Review: Undead and Unfinished by MaryJanice DavidsonSpoilers (marked)

Purchased 7/6/2010 for Kindle $11.99 (Price st by Publisher)
Read 7/6
Publisher: Berkley
332KB (320 pages)

Synopsis
After a fight with her husband the Vampire King, Sinclair, Thelma and Louise Queen Betsy and her half-sister, the Antichrist, Laura, are persuaded by the Devil (Laura's Mom) to be pulled through Betsy's "trouble" spots in time and space. Trouble is Betsy can never leave well enough alone.

The damnable Book of the Dead is truly a thorn in Betsy's side.  If she doesn't read it she has no idea what is going on. If she does, she goes nuts.

I love Queen Betsy, Laura, Tina, Sinclair, Jessica and the whole gang.  I even like the Devil as written by MJD.  In this ninth book in the Queen Betsy series she and her half-sister, whose mother is the Devil, are sent on a little Around-Betsy's-family's-lives cruise, so Laura can become more familiar with her Supernatural abilities.  Time-travel is always tricky, what with creating paradoxes, running into yourself, altering the time-line, etc. In this instance, it seems as if Betsy is learning something about herself, her "job" and her husband.  On this trip she begins to mature a little bit.  Betsy and Laura, also get to spend quality time together.


But like I said time-travel is always tricky, and apparently for Berkley Press so is utilizing a spell-checker or proofreader (I am going to go off on a Betsy-esque tangent here). What do they think interns are for?  The first error that stood out occurred 8% of the way into the book: "ninch" for "flinch." But, I am not completely anal, so although I harrumph while reading when I see a misspelling, the one that stands out  is a "μ." Yes, the math symbol and Greek letter "mu" appears on the first page of chapter 23 in place of a "u"!  I can only infer that the interns were asleep on the job or had poor supervision or the spell check had a big "out-of-order" sign on it.  To put a mu in to a book, one either has to go to an insert symbol or insert glyph dialogue box or find the HTML code (what I had to do). Please note, I am reading a Kindle edition - the print edition may have been corrected.


I am so far below perfect at spelling and grammar myself that it would seem that I shouldn't complain, but, I did not charge me $11.99 for a book it took less than five hours to read with a lot of typos. Cheaper than a movie, but without the images.


 *********SPOILER ALERT**********************


So back to the story, about which I don't want to reveal too much, but, Betsy and Laura are zipping about Time and [mostly] the Midwest when somehow, they end up in the distant future.  At this point in the story, I became so confused that I think I had to read each page twice. It didn't help.


I certainly did not like the ending of this book, not at all. It must be the end of the series and has the biggest and most unexpected twist I think I have ever read in any book, but certainly in any of the chick-lit genre. Seriously, I couldn't sleep.


*********END SPOILER ALERT******************


There is very little of Sinclair or the other characters, at least as we are familiar with them. I missed the banter between Eric and Betsy and their conjugal cuddling. I hated that Betsy pretty much only wears one outfit throughout the entire book. Really! But, I did enjoy her banter with other characters; especially a few in Colonial America.  In honor of Queen Betsy let me utilize tiara's today and give Undead and Unfinished three-and-three-quarters tiaras out of five to MaryJanice and two out of five to the publisher.