Series Reader Review – Heroes of New Vegas Series (The Envy Chronicles) - Colleen Gleason

 

Read time: 3 minutes

 

I write series, so of course, I read series. In fact, if an author hasn’t written a series, I don’t know much about them. I will read a stand-alone book, if it’s from an author I fell in love with while reading their series.

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Colleen Gleason at a writing conference in Michigan several years ago. Her book Beyond the Night was a freebie being given to all the attendee’s. I was there as a speaker on the panel, answering any questions authors had about the cover art process. She was amazing, and I wish she’d write another series similar to her Envy Chronicles (please, Colleen!). I read Beyond the Night and then went and bought every single title in the rest of the series.

I’m really thankful I did, because it seems a few of the titles have since been pulled, or are no longer available in certain formats. Since I read everything in iBook or paper, having them on my cloud was a real sigh of relief moment when I went to read through this series a second time and saw they were no longer accessible in the store. But, they were still mine to download. Yay! And let me just say here too, I love iBooks and how organized all my series are in the books app. It’s a thing of beauty and the reason I will never own a Kindle. My iPad and I are happy with our organized series.

The series is six books long – Beyond the Night, Embrace the Night Eternal, Abandon the Night, Night Betrayed, Night Forbidden and Night Resurrected.

The books are post-apocalyptic in nature. 50 years after a global event, four friends wake up to discover a changed world. Strange and dangerous beings wander at night stealing and killing people. An addictive drug is making slaves of a young generation. And they’ve each awoken with special powers unique to them. As they navigate this new and confusing world, dangers arise and they’re thrown into a high stakes power struggle between a mysterious group and the humans scraping by to survive.

I loved all the characters. The plot itself is incredibly unique. The writing is fantastic. Action is fun, and the chemistry between the characters is wonderful.

There is a series flow. The plot extends and grows over the course of the six books, like layers peeling away to reveal a shocking center, so definitely read them in order. She does an absolutely wonderful job of introducing you to new characters and pulling you in to want to know what happens with our next hero and heroine duo. Because I can’t go into each book without spoilers, I won’t.

I will say the last book in the series disappointed me a little. For six books we’d waited to know this character’s story. I was DYING to read his book y’all. The heroine also had a multi-book journey you followed. So by the time these two rolled around, I was bouncing with anticipation. And because there was so much left in the series plot, I really felt like these character’s relationship journey took a back seat to the plot itself. To this point, Colleen had done a fantastic job of balancing the couple’s plot line with the series plot line, but for the final book, so much had to be addressed, the scenes with the couple felt rushed and the actual growth of the relationship small in comparison to the finale of the series. Still definitely worth reading, and that’s my only complaint.

If you can find all six books’, absolutely check out this series. Even if you can’t find them all now, read what you can, you won’t regret it! I haven’t checked out any of Colleen’s other titles, I’m on the fence about her Victorian Vamps. If you’ve read her other works, what do you think about them?