Halo Bound

Halo Bound

by eden Hudson

3 out of 5

Synopsis
The holy champion chosen to save the world is enslaved to a sadistic fallen angel and losing the battle for his sanity.

The guy chosen to save the holy champion is his binge-drinking redneck brother.

So, basically, the world is screwed.

Meet the Whitney boys:
Colt—a mentally unstable holy soldier with a rapidly deteriorating hold on reality. His last plan to rid the world of evil either failed horribly or went off without a hitch. With the constant torture and brainwashing, it's getting hard to be sure of anything but the sick attachment he's developing to his beautiful tormentor.

Tough—a smart-mouthed honky-tonk hero trying to drown his problems in music, women, and good times. He hasn't spoken to Colt in five years—not since their disagreement over a nymphomaniac vampire turned into a drunken slugfest—but they're still brothers. Tough knows he can't leave Colt fighting for his life and his sanity alone. The question is whether Tough can fight off his personal demons long enough to save Colt from the literal ones.

Halo Bound is the first book in the Redneck Apocalypse series. It was originally published under the title How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town.



Review
The town of Halo comes with certain prices. Any meagre human has to earn the protection of one Non Person, or potentially suffer at the hands of vampires, witches, and angels. Everyone is still scarred from the war, and live in fear of the fallen angels that rule them.

This book sounds amazing. A little bit of Supernatural, a dash of True Blood, yep, definitely looking forward to it. I downloaded it onto my kindle and it skipped to the front of the queue!
It starts off rather confusingly, as you're dropped into the middle of the Whitney brothers' angel drama, with Colt fighting mind control, and Tough literally speechless. But then it drops back to Desty's POV, as the girl heads into Halo, searching for her missing twin sister, who happens to be obsessed with the romantic view of angels.

The first half of the book was awesome. I enjoyed the interactions, the relationships, the fights and everything else.
Halo Bound is a harsh world to live in, but the main characters do so, with a bitter smile and banter. The Whitney brothers (and many other residents) don't take themselves too seriously most of the time, and it really was quite entertaining.
You also have Desty, who has also been the more introverted twin, but daring to risk everything to find and rescue her sister. Her solo roadtrip has made her strong and capable.

By mid-way, it all got kinda stale. It was no one thing in particular, Desty continued to um and ah over her sister's fate; Colt continues to love and hate his angel tormentor; the best friend Jax continues to play video games. All of which would have been fine, but it was Tough that screwed it up for me. He's centre-stage, so the story relies heavily on him.
To begin with, he seemed really interesting, with his thoughts of revenge, and mix of guilt and issues. But as the story went on, I developed an equally interesting mental tic. Every time he did, or thought something stupid, a not-so-little voice in my head stated "you're a dick".
Tough deserts his mentally-unstable brother "you're a dick". Tough cheats on the new love of his life "you're a dick". And that death near the end? "you're a MAJOR dick!".

The latter part of the book had some more highs and interesting twists. My favourite being all about Ryder. That was awesome, Ryder quickly jumped to being my fave character!

I might be tempted to finish the series later, but yeah, not feeling over-enthused at the moment.

Goodreads link
Amazon.co.uk