Review: Apollyon, by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Title: Apollyon (Covenant, #4)
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Genre: YA Paranormal/ Mythology
Pub. Date: April 4, 2013

Fate isn’t something to mess with… and now, neither is Alex.

Alex has always feared two things: losing herself in the Awakening and being placed on the Elixir. But love has always been stronger than Fate, and Aiden St. Delphi is willing to make war on the gods—and Alex herself—to bring her back.

The gods have killed thousands and could destroy entire cities in their quest to stop Seth from taking Alex’s power and becoming the all-powerful God Killer. But breaking Alex’s connection to Seth isn’t the only problem. There are a few pesky little loopholes in the whole “an Apollyon can’t be killed” theory, and the only person who might know how to stop the destruction has been dead for centuries.

Finding their way past the barriers that guard the Underworld, searching for one soul among countless millions, and then somehow returning will be hard enough. Alex might be able to keep Seth from becoming the God Killer… or she might become the God Killer herself. -Goodreads

Whaat!? I'm rating a book written by JLA 2 stars?! I know, I can't believe it either, but this book somehow fell short compared to the other books. It didn't pull at or challenge my emotions much, and I felt a bit disconnected from the story.

I have been a huge fan of the Covenant series for a while. Particularly Deity and Pure, I always felt engaged in the story and could never put the book down. Apollyon was a struggle to finish, and I must say there were not any notable moments that had me gripping the book out of complete interest. Sad thing is, nothing kept my interest for long, except maybe a few select scenes that still did not satisfy me compared to the other books in the series.

Simply put, there was too much sitting, not enough doing. It seemed like the action scenes were few and far between and a lot of the time was spent sitting around giving pep talks or whatever.

It was brought up plenty of times that Alex is "maturing". But I beg to differ. If she was "maturing", why was she so selfish, more so than the other books? She even admitted that she was selfish, but her friends kept assuring her that she is "much more mature than she used to be". That is not the case, for sure.

The antagonist was very obvious. Anyone with some knowledge of Greek mythology would be able to figure it out fairly easily.

The absence of Seth for a large portion of the book was disappointing. I didn't acknowledge that until reading Apollyon, but I noticed that without his constant jokes and sarcasm, the book became kind of dry without it.

I'm used to my emotions raging wild from reading the books in this series. In fact, that's what I expected from Apollyon the most. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I will admit, there were some okay-ish scenes, but not enough to blow my socks off like the other books did.

2/5 stars