Rift Blog Tour: Review

Thanks to Razorbill for putting together this Canadian blog tour. Below you will find my post for the tour: a review on Rift. Enjoy, and feel free to leave a comment!
Title: Rift (Nightshade Prequel #1)
Author: Andrea Cremer
Publisher:  Philomel
Release Date: August 7th 2012
Source: ARC for Review
Rating: 3.5

Sixteen-year-old Ember Morrow is promised to a group called Conatus after one of their healers saves her mother's life. Once she arrives, Ember finds joy in wielding swords, learning magic, and fighting the encroaching darkness loose in the world. She also finds herself falling in love with her mentor, the dashing, brooding, and powerful Barrow Hess. When the knights realize Eira, one of their leaders, is dabbling in dark magic, Ember and Barrow must choose whether to follow Eira into the nether realm or to pledge their lives to destroying her and her kind.

Review:

After that horrible and anger inducing finale to Nightshade series, I was a bit interested in a prequel to the series. Lucky for me there was one, Rift. Getting to know the origins of the keepers, seekers, and the rift sounded like a great book to me, unfortunately these things aren't very obvious throughout the book.

For most of the book I didn't see how it connected to Nightshade, and the only reason I did was because of a certain character that makes some brief appearances. The keepers and seekers haven't been given that name yet and haven't actually formed. What I missed the most was the werewolves, they were the main reason I read Nightshade. I'm hoping they are created in the next book.

I was totally happy to see a new character who wasn't at all like Calla was, a slut and a annoying one. Ember is a strong warrior who has some serious potential in the future books for this prequel series. If only it was written in first person, I think that Andrea Cremer is a overall better writer when she writes in first person instead of third. I also enjoyed the lack of a love triangle, mostly because if she picks the guys I don't like I don't want my heart to break.... again as what happened in Bloodrose.

The story starts off pretty slow, but more towards the end it really picks up and is action packed. The ending left me with high hopes in what will happen next. Rift kind reminded me of The Brothers Grimm and Supernatural a bit. As for the love interest I am liking Borrow so far, but need to see some romance in their relationship to make my final decision on him.

Overall Rift is a pretty good prequel to the Nightshade trilogy, in some ways it's better and in others it's lacking a bit. I reccomend reading it, but I have a strong feeling that it will get better in the next book.