HISTORICAL URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: Danilov Quintet 3: The Third Section - Jasper Kent

Release Date: 18/08/11

SYNOPSIS:

Russia 1855. After forty years of peace in Europe, war rages. In the Crimea, the city of Sevastopol is besieged. In the north, Saint Petersburg is blockaded. But in Moscow there is one who needs only to sit and wait – wait for the death of an aging tsar, and for the curse upon his blood to be passed to a new generation.

As their country grows weaker, a man and a woman - unaware of the hidden ties that bind them - must come to terms with their shared legacy. In Moscow, Tamara Valentinovna Komarova uncovers a brutal murder and discovers that it not the first in a sequence of similar crimes, merely the latest, carried out by a killer who has stalked the city since 1812.

And in Sevastopol, Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov faces not only the guns of the combined armies of Britain and France, but must also make a stand against creatures that his father had thought buried beneath the earth, thirty years before..


REVIEW:

To be honest I’ve been reading Jasper’s work since he burst on the scene with his debut, Twelve which I loved with the blend of historical fiction and the vampire myth. It worked wonderfully well and announced a new name with a thrilling concept for fans of the undead as well as the historical fiction hero.

After this came the second book (Thirteen Years Later) which built upon the success of the original and took it to a whole new level, so when this landed, I literally had to get my teeth into it after ripping the package open. Sadly, for me at any rate, this novel felt flat as we moved on to the next generation within, whist this was expected given the differences years wise from the previous two I didn’t feel that the new key principle cast members were as well rounded as the original two titles and as such made this feel quite flat. Add to this a quite demure pace and plot and sadly it was one that whilst I enjoyed really doesn’t compare to what has gone before on the same scale.

Don’t get me wrong, if you take this as a title on its own it is very good but when you compare it against its predecessors it really feels that either the timeline or the events weren’t sharp enough for the author to get a fuller plot from within. Personally I’d have perhaps dropped it and gone onto a whole new set of characters in a time that enthused me and utilised a diary from the previous characters to help bring things up to speed. But that’s just me. All in, this title was OK but nowhere near as good as the others, my only hope is that the fourth book will pick up the pace as well as round the characters out a little better.