Jamie's Book Blog

Black Arts lives up to it's title!!! 

Jane Yellowrock is a shape-shifter, a Cherokee Indian, and a skinwalker who always takes care of her friends, regardless of personal sacrifice.

When Molly, Jane's best friend goes missing and Molly's husband Evan Trueblood turns up at Jane's doorstep one night out of the blue, convinced that she is visiting Jane, they soon discover that she never showed up and has disappeared without a trace.

With the help of her friends and allies, Jane begins the search for Molly while also attending her duties as Leo's enforcer. As old allies become enemies, past foes reemerge and Jane is once again drawn into the centuries old conflict between witches and vampires. Every step leads to danger and as she draws closer to finding her friend she draws the attention of a new enemy. One twisted with black magic and more deadly than anything she's ever encountered before.

I simply love the detailed world of Jane Yellowrock. The world building is phenomenal along with the attention to detail that Faith Hunter gives her characters and story. I really enjoy reading novels with a good vampire and especially like series that have a whole history and strong society for their vampires. Faith Hunter does this extremely well and provides enough rich history on her vampires that she could write dozens of books on them alone. Jane is as kick ass as ever and the last battle scene just flat out rocked! Jane continues to evolve and I feel that she is truly starting to come into her own, not only as a bounty hunter who hunts vampires for a living but also as a person and a true heroine. Beast, well Beast is still Beast but there has been a significant change in her too. Black Arts really is a novel about change and after reading it I'm extremely excited to see what comes next.

  Now that we've got the good stuff out of the way let's discuss a few things that I didn't like as much.

1. The first 3/4 of the book was a bit slower than normal. It wasn't bad but I love the action scenes which I feel weren't plentiful enough in black Arts and I love Beast even more which brings me to:

2. We don't get too see nearly as much of Best in this one. Once upon a time Beast used to bug the every loving crap out of Jane if Jane didn't change into Beast every so often. I love those interactions. Maybe Beast didn't bother Jane as much because the stakes were so high, after all we all know how Beast gets when there are "kits" involved but I did miss seeing more of her and I hope Beast will be making more appearances in future installments.

3. Rick: Screw Rick! That's all I'm gonna say on that subject.

So I wavered a bit on this one. Is it a 4 star book or a 5 star book? I could have gone either way and was really leaning towards four stars when something happened: the last fourth of the book kicked in. The action was simply awesome. The storyline introduced several new characters that I cannot wait to read more about but most importantly Jane took a huge leap forward as far as evolution goes. She's been slowly evolving with each book. Finding out who she is, what she is and ever so slowly she's been having more memories from her past. Jane really grew in this book. Quite possibly more so than in all of the other books combined and that alone made me give this one 5 stars. Some very important things happened to her along with finding out some very important things about herself that will forever change who she is and I cannot wait to read Jane's next adventure and to see how greatly these realizations impact her and her group of friends.

If you're a fan of the series then you definitely do not want to miss out on this one. Yes it was a little bit slower in the beginning. It's also true that there just was't as as many action scenes this time around and her problem with men just seems to get worse with each book but I think we're in for some huge changes and surprised in the world of Jane Yellowrock. The plot was great, the pacing a little uneven at times but the astounding world building and characters more than made up for it. Jane's continuing growth and evolution were truly the highlight of Black Arts which is an excellent addition to the world of Jane Yellowrock. The book lives up to it's Title and is a must have for Jane Yellowrock and Urban Fantasy fans everywhere.

Note:  I've been working  hard on this one.  Trying to give it a little more structure and to make my feelings on the book more understandable along with also showing things I don't like about the book.  It took me days to finally write it like I wanted it. At first I was trying too hard and finally just stepped back a bit and just wrote it.  I don't know if I was successful or not.  I'm going to keep trying hard to improve.  I'm not a professional writer by any stretch of the imagination but I love reading and sharing my favorite books with everyone and hope some of you'll may enjoy it.  Here's my review on Blood Trade, book 6 in the series and my last one.

 http://jamiesbookblog.booklikes.com/post/726007/urban-fantasy-at-it-s-finest-jane-yellowrock-rocks-

Let me know which review you like better.  Let me know if both are bad lol. Also let me know if there was anything that you feel I need to improve more upon. All constructive criticism is much appreciated.  Thank you.