Review: Fury by Elizabeth Miles

Fury by Elizabeth Miles
Release Date: August 30, 2011

Read the summary on Goodreads here.

I was incredibly antsy to read Fury after hearing Elizabeth read from it at the Simon & Schuster blogger event at BEA and I was ecstatic when I found out it was in our goodie bags! The premise just really intrigued me. I love paranormal books that incorporate interesting elements from mythology or some completely unique creature that strays from the typical “creatures” in paranormal lit. The idea of placing the Roman goddesses of vengence, the Furies, into the modern world to extract revenge on humans seemed like an interesting concept that could really be built upon. I was so game for it because I really have been getting into Roman and Greek mythology.

The readability of this book was fan-freaking-tastic. I was reading quickly because I was intrigued by the Furies and wanted to find out what their deal was, I wanted to know what Chase did to make the Furies choose him and really it was just one of those stories that just perfectly held my attention and had my eyes furiously moving along the pages. I enjoyed the writing and thought Miles did a good job of pacing the plot…although there were sometimes when I slightly bored with reading about Chase & Em’s dirty little secrets. My overall reading experience was a good one — I flew through it and I finished yearning for the next installment. However, there were some things that did detract from my overall enjoyability of the story that I’d like to mention.

Firstly, don’t go into this book thinking that you are going to want to be bff’s with these characters. They won’t be characters that you will look back fondly on or have warm fuzzy feelings about. I honestly despised most of these characters in this book and it really annoyed me. I’m all for books that have despicable characters…I’ve liked plenty of books where I hated the characters..but I think that is because in some way I found them redeemable at the end or I felt like I learned enough about them to understand why they are that way or that the author was just SO crafty that they had me feeling unexplainable pangs of sympathy for even the most despicable characters.

This did not happen for me really..maybe a tiny bit for Chase but nothing significant. I was already ready to give Emily the stink eye because pretty early on because she breaks one of my Rules of Thumb For Not Being A Biznatch And Bad Friend (KIND OF A SPOILER BUT IT WAS ON OFFICIAL SUMMARY) and that is: “Thou shalt not ever ever EVER even think about your friend’s boyfriend and sexytimes in the same thought. If you do, please go play in traffic” After that I just couldn’t shake my bad feelings towards her. I also thought her bff was annoying, the bff’s boyfriend (Zach) was a major McDouche, the parents mostly sucked. I think maybe I liked Emily’s friend JD but he even kind of bored me & seemed to be that cliched “overlooked best friend who is really in love with you” type.

Elizabeth Miles laid a good foundation for the Furies story but I have to hope that we will see more of the Furies in the next book and learn more about them. They were intriguing and I feel like they still remained a bit of an enigma to me. I wanted to read more about them because at some points I was just over Emily and Chase’s stories. I honestly didn’t care what happened to them too much. I was ready for the Furies to unleash some karma real fast..because the karma that the Furies handed out was not messing around. They were pretty creepy too but I wished we could have learned a bit more aside from how beautiful and ethereal they were. Once the Furies really started to appear and mess with the humans, I found myself way more engaged in the story and plowing through like my life depended on it.

My Final Thought: Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was a fresh take on a truly interesting piece of Roman mythology that I had never heard of. I found myself totally captivated by the Furies and watching their plan unfold. It’s unfortunate that I never found any reason to care about the characters and that the Furies didn’t have more of a presence as I think I would be head over heels for this book. Luckily, Elizabeth Miles had me hooked by the premise of the Furies and that storyline to get me past some of the things I didn’t enjoy. An intriguing, well written story that would make for a pretty freaky movie. Can’t wait to read the next installment…I just have this feeling that the Furies are going to be a bigger part and it will be pretty exciting to see where Miles goes with everything after the action packed ending! So many possibilities!