The Book of Azrael: When is the story going to start?

Author: Amber V. Nicole

Rating: DNF

I went into this book with high expectations as it is often recommended on social media as an underrated romantasy book featuring some of my favorite tropes including enemies-to-lovers as well as a plot that promised action and an immersive world. As a lover of romantasy especially ones that have higher-stakes, end-of-the-world vibes, I was excited to find a new favorite. However, after two hundred pages of a confusing world, unlikeable characters and mediocre dialogue, I ultimately decided this book was not for me.

Prior to the story starting, our main character, Dianna, made a deal with a monster called Kaden to save her dying sister. In exchange, she would become a monster and serve him for the rest of her life. Her sister also became immortal, though not a monster, and Kaden controls Dianna by allowing her access to her sister when she has pleased him.

In this world there are various gods, monsters and immortal beings along with mortals, who all live alongside each other. I’m honestly not sure what the structure of the world is. There seems to be either other planets or dimensions that various non-mortals can travel between magically, but the setting switched abruptly from contemporary-coded cities to almost sci-fi-esque fantasy realms. If you’re familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, think Thor or Guardians of the Galaxy but without the spaceships or technology. At least that’s what I was picturing because the author was not super clear in the worldbuilding despite the fact that the first 25% was nothing but world-building and establishing the norm of Dianna’s life.

Dianna has been tasked by Kaden with looking for the Book of Azrael, which, from what I understand, will allow Kaden to take over the world or some other basic villain objective. This leads to Dianna crossing paths with our other main character and love interest, Samkiel or Liam, a god living in a self-imposed exile for centuries until this search for the Book of Azrael forces him out of hiding.

At the point I stopped reading (on page 197), our main characters had met, fought, “bantered” and I believe we were finally at the start of the main plot, but unfortunately I didn’t care enough about either them, the plot or the world to be concerned about what happened next and decided to put this book down.

Reading this book felt like being thrown around and not in a pleasant way where I’m intrigued with where the plot might go. I think the author was trying to make Dianna out to be a morally grey heroine who continues to do horrible things at the behest of someone more powerful in order to protect/save her sister, but given she and her sister have now both lived for hundreds of years (far beyond what their natural lives would have been as mortals), it felt like she was just being callously selfish. I get the moral dilemma of doing bad things to save someone you love, but something about continuing to do those bad things for centuries and extending both your lives far beyond what you would have otherwise expected seems excessive and makes it hard to sympathize with Dianna in the way that I think the author wanted us to.

The pacing and writing style also didn’t work for me. Everything felt over-explained (there was a point at which several paragraphs were devoted to the concept of teleportation, which all parties in the scene, including the reader were familiar with). This is perhaps why it took nearly two hundred pages to get to what I think was the real start of  the plot. This might have been fine had the characters been more likeable or interesting, but unfortunately both of the main characters’ struggles and inner turmoil seemed contrived. Additionally, the characterization of Dianna as a witty, badass fighter was poorly done so that dialogue and comebacks that I could tell were supposed to be clever and result in the reader forming an attachment to her as a character just felt like a teenager’s attempt at writing Buffy fanfiction.

I’m sad I didn’t enjoy this more, but I’m also proud of myself for having the confidence to DNF it. I have trouble pronouncing final judgement on books without finishing them, and it’s possible that my dislike of the first third of this book was just a wrong-time, wrong-book deal or that the latter two-thirds would have been amazing, but I also know that I have enough unread gems on my bookshelf (not to mention my wishlist) that there is no need for me to force myself to power through a book I’m reading purely for entertainment.