I didn't have high expectations--just wanted some mild entertainment. Yawn! This was so boring, too much yammering, nothing interesting happens. Just plain weak. And all that blah leads up to what? The next book, where perhaps something interesting happens and the yammering gets dialed down. Minion really is just one long, mind-numbingly dull prologue. I'm not wasting my money or time on the next in the series. There's much better out there.

Despite some reservations, I picked up this book hoping to find something, if not wholly original, at least fun and exciting. The version I bought has a little blurb on the cover that basically amounts to "Minion: The director's cut". This is a pretty dumb idea to me, but it says that this new version has more action and excitement, so I thought, what the heck?

The book started out very strong. There's a big fight at the beginning, and while I couldn't exactly follow all the action because of the large cast, it was strong enough to keep my interest. After that though, it all goes downhill.

The biggest problem I had with this book was that it's all talking. This in itself isn't such a big deal, but it's all talking about the same thing over and over again. Namely: What price does one pay to be a vampire hunter? Great. Interesting topic for about thirty pages. But damn it, this book goes on and on and on about it.

Then, when we finally get to another action scene, it starts out strong again, but quickly, it becomes bogged down in dialogue as a supporting character talks about what is happening over the phone with the other characters. That's right. Action scene as a phone conversation. If it sounds clumsy, it is.

The quality of the writing was fine but Banks has no sense of pace, nor does she ever seem to realize when she's made her point. After hearing the fifth or sixth time that demons are different from vampires, it gets annoying.

Neither Damali or her supporting cast have any true personality, and the dynamic of a vampire hunter and her music band (who live in a secret base by the way) is kind of corny but acceptable. In the end though, this lacked even the entertainment value of an episode of Josie and the Pussycats.

I can see now why our library doesn't carry this series, it is "god-awful". I sloughed my way through 150 pages of this before tossing it in the garbage. I was sorely tempted to send it back to the publisher with a note, "Did you actually read this before publishing it?"
The dialogue is erractic, the prose nonexistent, and the characters so thin and carboard it's hard to say they even have two dimensions.
I've read some of the other reviews and they hit the nail on the head: it's bad, bad, bad, bad.
If you rarely read, were born in the ghetto, and never finished elementary school, then this book is for you. Otherwise, don't look twice at the fancy artwork on the cover, it is the best thing about this farce posing as a novel.