I have a lot of issues with the Cal Leandros series.

I find the character progression backpedaling maddening. At the end of the last book I read when he SHOULD have gotten together with the seer girl he broke off contact with her. I asked somebody, maybe you, if he stops being such a self loathing idiot in the next book and I was told 'no'.

Characters are the #1 thing for me and I can not stand Cal, I also think the author's male characters are a little off. They are like women acting the way women think men act.

After two books I decided to break with the series.

 

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well the gender bender stuff i can answer. rob thurman is actually ROBIN thurman lol...she just did that so guys would buy her guy oriented book and not run away because it was a female author lol.

yeah i know what you mean about the character issues but i guess the whole series just sort of amuses me. its sort of like the simon green nightside books....they make no godamn sense and the character work is atrocious but it somehow manages to be entertaining anyway

i don't really find much in the urban fantasy/paranormal genre i'd consider to be better than average though. dresden was better than average and the kim harrison books were better than average up until a a few books ago. other than that i have a hard time naming anyone else that seemed to break out of the mediocre mold. if hamilton hadn't run her series into the ground i'd name her but the anita blake books were only good up until obsidian butterfly and then they went to hell. theres some real talent behind j.r. wards stuff but she throws too much porn in there and it keeps them from being as good as i think they could be...not to mention her naming conventions are just juvenile.

i think i'm becoming a book snob or something i'll read alot of stuff but i'm pretty harsh if i critic any of it.

 

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Kim Harrison is my favorite UF author, followed by Ilona Andrews. If you are looking for something to try in the genre give Andrews a read, just don't let the beginning of the first book turn you away. The first few dozen pages are the most amateurish garbage ever, but it very quickly gets very good. She really hits her stride by books two and three.

I read the first two J.R. Ward books and they were good, just a touch too far on the romance side for me. The rotating main characters and romance influence was enough to stop me from continuing though I intend to perhaps finish the series some day.

The vast majority of the genre is very average to bad, but there are some quality authors in there. I like Kelley Armstrong, Chloe Neill, Nalini Singh, Patricia Briggs, Richelle Mead, Rachel Caine and a few others.

 

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If you haven't, you should read Lies of Locke Lamora, Grim... (And then conveniently forget about Red seas under red skies..)

 

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