Book Review: Ordained {The Immortal Archives # 1}

Title: Ordained
Series: The Immortal Archives
Author: Devon Ashley
Publisher: Self
Date of Publication: March 25, 2011
Format: ebook, paperback
Source: bought

Normally, the school creates the hunters - not the monsters.
Abby Sorrensten likes to play rough. Ripping the horns off the foreheads of demons, manipulating lightning and setting things on fire with the flick of your wrist can give you a serious rush. So she probably wasn’t the best choice for the Order’s experimental training program. Thirteen years of isolation, lack of affection and a bruised and broken body from horrendous training sessions creates more than just an exceptional fighter. It creates an evil within - an evil responsible for several deaths the night she left.
Two hundred years later Abby resurfaces as the very thing the Order trained her to kill: a vampire. A mythical demon has set his sights on the school and only the ordained hunter has the powers to face it. Unbeknownst to the Order, Abby’s their precious ordained one and their only chance for survival. As much as she would love to leave them hanging, she’s not willing to risk the life of Emily, a fellow friend and hunter also fed up with the organization.

But for Abby, locking herself away in a fortress with angry descendents of those she killed causes suspicions and tensions to run high. Abby must learn the demon’s weaknesses for battle before the Order learns hers.
-goodreads summary

My Thoughts:
 Ordained was one of those books that didn't give me chills all over from excitement but it didn't make me want to stop reading either.  Ever since I seen this book I have been craving to read it.  I was so hyped up for it and I guess I felt like a little let down when I did get my hands on it.  This isn't to say it was terrible book-it wasn't.  I liked this book very much; it just wasn't one of my favorites.  
I liked Abby, our main heroine, a lot.  Abby is powerfully strong, magical, very snarky, and short on temper.  Her husband, Noel, is also a pretty cool character too.  He is smart, calm, and extremely protective.  I think Noel and Abby make the perfect couple: they are like yin and yang to each other.  Noel has this way that he can anchor Abby to her saneness, instead of falling to the darkside.  
I absolutely adored the fact that Noel and Abby are already married.  Most of the time in books, you are seeing the two court each other and fall in love, but with Ordained that has already happened.  We get to see the married couple and the way they are with each other now.  Love it!  Was this a romance?  Not in the traditional sense, but we still got to see the love and devotion between Abby and Noel.  Even though Abby has these good and bad powers swirling around inside her, I felt like she was portrayed as an exceptional caretaker, especially where Emily, our second heroine, was concerned.
Emily, for me, was much more of a mystery.  I knew she was important but at times it seemed like she was just there as bridge between Abby and the Order.  The action was incredible, the fight scenes pretty spectacular, and the villains terrible (especially the ones that were supposed to be good).  
I also like the originality of the idea of a pure vampire compared to the "mutant" vampires.  But the explanations were very confusing and took a little away for me.  I still feel a little lost and hope it gets cleared up better in the second book.  The end is sorta of a cliff hanger which helped make up for the lacking I felt in other areas of the book.  It took a long time to get where we needed to be, but once we were there, the story was incredibly good.
All in all, Ordained is an enjoyable read.  I look forward to continuing the journey in Book 2 and I hope to see Abby, Noel, and Emily grow in their personal lives.
I gave it 3 hearts.  

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