REVIEW: The Eldritch Conspiracy by Cat Adams

The Eldritch Conspiracy by Cat Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading book 5, it’s easy to forget things used to be really angsty in the beginning of the Blood Singer series, and I was more than happy to forget it. Celia rocked my world!

+ the heroine

The heroine still battled the same personal issues from the beginning of the series, such as the issue of being a vampire and, on top of it, a Siren. However, she didn’t let the issues get in the way of her life as she often used to. I really liked how far Celia has come in accepting herself. It was about damn time. Better late than never!

I was amazed by how much she could shine when she got a tight grip on her issues. Celia was focused, prepared, and vigilant. She tempered her bleeding heart with pragmatism; there was no stupidly rushing into danger trying to save people when she’s likely to get killed along with the victims let alone saving anyone. She heeded advice and future visions. Yes! She cooperated and adapted. Double yes! Holy shit! Praise to Cthulhu when an Urban Fantasy protagonist actually listens and makes good choices because that shit does not happen often in Urban Fantasies as much it should. The short version of my accolade: Celia was a badass! WOOT!

The only thing I didn’t like about Celia was how she continued to roll in guilt trip shit, and unlike the guilt trips in previous books this one was definitely needless. For some stupid contrived reason, towards the end of the book readers suddenly learn that Celia has stabs of conscience for using her Siren power to psychically attack bad guys at the end of book 2 in self-defense and to save the world. The fuck? It was in self-defense AND to save the world against bad guys. They were PSYCHOPATHS for fuck’s sake! Why was this brought up all the way from book fucking 2? I was peeved by Celia’s double standard with supernatural attacks and human weapon attacks as if shooting a bad guy to death with a gun is better than psychically attacking a bad guy to indefinite coma. No, Celia. NO. Thankfully, the guilt trip shit was limited to a few pages and didn’t have any impact on the plot. Obviously, I shouldn’t reasonably expect Celia to quit guilt tripping cold turkey.

+ the romance

The other thing I didn’t like, the thing most, if not all, reviewers on Goodreads didn’t like, was the romance. Book 4 left Celia and Creede in a really good place, but in book 5 readers quickly learn they broke up between book 4 and 5 and the romance pendulum swung back to Bruno. Say what? On one hand, I recognize romance are messy and never linear. On the other hand, it’s fiction, it’s book 5, and there’s creative liberty on the table. Take it! How long must the love triangle be dragged out? At this point, I don’t really care who Celia ends up with. Creede, Bruno, or some other random dude. I just want the love triangle to go away. It’s tiresome. Stop it.

On the bright side, the romance was a minor plot line so there was little stupid drama. Unfortunately, the catch was that there was no romantic resolution to be had either. The love triangle crap continues!

+ other things to note

I didn’t care much for the happy ending as I would have liked. I found it abrupt and in great need of an epilogue.

The title is a bad one because the Eldritch thing was not relevant and there was no conspiracy to it. In fact, there was hardly any conspiracy to be had, let alone an Eldritch one. Evil schemes, yes. Conspiracies, no.

The issues with the ending and title are trivial but the thing is these were the same trivial issues I had with book 4... Hmm. I hope these issues will be fixed in book 6.

In Conclusion

I rate The Eldritch Conspiracy 4-stars for I really liked it. I wasn’t troubled by the romance crap as other readers were so it had little effect on my rating, which is why the rating is as high as it is.

Unfortunately, as much I liked this book, I get the feeling it’s a fluke and that the next book will put the series back to its usual angsty, stupid self. Here’s hoping not.

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