Review: Origin (Lux, #4)

Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Series: Lux, #4
Release date: August 27th 2013
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Paperback, 366 pages
Buy: The Book Depository

Daemon will do anything to get Katy back.

After the successful but disastrous raid on Mount Weather, he’s facing the impossible. Katy is gone. Taken. Everything becomes about finding her. Taking out anyone who stands in his way? Done. Burning down the whole world to save her? Gladly. Exposing his alien race to the world? With pleasure.

All Katy can do is survive.

Surrounded by enemies, the only way she can come out of this is to adapt. After all, there are sides of Daedalus that don’t seem entirely crazy, but the group’s goals are frightening and the truths they speak even more disturbing. Who are the real bad guys? Daedalus? Mankind? Or the Luxen?

Together, they can face anything.

But the most dangerous foe has been there all along, and when the truths are exposed and the lies come crumbling down, which side will Daemon and Katy be standing on?

And will they even be together?

I have the strangest fluctuating relationship with Jennifer Armentrout. It started with me downright despising her for her plagiaristic tendencies, changed into a grudging sort of respect for the entertainment her books provide and progressed to open affection for her characters. But even when I admired her the most, (after Deity and Opal, to be precise) that little nagging voice in the back of my head kept screaming “Book thief!” And not the Markus Zusak kind either.

Regardless of how I felt about her at any particular moment, I was always aware that she isn’t the best of writers, technically speaking. She is no Maggie Stiefvater, Ann Aguirre or Elizabeth Wein and most of what she does is pure fan service, but this is something I can’t and won’t ever hold against her. What she does know is how to create characters that crawl right under your skin intent on staying there for all eternity. Oh, and swoon-worthy boys. She definitely knows a thing or two about those.

With Deity, she had me right where she wanted me – in love with Alex and Aiden and hanging on to her every word. She repeated the process with Opal, and just like any other addiction, left me needing larger doses in shorter time intervals.

But with Apollyon and now Origin, she almost lost me again. So I had to sit down and ask myself what went wrong.

A part of it was surely my lingering upset over the cliffhanger Opal left us with. The situation Daemon and Kat found themselves in was not an easy one to resolve and the first part of the book was more dark and hopeless than strictly necessary. It made things torturous and slow, and with Kat’s imprisonment and sense of powerlessness came this overwhelming feeling of claustrophobianthat I just couldn’t get over and it stayed that way for a very long time. It wasn’t until the 40% mark that things started to pick up. After that, I was glued to my seat and to my Kindle like I was supposed to be from the start… and it just went uphill from there.

Secondly, the secondary characters I’ve grown to love were mostly absent from Origin and Kat and Daemon were surrounded by new names and faces, the vast majority of them far too unpleasant. So it was really up to our favorite duo to keep us engaged and entertained, and even poor Katy wasn’t her usual self. So I found myself wanting to go back to the good old days, with Dee and Dawson, and even Ash.

On the other hand, the relationship aspect of Origin was something I enjoyed immensely. This is how I like my romantic couples: together, in sync, and ready to face all outside threats. There are no misunderstandings between Daemon and Kat, no jealousy, no insecurity, no negative feelings whatsoever. What they do, they do together, and they are both well aware of what they have.

So yes, fan service… there’s a lot of that going on. About 20% of Origin was written purely to satisfy the army of Daemon’s screaming fans, but as I stated earlier, this isn’t something I’m willing to hold against Armentrout. I’m one of Daemon’s screaming fans, after all, and I do like to swoon as much as the next girl.

The ending of Origin, while not a nasty cliffhanger, leaves far too many questions and not enough answers. If I’m not mistaken, the next book is also the last, so we have at least one clean ending to look forward to.