Obtain Abracadaver (Esther Diamond, #7) Compiled By Laura Resnick Document
don't know why it took me so long to read this, Still love Esther and Max, but I'm ready for Lopez to get with the program, While I'm a big fan of the Esther Diamond series, this volume was a bit akward it felt like an inbetweenbook where nothing really new happens and we actually wait for the next book in the series.
The first half is basically a retelling of the previous story, "The Misfortune Cookie", and therefore not that interesting and comparatively slowpaced, Luckily, after that the pace picks up, things start happening, the Action and hilarious slapstick humour are back and it reads again like an Esther Diamond novel,
In retrospect, this book splits down in the middle between rather lame at the beginning and pretty good at the end, I'm looking forward to the next one and hope that Resnick has found back to her usual form by then, Because I really love Esther and her chaotic life and Laura Resnick has created a wonderful supporting cast of crazy characters that I want to read more about.
R. I. P. Reanimated, Infernal, and Pretty damn dangerous
After struggling actress Esther Diamond gets cast in a guest role on The Dirty Thirty, a TV crime drama about depravity and corruption in the New York Police Department, her exalmost/sometime boyfriend, NYPDs Detective Connor Lopez, vows hell never forgive Esther for convincing her narcissistic costar to add verisimilitude to his performance as a morally bankrupt cop by shadowing Lopez on the job.
But Esthers fellow thespian is her best bet for keeping an eye on Lopez/and, more to the point, on Lopezs new partner, Detective Quinn, Esther and her friend Max, ayearold mage whose day job is protecting New York City from Evil, suspect Quinn of being involved in the latest mystical mayhem to menace Manhattanwhere corpses suddenly arent staying quite as dead as they should.
While Max and Esther try to determine what Quinns role is in the supernatural reanimation of the deceased downtown, a parttime mortician courts Esther, and a dangerous foe with deadly intent changes everyones dinner plans one cold winter night An Esther Diamond Novel, I love Easter and Connor her sometimes boyfriend.
This time they are off to another unusual adventure and again Connor just cannot accept what is going on right in front of him, Great addition to the series, It's probably a bad sign I wish Lopez had died in this book, He neither needs to become a believer, or get out of the story all together, I'm EXTREMELY sick and tired of reading such an unhealthy relationship,
It's such a pity that I cannot stand the main love interest, or the fact that Esther is so hung up on someone who thinks she's demented.
Physical attraction does not explain the depth of depravity these two are willing to suffer for a relationship that mostly involves being angry at each other, If it weren't for that, these books would be excellent, I am slightly conflicted because on the one hand, Resnick gave us one of the strongest offerings building on the momentum of the past two offerings especially, On the other hand, I'm not sure it felt like a complete book, This is the latest volume in Resnick's Esther Diamond series, It starts in Chinatown right where the previous volume, The Misfortune Cookie, ended, Esther continues to pursue her acting career, surrounded by the zany support characters she's accumulated in the previous books, opposing the forces of evil in her spare time.
The only drawback is that there's so much backstory and explanation that needs to filledin that the pace is slowed considerably in spots, Still, it's a fast, fun, and lighthearted read, and left me wondering if Esther and Lopez will ever finally get together they deserve it by now, Esther
and Max have not even left Chinatown following their last adventure in The Misfortune Cookie, before they get a call from John Chen asking them to come to the family's funeral home.
It seems that one of their "customers" decided to take a short walk right out of his coffin, John knew just who to call, Esther seems to always be around when things like this happen, But in this case so does Lopez's Esther's sometimes boyfriend partner, Detective Quinn, Could the policeman be inadvertently raising the dead
This series is so much fun, Esther is one of my all time favorite urban fantasy heroines, She has no special powers but is always getting tangled in some sort of magical/demonic situation, And for an normal person she holds her own pretty well, I love Max and his adorable, but enormous, familar Nelli, And the Not Love story between Esther and Lopez take an ominous turn in this book, Hopefully they will be blissfully not dating again in the next book, As always, I'm also hoping to see more of John the hunky Asian undertaker, As always, can't wait for the next book, Esther Diamond is a struggling actress in New York with an on again off again police detective boyfriend, By now, in the seventh book, Esther is all too familiar with mystical mayhem, Esther, Max and Lucky know something is up with Quinn when several incidents happen in his vicinity, Nelli barks at him, phones and cars fail in his presence, and the clincher a dead body gets out of its coffin, Esther is especially worried because Quinn is the partner of Lopez,
Fast fun read, More depth is added to the characters, such as an alternate love interest,.stars. You probably want to read The Misfortune Cookie first, There are several characters that make reappearances, and in the other order you'd have big spoilers, The other four Esther Diamond novels I've read were mystical whodunits this was more suspense, Bookof the Esther Diamond paranormal mystery series is very likely its final entry
Esther Diamond is ayearold, struggling actress in New York City, This story begins only a few hours after the events within the final scene of Bookin this series, The Misfortune Cookie, Susan Yee, the main villain of TMC, has been arrested for the attempted murder of both Esther and John Chen, ayearold, ChineseAmerican, graduate student, who works parttime prepping corpses for viewing at his familys mortuary which figures heavily in Book.
The inciting incident for this novel occurs when John calls Esther and begs her to come immediately to the Chen mortuary and bring Dr, Max Zadok ayearold wizard, and Nelli Maxs doglike, interdimensional familiar, A little while ago, John was interviewed at the mortuary about Susan Yees murder attempt by Officer Quinn, who is Detective Connor Lopezs brand new partner of only a few weeks.
In TMC, Nelli displayed a strong, negative reaction to Quinn, and Max and Esther have been suspicious of him ever since, because Nellis magical talent is sniffing out evil paranormal forces.
When John informs Ester that, shortly after Quinn departed from the mortuary, the corpse John was working on climbed out of its casket and walked away, Maxs worst suspicions are confirmed.
He believes that Quinn is “oppressed” by a demon, He is not “possessed,” because this entity is a death demon, who can only possess dead bodies, not living onesunless a person is temporarily dead, the demon jumps in, and then the person is resuscitated and brought back to life.
Which is not the case with the corpse that the demon could only manage to temporarily occupy,
As is the case for all the books in this series, for the most part, this novel is a fastpaced, entertaining read, Though this series is billed as humorous, there are only a few light moments in this novel and, overall, it is quite dark, Mainly because, in my opinion, a demonic villain is much more creepy than a human villain, no matter how evil that human might be,
After the author broke up Esther and Lopez as always in TMC, they are sort of back together again, for a little while, at the very beginning of this book.
Unfortunately, it isnt very long before Lopez breaks up with Esther yet again, This is the pattern for their relationship throughout this series, onagain and offagain, rinse and repeat, What is different this time around is that Lopezs dumping of Esther seems much more final and hopeless to her, and in the throes of her anguish immediately after Lopezs rejection, LR introduces a romantic triangle.
Esther briefly rebounds into the arms of John Chen, Though she only goes so far as to make out a bit with him on her couch before pulling back, when she suddenly realizes she is using a very nice man, who truly cares about her, as a selfish means to dampen her abandonment despair over losing the man she actually loves.
The problem with romantic triangles, especially this one, is that John seems to be a far more appropriate match for Esther than Lopez, First and foremost, John accepts all the paranormal elements that are so much a part of Esthers life over the course of her adventurous previous year since meeting Max, up to and including the reanimatedcorpseriddled present.
John is every bit as gorgeous as Lopez and just as intelligent, And where Lopez has as his macho, romanticherfeature that he is a cop, Johns macho element is that he is outstanding at martial arts, Best of all, unlike Lopez, John does not think Esther is mentally unstable, truly likes and admires her, and is more than happy to openly date her, Because the author refuses to allow Lopez to either accept the magic created by other people, or acknowledge and accept his own innate magical powers of light and fire, his frustratingly redundant denial is the entire reason that he keeps running away from a relationship with Estherhe keeps insisting to her that anyone who believes in the paranormal is nuts.
This novel was published eight years ago inand, as of todays date in, unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that the author will ever write another book in this series.
This means that she will never finish Lopezs extremely draggedout story arc, both in terms of accepting his own magic and the magic of others, and from there having the possibility of accepting Esther, which is an absolute prerequisite to a believable HEA romance for the two of them.
In, this entire series became available in audio format, in the form of multicast productions performed by the extremely talented actors of GraphicAudio, This is how I experienced all seven of the ED books over the course of the past two weeks, after I borrowed them from Hoopla, I doubt that I would have continued reading this entire series if it werent for GA, They have the ability to take whatever story material they are given to work with and hugely elevate its entertainment value through their marvelous acting performances, In addition, given that GA creates a script that the actors work from, similar to what happens when a novel is made into a movie their motto is, “a movie in your mind”, a GA production is only aboutas long as an audiobook version of a novel would be, if a narrator had read the entire book straight through.
Thus, the audio production of this novel is onlyhours long, rather than the approximatelyhours long that a regular audiobook reading of this novel would have been.
Since I tend to get bored with all the cluesleuthing involved in the mystery genre, as well as the periodic long, boring, explanatory rambles about esoteric aspects of magic by Max or other characters throughout the ED series, I consider this script abridgment of the ED books all to the good.
The tedious parts have been reduced, and the action and romance brought to the forefront,
Below is a list of the complete ED series with the dates they were initially published:
Disappearing Nightly
Doppelgangster
Unsympathetic Magic
Vamparazzi
Polterheist
Misfortune Cookie
Abracadaver
I rate this audiodrama as follows:
Heroine:.
stars
Romantic Interest:stars
Subcharacters:stars
Mystery Plot:stars
Romance Plot:stars
Paranormal Elements:stars
Setting:stars
Writing:,stars
GraphicAudio Performances:stars
Overall:,rounded tostars
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