Author: Jennifer L Armentrout
Pages: 281
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Goodreads rating: 4.22
Published: October 18, 2011
Source: Bought
Description:
The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, and the children of two Hematoi pure bloods have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals--well, not so much. Half-bloods only have two options: become trained Sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of the pures. Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden. Unfortunately, she's crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn't her biggest problem--staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is. If she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden. And that would kind of suck.
Okay, first off I've been on a JLA reading kick lately, and had just finished Wait for You and Frigid {under her alias J. Lynn}, and decided that since I loved those two and the first three of the Lux Series so much, I was just going to go out and buy physical copies of the whole Covenant series {she's one of my auto-buy authors now}. I've heard nothing but good things about this series, and all of the books have relatively high rankings on Goodreads. I have mixed feelings about this one, though, and I'll tell you why more towards the end of this review.
First off, I really enjoyed this book, and it only took me a couple days to read it {which I feel is super fast for 1) A mom still getting used to properly dividing up her time between my baby, my hubs, my home and "me" time, and 2) the fact that I really am not the fastest reader}. I love JLA's writing style and how much she just sucks me into the worlds she creates, and the world of the Covenant series was no exception.
First, Alex... she is quite the badass 17-year-old girl! Training since she was young to be a Sentinel or Guard {she would prefer a Sentinel, but Guard is preferable to being a zombie slave}. She's a half-blood, and that's basically all they can do: Sentinel, Guard or drugged-up-zombie-Slave. Half-bloods don't really have personal lives, because they're second-tiers to the Pures, those who don't have human blood diluting the purity of the gods' blood in their veins {hence the names: half-bloods and Pures}.
Aiden... he was... unexpected. I really do like his character, and I feel like he is unfairly being compared to another in a work eerily similar to this one. Unlike the one he's compared to, Aiden chose to basically step down from a life that would have been fairly luxurious to one of hard physical work and putting himself in bodily danger. But I like him, and honestly much more than the character he's compared to.
The world building was really good in this one, one of those books that when I read it, I felt like I was actually there in the background, observing everything as it was taking place. I love books that do that {maybe its just how I read, but I feel like books either transport me or don't at all}. I love all the new takes on the mythological gods and goddesses out there {Aimee Carter's Goddess Test Series is another one I really enjoyed}, and this one is a great twist on the demigod offspring throughout the centuries.
Okay, as for the comparison this seems to be getting a lot on Goodreads... I've read the entire Vampire Academy Series by Richelle Mead, and about halfway through this book was thinking there were a lot of similarities between the two works. And as I continued reading, I noticed more, and, well, I was honestly a little disappointed with how much it seemed like JLA took from Richelle Mead's VA Series. This book has me torn. I loved it and really enjoyed every part of it while reading, but because Vampire Academy was released four years before Half-Blood... Ah! Its SO hard, and I want to give the author the benefit of the doubt that she never read those and didn't intentionally steal the plot line from VA for Half-Blood {and I've heard the similarities become less and less the further into the series, and that after book 2 - Pure - they're pretty much non-existant}. Well, here's to hoping that's the case! Since I bought these, I will be reading the whole series. And since its so similar to the VA series, I will most likely be review each book so other readers out there who might shy away from this as being a copycat work will *hopefully* see how different they really are!
*I'm giving the book a straight 4 stars... it would have been 5, had it not reminded me of VA... hopefully the others will be 5 stars!
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