Seven Kinds of Hell

Written by Dana Cameron

Narrated by Kate Rudd

Archaeologist Zoe Miller has been running from a haunting secret her whole life. But when her cousin is abducted by a vicious Russian kidnapper, Zoe is left with only one option: to reveal herself.

Unknown to even her closest friends, Zoe is not entirely human. She’s a werewolf and a daughter of the “Fangborn,” a secretive race of werewolves, vampires, and oracles embroiled in an ancient war against evil.

To rescue her cousin, Zoe will be forced to renew family ties and pit her own supernatural abilities against the dark and nefarious foe. The hunt brings Zoe to the edge of her limits, and with the fate of humanity and the Fangborn in the balance, life will be decided by an artifact of world-ending power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Mar 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781469276823

Dana Cameron

Dana Cameron is a professional archaeologist, with a Ph.D. and experience in Old and New World archaeology. She has worked extensively on the East Coast on sites dating from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century. Ms. Cameron lives in Massachusetts. Ashes and Bones is her sixth novel featuring archaeologist Emma Fielding.

Reviews for Seven Kinds of Hell

[Shannon Busse-Fricker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was OK, decent plot decent character development. Heroine not an idiot. I would recommend the written book over audio book necouse the new jersey accent gets tedious to listen to after a while.

[Breyana Funches · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Book had great twists & turns, but we never found out about the friends/help from the previous chapters.

[sbshepherd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting adventure with the supernatural, archeology, and greed. Zoe finds out she's not insane and gets dragged into a society she knew nothing about. Good character, plot, and storyline development. My only gripe is that the main character seems to whine a lot.

[bookjunkie777 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting adventure with the supernatural, archeology, and greed. Zoe finds out she's not insane and gets dragged into a society she knew nothing about. Good character, plot, and storyline development. My only gripe is that the main character seems to whine a lot.

[rowingrabbit · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.5 stars

The basic plot of this first entry in a new series has a familiar ring. A young woman running from her past & denying her heritage will have to embrace it before facing the bad guys to save a family member by finding a much sought after ancient relic. To make it rise above similar books in the genre, there have to be aspects that distinguish it from the rest. Things like characters you find compelling, well thought out & clever story lines & fresh spins on common plot devices.
In this outing, the author succeeds some of the time. That's all I'll say about the actual story line & instead give my opinion on what worked & what didn't.
The first thing that popped into my head upon finishing was this book could have benefited from a firmer hand in editing. Of course you want elements like secrets, hidden agendas, mysterious clues & action. However, they can't be so numerous as to leave the reader confused & exhausted trying to keep track. At some point, you throw up your hands & hope the ending will clear up the whack of questions that have accumulated.
In terms of the main character & the plot, one got better & the other got worse. At first, I found Zoe a bit of a cliche (socially awkward, insular, hidden past, etc.). She's been sheltered all her life from her father's family by her mother but doesn't know why. Wouldn't you ask? Then, after years of guiding Zoe with info & lessons on how to keep safe, Mom dies. Does Zoe follow her mom's advice? No. So you have to wonder: why wait 'til Mom's death to start questioning everything? She makes some obviously bad choices that had me gritting my teeth & her believability factor plummeted. But as the book progresses, she became more interesting & redeemed herself somewhat. Unlike the plot.
The book starts with some interesting premises. I liked the idea of the Fangborn & the way the vampires were portrayed was a refreshing change from the norm. However, after her cousin is kidnapped & the chase begins, the lack of editing becomes apparent. A veritable horde of secondary characters, constantly shifting alliances (often with no reason or explanation), a plethora of hidden clues & action sequences leave the reader reeling, wondering if they missed something that would make sense of it all. Also, because so much of the above has been packed between the covers, there is little room left for the character development that would have made me invested enough to care more about them. You're left with a book that is superficial on many levels. You know a lot of things but none of them very well, sort of like a B grade action movie.
So you make it to the end, hoping for that "aha!" moment where it all clicks but alas, it doesn't arrive. Little is cleared up & many questions are left unanswered. You expect this to some extent with a book #1 so some of the story lines can be continued in book #2. But instead of feeling like I'd come to the end of the first act, I just felt like I was being set up for the sequel.
The flow is awkward at points but hey, this is a first time author & no doubt this will improve. The mythologies presented are interesting & the writer obviously has a background in archaeology. In the next book, I'd like to see more time devoted to the development of the main characters & fewer story lines so they could be done well as opposed to the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach that bombards the reader here. Zoe has the potential to be a really great character if the author can slow down, ease up on the chaotic plot lines & play the long game.

[eyes92c · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

'...we're Fangborn...Vampires...who clean blood and heal.'Zoe was cataloguing a collector's box of objects for the museum she worked for when she was called to her mother's hospital bedside. Who knew that absent mindedly pocketing the cheap tourist pottery figurine from the box would bring more than the museum authorities down upon her head. Having been on the run from with her mother from her father's family her mother's death gives Zoe more questions than answers. Old loves and valued friends are in turn endangered and dangerous.Zoe does discover that she is not going mad but part of a select group of beings called the Fangborn.Against her inclinations, driven by fear for those she loves, confused by what is happening around her, Zoe is drawn into a maelstrom of action and emotion, of violence and kidnapping. Pandora's box is truly opened.As an aside, I found the archaeological detailing quite interesting and a great platform for Zoe's story.A NetGalley ARC

[krau0098 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I got a copy of this book through the Amazon Vine program. Thanks to Amazon for providing this book for review. This book sounded like an interesting start to a new urban fantasy series; I mean archeology and werewolves sounds kind of cool! It really wasn’t that great of a book, everything about it was okay but not great.Zoe has been on the run with her mother for her whole life from her father’s violent people. When her mother dies, Zoe is looking forward to a new start at life. Then her cousin is kidnapped by someone, she thinks her father’s people. As she tried to comply with Danny’s capturs in order to facilitate his release she is drawn into an archeological quest to find the keys to Pandora’s box.I did not enjoy this book and almost didn’t finish it. The storyline was all over the place, the writing was difficult to read and the characters didn’t have much depth and were hard to engage with. I pretty much struggled through the whole thing.Zoe is a very strange character. Supposedly she was raised running from place to place with her mother, living carefully and avoiding detection. When her mother dies you would think she would be careful, especially when she is followed by some of her “father’s people” through the city. Soo....what does she do? She leads them right to her family and friends, because you know she spent her whole life hiding....how did she not get caught ages ago if she is this horrible at hiding and sneaking around?Additionally Zoe’s background feels shallow and contrived. She never thought to question why her and her mom ran around hiding until now...when she is in her mid-20’s; she just kind of accepted it. It seemed like a flimsy back story to me and made Zoe seem very 2D.Zoe has a love interest that also goes quickly in and out of the story. The scenes between Zoe and William are flat feeling and boring; there’s not a lot of chemistry here and it really didn’t engage me at all.You would think that Zoe trapsing around to exotic locations and exploring to find hidden artifacts would be cool...it was not. The locations aren’t described well and never really come alive for the reader. A number of characters flit in and out of the story but never really make that big of an impression. The idea is cool and I love that the author explores the mythos of Pandora’s box...but the rest is not so cool.The world building is incredibly weak. Supposedly vampires and werewolves are called Fangborn. The vampires and werewolves are incredibly bland; the vamps can do some mind control and the werewovles are hot-tempered and stronger than normal. To spice things up vamps actually like the sun in this book, but that is about as creative as this world gets. Outside of the Fangborn this world doesn’t have anything else creative or exciting.The book ends well enough I guess. I just had a lot of trouble caring. I was not engaged with the story or the characters. While there didn’t seem to be anything technically wrong with the writing, I just had a lot of trouble reading the writing style; it didn’t flow well and I had to constantly go back and re-read things because I felt like I was missing things.Overall not a great urban fantasy read. The world is boring, Zoe is not a character that has much depth, none of these characters are all that easy to relate to. The concept sounds neat, but the execution left a lot to desired. I definitely don’t recommend this urban fantasy read.

[dearheart_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Zoe and her mother had been on the run all of her life from Zoe’s father’s family. They’d finally settled in the same place for a few years so she could complete her BA in archeology. Zoe has a secret; she has a beast inside of her and can’t even tell her mother for fear that she might be insane. She uses drugs and alcohol to stay mellow enough to control the beast.Now, upon her mother’s death, her father’s family has found her; and they’re like her. They are called Fangborn and consist of vampires, werewolves and oracles; only nothing like the fiction or Hollywood versions. She continues running from them, even though some say they just want to talk to her, when a long time friend she considers her cousin is kidnapped by a man to force Zoe to look for an artifact; one of four and he knows she already has one of them.There is a lot of action, international travel, and apparently a great deal of research was done in a number of areas. Zoe has trust issues and they’re justified as she’s got at least three different groups wanting to use her and all with a different agenda. She also proves she’ll do almost anything to save her cousin.If I hadn’t been obligated to review this book that I received as an ARC, I would have walked away from it about the 40-45% mark. The story dragged, felt chaotic and I never felt a connection with Zoe. And if I had set it aside, I would have been sorry as the story picked up at about the halfway mark. At this point we and Zoe get a better understanding of who to trust and what the other guys want. Zoe does not know or understand the culture of the Fangborn and as she learns we get a better idea of just how different these creatures are and their importance to humankind and in history; and of course, just how different Zoe is from them. But even with that it still would have been easy for me to set aside.We get a lot of detail on the history, mythology, artifacts and archeology, although unless you are somewhat familiar with what is being discussed, it can feel like too much. But I found myself perking up when something I’d at least heard of was mentioned.The concept of the Fangborn and what Zoe must find are both really interesting and those aspects are what have me giving it a 3 star rating.This is the first full length novel in the series. A short story on two of the characters (a werewolf brother and vampire sister) is mentioned as being in the anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. Now I’m going to have to go back and reread that story. Oh, and the name of the title? Seven Kinds of Hell is how Zoe describes her looks when in the hospital.Read as an ARC for Amazon Vine Voice

[pollywannabook · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Review courtesy of All Things Urban FantasySEVEN KINDS OF HELL is the first full length novel in the Fangborn series, but it's not the first story set in this world. I've read and reviewed two short stories set in the Fangborn universe (there have been four--see the series tab below for links) and was thrilled to get to jump into a more expansive novel featuring an archaeologist no less (possibly my favorite literary profession), along with the Stueben siblings from the short stories. I'm sorry to say I was less thrilled by the somewhat staid story and rather bland characters.I normally love when short stories lead to full novels. In this case, the Fangborn mythology is so cool that it really should have leant itself to a great book. The Fangborn, or Pandora's Orphans, are the hope that was left when the mythical box was opened and evil escaped into the world. Werewolves, vampires, and snake shifters are the superheroes of this world, able to detect and destroy evil. Vampires, for example, don't feed on human blood, they literally suck evil out of people. There are all kinds of new twists on these creatures that I found fascinating. I was even glad to see the characters from the short stories pop up to help in SEVEN KINDS OF HELL. The problem was with everything else.SEVEN KINDS OF HELL is, at it's heart, an archaeological thriller. But it's less Indian Jones and more whatever the boring equivalent of that is. Zoe was pretty sleepy for me from the start, and as she traversed the globe to rescue her kidnapped friend, retrieve artifacts, and avoid Fangborn politics, she never became any more exciting for me. In fact none of the characters captured my attention--not even George and Claudia who I enjoyed in short form. The whole book was slow even during fang filled action scenes. It all just felt bland.I'm really baffled by my reaction to SEVEN KINDS OF HELL. It had everything that would normally equal a great urban fantasy for me: Eye catching art from Chris McGrath, fascinating mythology that I was anxious to see expanded, and even an archaeologist protagonist! The writing itself is fine, but I really had to push through the last 2/3 of the book due to the meh story and dull characters. There are two more full length novels planned in the Fangborn series, but I think I'll be passing.Sexual Content:A Brief sex scene

[kmartin802_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Zoe Miller has spent her life on the run with her mother. She has also hidden a secret from her mother. Since she was sixteen, she has had to control her anger or unleash a Beast. Now that her mother has died of brain cancer, the family that they spent their life running from is catching up. All of a sudden Zoe learns that she is fangborn—a born werewolf. To add even more complications, there are rival families of fangborn who are arguing about coming out to humans and who each want Zoe on their side of the argument. Zoe is an archaeologist who picked up an inconspicuous artifact from a dusty, long hidden box in the museum basement because it called to her. She didn't know that it would lead to the kidnapping of her cousin and a world-wide hunt to rescue him, discover Pandora's box, and reunite her with a long-lost love. Along the way Zoe learns more about being a fangborn and learns that she is more unusual than she or the other fangborn could have imagined. I liked the adventure. I liked Zoe because she wasn't a superhero but was a young woman trying to do her best for the only family she had left. I liked the romance that was rekindled with Will.I thought the plot was quite complex with all the various groups who were after Zoe. Between a secret fangborn US senator who is willing to manipulate anyone to bring about his version of the future and a human Russian mobster who things gathering the same artifacts Zoe is searching for will make him fangborn and various fangborn of different families, Zoe has her hands full. The ending demands a sequel. I can't wait to read it!