"Half Black Soul" by H.D. Gordon

When I was given this book to review, I was more than a little skeptical about it. Not because of what I'd heard of it, because most reviews have been positive. It's rather because book 1, Blood Warrior, hadn't really made such a good impression on me.

But I can say that Half Black Soul was nothing like Blood Warrior. And by this I mean that the writing style had improved, the grammatical mistakes were mostly fixed and the story was actually making a great deal of sense.

**What I didn't like:**

True, there are some misspellings, some minor substitutions like 'too' for 'to' and 'passed' for 'past' (as in 'moved passed me'), but that can't really be too bothersome.
What really annoyed me were the overused italics. There wasn't a paragraph where at least one word would be italicized, sometimes two or tree words, and it just totally overdid it.
Also, one other thing that kind of bothered me was that sometimes the voices didn't sound realistic. Kayden for instance seemed so stiff and out of his skin that I wanted to strangle him. And sometimes Nelly's thoughts and conclusions sounded too childish.
Lastly, since this is a YA book, I felt that Alexa's language should've been a little toned down.

**What I liked:**

In this book we can finally hear Nelly's voice, and at one point Kayden's as well. It was nice to get to know Nelly for who she really was. In book 1 we only knew Alexa and how she saw the world. So Half Black Soul kind of broadened our scope of things.

Blood Warrior left us with Alexa leaving Two Rivers in order to find her mother. She had rejected Kayden's help, but I knew in my mind that he won't stop at anything and sooner or later would find her. I was not disappointed. And I give credit to the author for having Kayden appear at the perfect moment. The timing was just first class.

I loved the development of the romantic relationship by the Warrior and the Libra. It was about time that those two figured out how they felt about each other. And the guilt that Alexa felt for cheating on Jackson really annoyed me. I mean, yeah he was her boyfriend, but she never really hold any passionate feelings for him. So, with gorgeous Kayden by her side, why think of Jackson at all?

Besides I never got a good vibe off Jackson. I just didn't like the dude, especially when he sounded like a control freak or something.

The restaurant scene was really cheesy in the "Twilight" kind of way. I mean, everything about it felt like it came straight out of "Twilight" and just landed on this book's pages. I kind of laughed when I read it.

I loved how Nelly's searching abilities seemed to stretch almost indefinitely. She kind of grew up in this book from the frail child she was to a mentally strong person. The control she could exercise on people was totally amazing.

What really got me interested was the ending. I had never anticipated that wicked twist of events, but hey, it's the cliff hanger that makes you buy the next book, right?


My rating is an honest