel going to let Harmony become tangled in this deadly web. With her mother love in overdrive, Ms. Melanippe Saka is quite a force...even when she's facing a barrage of distractions -- including a persistent detective whose interest in Mel goes beyond professional, a sexy tattoo artist with secrets of his own, and a seriously angry Amazon queen who views Mel as a prime suspect. To find answers, Mel will have to do the one thing she swore she'd never do: embrace her powers and admit that you can take the girl out of the tribe...but you can't take the tribe out of the girl. "

Though this author normally writes paranormal romances, there is not a "strong" romance thread in this story. There is potential love interests, but due to the view of men that Mel was raised with, it might be a while before those who desire a romance will be satisfied. For those who would prefer the focus to be on anything else but romance, this should be a bonus.

Sounds interesting so far, right? It has a nice "serial killer" thriller idea and you can see a lot of thought put into how an Amazon would react to the current world. The world building is nice and I like how it was explained how the Tribes function in this day and age without being noticed by the average human. I do wonder if there is more Amazons running outside of the Tribes in the world secretly taking over the world or something though as the way the Tribes are represented seem like something the younger ones would rebel against to "move with the times" as the Amazons are very set in their ways and don't like change at all. So far, only seems Mel is the type to move out of the common accepted path, but there has to be others. Something that I felt would've been more realistic, but they do have strict rules on "outcasts".

The use of the tattoos were fun and creepy when it is mentioned that those are what the killer is focusing on keeping as a trophy. Kind of grisly, but no big descriptions going on so there is no feeling of reading a gore book. It is almost brushed over lightly to keep it more of a "PG" rating than a R rating. The way the tattoos were held by the Amazons were cool and the fact Mel has a tattoo shop was interesting. Not often you see in books where the heroine is an owner of a business like this.

I enjoyed the supporting characters, especially the grandmother and Peter. I'll be honest, I was more interested in the supporting characters and background characters than Mel. I think it is because they seemed to have more of an interesting background and story than Mel. Mel's problems were a bit too common in this genre with nothing that really caught my interest as strongly as the idea of what Peter and others like him went through. Plus, her involvement seemed almost forced and random to start with until you find out who the killer is. Fine when you get to the ending, but not so much through the rest of the book.

I am a tad torn on this book. I liked the idea of it, but there were too many problems with the book for me to truly enjoy it. I didn't really connect with Mel. Part of the problem with that is right off the bat, we are told that she isn't going to report the teens deaths to any of the authorities. When she finally does reveal that there is a "problem" with two teens missing, it is done in such a roundabout way for the amazons that seemed disrespectful to the ghosts of the dead teens.

And since there is a big angst scene over Mel needing to also lay them to rest and how guilty she feels for not doing more to start with, this bothered me a lot. Her reasoning to protect her child I could understand, but it still didn't make logical sense. The best way to protect her child is to have everyone under the sun looking to stop the killer. Especially if the killer is focusing on her house or her family. Instead, SHE is going to stop the killer despite not having the training or the knowledge to really make a good detective. Plus, her missing obvious clues or constant jumping to conclusions didn't help on taking her seriously.

It didn't help that we are constantly exposed to the author writing over and over how her protective mother instinct was being aroused or flaring up ect. It was getting a tad annoying and made me wonder how Harmony managed to go to school without her mom being there. Definitely hard to take as a serious "detective".

Also, I was a bit bothered by the fact that none of the Amazons who usually age up to a hundred and more (I think one was said to be 500, but can't swear to it) didn't act or think like a long lived being would. The lead was said to have lived for a long time, but she seemed not to have much life experience and pretty naive about the facts of life for such and old being who lived such a "brutal philosophy" way of life.

I did like the scene where Mel decided to hire a new artist and her realization that she was continuing on with being as bad as the other Amazons she kept judging for doing the same thing she was guilty of. Guilty of viewing no male of worthy of working at her shop. But she realized it.  That kind of growth works for me. Moving beyond one's preconceptions is always a good thing. Unfortunately, this theme didn't stick throughout the book though it seemed to be one of the "lessons" it was trying to convey.

The more fascinating part of the book came near the end when you find out who and what the killer and other characters are. Not enough time devoted to it. I figure that is what the sequel (Amazon Queen) might be about is the ramifications of this knew knowledge.

My other biggest complaint was the fight scenes. The descriptions lacked or seemed to simple of a battle to really interest me. There was no sense of danger. Even the grand fight scene with the killer was... blah. The fact that the "victim" came back to give a "totem" to Mel for no real obvious reason in the middle of a friggin fight just made me laugh. Yeah, you got someone who has no idea what the hell is going on and is almost killed while superpower crap is going on is going to come running over to hand over a "totem" while mentioning who gave casually like you would at dinner.  Um...yeah. Need to teach some common sense to these characters.

Mel's abilities and "powers" were a bit too vague for me. You didn't really get a sense of what her arsenal had in that department so it made it hard to take the fights seriously because she was going to pop up with some new power easily that the reader didn't know she had or whether it made sense to the "magic system" designed for this world. The killer's actually made more sense to me and seemed more useful in battle. Something that needs to be worked on and clearer in future books in my opinion.

I think in a way, the book would've been a better story if the author had focused more on the characters like Peter or her grandmother and told their stories from their point of view. It would've been different and more interesting to me at least than watching Mel trying to protect her daughter from a killer despite the fact she obviously didn't know what she was doing.

The book itself isn't totally bad, just some obvious problems with the story that could've been improved. It was a decent read for something different, but not a keeper. I give major points for an original idea and the use of Amazons over other more common paranormals you find in this field.

About Shar
Shar is one of those rare readers who doesn't want to write books. She just wants to read everyone else's instead. Her dream is to own the most massive book library on the planet. She lives somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains where she can be found harassing the local bookstores for more books. Her favorite genre lately is adult or young adult dark fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. You can read more of her ramblings at her shartyrant.livejournal blog where she tries to corrupt others into joining her on her quest to find more books to read.


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