Brimstone Kiss, the second book in Carole Nelson Douglas's Delilah Street: Paranormal Investigator series, reads like the first draft of a much better book. It opens with a recap of previous events and characters, instead of integrating such things into the story itself, and yet still often manages to remain incomprehensible to readers not familiar with the first book of the series. The plot is wandering and frequently seems to go nowhere. Scenes are contradictory and disconnected. At one point, the same line of dialogue is repeated verbatim just a few pages later.


The book is littered with awkward pop culture references. Any good author should know that if you have to stop and explain a reference, it's probably not a good reference to be making, but Delilah does exactly that every time she quotes something from television or the movies. It wouldn't be quite so bad if the author could get her explanations right, but she makes errors that should have been caught in the first read-through, like claiming to quote "Patrick McGoohan as Number Six in The Prisoner" when in fact quoting a line spoken by Number Two in the show's introduction. Douglas seems to have decided halfway through that the references weren't a good idea and given it up, but unfortunately didn't take the time to fix up the book's first half.

On the other hand, the world of Delilah Street is unique among paranormal series. After the Millennium Revelation, when normal humans finally became aware of the paranormal world, Las Vegas became populated by CinSims, Cinema Simulacrums, "live" reproductions of old film characters made from illegal zombies. Glimpses of her doppelganger and a long-dead teenage girl appear in Delilah's mirror. A vampire rock star, Snow, bestows an addictive Brimstone Kiss on his groupies, who spend their savings on concert tickets seeking after it. Delilah's boyfriend, former F.B.I. agent Ric Montoya, divines for bodies like an old farmer might divine for water.

Despite the interesting universe, there is not enough depth or resolution for a satisfactory novel. Everything revealed in the book seems to be for the purpose of continuing a series-long arc, not for resolving the novel's own plot, whatever that might be. Rather than developing the characters over the curse of Brimstone Kiss while leaving room for further development in future novels, Douglas leaves the characters mostly static. The result is a wholly unsatisfying novel in what might have been a very promising series.

http://www.helium.com/items/1508962-brimstone-kiss-carole-nelson-douglas-review ( )

Totally loved this, the second in the series, book. There is another cliff-hanger at the end, so I hope the third book is released soon.If you've read it, who do you like? Snow or Ric? ( )

I still felt a bit mystified at the end of this book, plenty of mystery and I really hope the next book brings a few more gasps rather than groans.

This book continues immediatley from Dancing with Werewolves, not even a warmer chapter to remind you a bit about the other book, it was lucky that it was only a week or two ago that I finished it.

I will continue to read this series if the next one picks up a bit, still a great read just felt a bit set up for a longer series. ( )

I'm not sure what changed so much from the first book, Dancing with Werewolves, to this one, but I didn't like Brimstone Kiss at all. It was blah and boring. It lacked the pizazz of the first book. As Brimstone Kiss jumps right in without covering any background, reading Dancing with Werewolves first is an absolute must. The only problem with that is that Dancing with Werewolves was a much better book - full of action, mystery, and an interesting new world. This time around, I felt that Delilah and Rick's "love" was not believable. There was lots of story-building and mystery, but very little action. Almost nothing was resolved from what was left open in the first book, so the plot seemed repetitious and mind-numbingly slow.

Nightwine is still Delilah's landlord. The enchanted cottage still has a mirror that shows the dead. Delilah can still travel through mirrors. Delilah and Rick are still investigating the identities of the skeleton couple from the park. Howard Hughes the vampire still has the hots for Delilah. Snow still wants to give Delilah the Brimstone Kiss. She's still looking for her CSI actress doppelganger, Lilith. The only new theme, hidden Egyptian stuff under Las Vegas, (seen it written better elsewhere) was dry and unimaginative. I felt like banging my head against a wall (but didn't). Even killer zombie mummies couldn't revive the book, since the "fight" scenes were too simple and quick. ( )

I'm stunned and almost wordless. "Brimstone Kiss", Carole Nelson Douglas' 2nd book about Delilah Street is just as good as the first one and only leaves me begging for more.

Delilah is an orphan. She's also got the appearance and coloring that make her vampire bait in the new millenium where all the fairy tale creatures came out of the closet. She recently came to Vegas on the trail of her double; a woman who could be her twin who appeared in a dissection scene on CSI V. In the first book she hooked up with Ric Montoya, a delicious Latino, former FBI agent who earned the nickname the Cadaver Kid for his ability to find dead bodies. What he never publicized was that his ability was actually the talent to call up zombies. The first book ended with Delilah escaping from a power and money hungry werewolf with Ric's help. In this newest book, Delilah is becoming a 'person of interest' to even more of the supes in Vegas. And she's learning alot more than she ever wanted to know about the struggle for power among the varied supernatural groups. When her investigation into an old murder ruffles feathers (or fur), she finds herself neck deep in danger.

If this series sounds interesting, you really need to read the first book "Dancing With Werewolves" before you tackle this one. There's just too much information you'd be missing. Carole Nelson Douglas has penned an intoxicating mixture of fantasy, suspense, mystery, romance, and the paranormal. I want more. ( )