Review: Spider-Touched by Jory Strong

Spider-Touched by Jory Strong
Series: Ghostland World #2
Published by Berkley
Published on: August 4th, 2009
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 372
Format: Paperback
Source: Borrowed

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The author of Ghostland continues her tale of a postapocalyptic world where supernatural beings have emerged from hiding.

Held prisoner by humans, his angelic memory and power lost because of the sigil-inscribed collar around his neck, Tir dreams of freedom and hungers for vengeance. He's sworn he'll never lie with a mortal, but when Araña removes his shackles and helps him escape his captivity, she melts his icy control and leaves him burning with desire. She's a temptation he can't resist-an unknowing enemy who might well enslave him more thoroughly than the chains he's worn for centuries.

Powerful forces have brought them together to serve a greater purpose, but learning the truth of what they are will destroy them-unless their love is strong enough to overcome the dark legacy of a battle that began with the birth of mankind.

Spider-Touched weaves boldly through the grotesque and complicated future to, in its final fifty pages come together in some type of harmony, some type of completion. This completion is not entirely unsatisfying. Everything that we have learned, heavy-handed as it might be, is delivered to us and those things that we could not see are revealed.

If you are just joining this series, you are just as much in luck as you are not. The first fifty pages plus are a fight to get through. And the few faces we came to love in the previous book are treated meagerly. You pretty much just have to take everything as it comes as entirely shallow as that might be and that might sound.

Arana, already a power play in terms of naming (Arana is the Spanish word for spider), has arrived in Oakland with Matthew and Erik, her adoptive parents. Their relevance to her will be explained in greater detail late into the book as we also come to meet Tir, Rebekka, and Levi, who all have their own perspective on this post-apocalyptic world. I cannot, although it is easy to, forget Raoul.

Due to the absolute abomination of a plot, the emotions of these characters come across as handed to them and not entirely thought through. If you were given too much time to wonder why Tir, an eon year old being, has feelings for Arana, your mind would probably erupt and spew spider babies. The motto here is “just go with it”. The imagery and ambition of this world, caught between cycles of divine and demonic war, should be enough to keep you turning pages.

The erotic element in this book, unlike its parent Ghostland, struck me often as laughable and often a hang-up, Tab A goes here, Tab B goes there, when there are dragon lizards, werelions, and demons. All in all, a total slog that only raises from the mire in its dying breath.

Books in this series:
My Review

Recommended:	For those with the patience of geological rhythms
Like this, like that:	De Le Vega Cats series by Lauren Dane and the Demon Bound series by Anna J. Evans

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