Wormwood: The Wormwood Trilogy, #1

By D.H. Nevins

"It appears as though every task Tiamat is ordered to carry out tears at his soul; but how can I know if that's true? How can I trust him, if he's the very one who destroyed this planet in the first place?"

Tiamat and his brothers, a legion of one hundred half-angels, have orders to send all humans on to their final judgment. Yet in a moment of weakness, Tiamat risks his life to rescue a hiker named Kali from the very destruction he initiated.

Kali, thrust from the surety of her world into the boundless hell of Tiamat's, must try to find a way to survive in the Earth's vast, devastated landscape. Plagued by a legion of Nephilim bent on sending her on, she is forced to trust the one being who could prove to be her greatest enemy.

Nevins creates a world that is as vivid as it is frightening, and she peoples it with beings who are complex and terrifying. Beautifully written and darkly portrayed, Wormwood is filled with indelible characters with monumental choices to make. A thinking person's paranormal dystopian and a complex love story, Wormwood could be one of the most exciting reads of the year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.H. Nevins
• Release date: Sep 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9780987761224

D.H. Nevins

D.H. Nevins earned a Bachelor of Arts from The University of Windsor and a Bachelor of Education from Brock University. As a teacher, she spent years encouraging students to write before she decided to follow her own advice. She lives in a rural part of Ontario full of forests and lakes, and incorporates her personal experiences and beautiful scenery into her work.

Reviews for Wormwood

[ssimon2000-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic read, exciting and thought - provoking. Looking forward to the sequel!

[Cara Appelhans · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I tried out this book on a lark and couldn't put it down. I loved it and can't wait to read the next book in the series. the author skilfully combined action, supernatural beings, and the apocalypse. What's not to love?!

[kayla.krantz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I started reading this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I immediately loved the MC, Kali’s, personality. She’s witty and sarcastic so when she meets Tiamat, a strange and beautiful man, I was interested to see where the story would go. The next time she meets him is five years later, after he and his brothers have destroyed mankind and the Earth along with them.

From there, the action picked up quite nicely and the author’s writing style had both sweet moments as Kali tries to adjust to life as she now knows it. The book is powerful and will be a definite favorite for fans of paranormal romance along with dystopia.

[samanthapearl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review through Voracious Readers Only.I found this book to be quite interesting with enough suspense to keep me turning the pages. While Wormwood is based on the Christian views of the end of days it is not over bearing or in your face with Christianity and/or religion. I think D.H. Nevins had the perfect balance of religious references for the intended purpose of the novel.Kali is the main protagonist. She is very likeable and well developed. Her only flaw, in my opinion, was her weakness towards Tiamat in all situations. No matter what horrible thing he did to her, or in front of her, she was too much in love with him to stop him. Her greatest strength was her determination to survive despite everything. Tiamat is the other protagonist in this story . He is half angel and half human. While his character is well developed I didn't find him likeable, in fact I found him to be simply awful. However, once his motives became clear I found myself sympathetic of his past and rooting for his future.This book was a rollercoaster in the best way with lots of twists, turns and excitement. I really enjoyed this book and felt the set up for the next book was great and left me excited to read it. I will definitely be reading the second book, Angel Of Shadow, in the near future.

[bibliodiction · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As I was reading this story, my mind was already creating an outline for the review. Love, hate, hate, love. However, after the last word was read, I froze. That final sentence felt like a knife being plunged into my heart. My spirit was faltering. The ending eluded to grim determination. I am still pondering the final conversation, which takes me back to a previous conversation. I don’t want him to be telling the truth, but it all makes twisted sense. He has to know exactly who she is. Why didn’t she say anything? But wait, there are just as many signs pointing to another truth.

I’m sure you can tell how much I love this book. The story was literally a roller coaster ride. The happy moments were quickly overshadowed by horrible events, and vice versa. It’s like a reflection of human nature. We are most affected by current circumstances. We love when being loved. We hate when being hated.

We began with a hike in a beautiful forest. Kali knew the area well; her dad started taking her there when she was a young girl. Then came the destruction. Ten years prior, Kali had met and befriended Tiaman in that same area. For both, it was a blessing as well as a curse. Kali was forced to come to terms with her new situation. Tiaman was forced to battle with his inner turmoil. Will either of them win? I’ve finished reading the book and I am still uncertain.

[krazykiwi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This one jumps right into the story and gets right into the action, with little buildup, which is a big plus. A self-confident heroine who has her world, quite literally, shaken apart, so she spends the rest of the story just trying to walk on quicksand, and a hero who is quite the epitome of glorious bastard. If any storyline invited deus ex machina, considering this one literally begins with a literal act of god, there's surprisingly little of it. And while our heroine is often blind to what's going on, it's not because she's not paying attention or the usual reasons, it's because the people who know are purposefully doing their best to keep her that way. So for me, the dialogue hit the right note, not mountains of exposition, it's limited to things people might actually say. That was a relief (I see some other reviewers complained about that: I am writing them off as unsophisticated.) And there's none of the usual info-dumps outside of the dialogue, which takes a deft touch to pull off - we know as much as Kali knows, and not a bit more, as it should be. It also shows off the rather spectacularly well done worldbuilding - this is a post-apocalyptic ruined world that feels visceral and real. I thought there was a distinct lack of insta-love. There's insta-attraction maybe, but also I thought pretty natural reactions to events and actions by the heroine. It's hard to say what our hero considers natural reactions, but he's got his own issues. FWIW, the idea that adults might have consenting (fade to black) even while having good reason to loathe each other, isn't a massive reach for me. When everything around you has been destroyed, I imagine one takes ones life-affirming moments where one finds them. Kali's emotions and reactions are skewed all over the place for most of the middle of the book, but that makes complete sense, given her situation. She's half on autopilot, trying to survive, and it's no wonder she's way off pitch emotionally. I have two smallish (tiny!) complaints: One is Tiamat's name: Tiamat is firmly ensconced in my brain as a babylonian goddess, so that took me right out of the story more than once. I was half waiting for Erishkigal to show up too (maybe she can be boss of Achaia? :) As a complaint, that is a mild one, and I was over it by a third of the way into the book, this Tiamat is most definitely not that Tiamat. The other is a tendency shared by a million and one books: there's a couple too many situations of "We need to talk" -> "I know" -> "Ok, so let's do that, later" followed by the characters being alone together for several more hours (ie pages) before the promised conversation. Sometimes it's clear Tiamat is just stringing Kali along with a promise of answers, in order to get her to do as she's told, but once or twice it almost comes off as if he can't physically manage walking and talking simultaneously. Oh and before I forget, I love the little touches of humour (the biodegradable soap made me snicker out loud) and that they aren't overdone.Overall, a solid 4, and I'm looking very much forward to more. Disclosure: I won this book in a GR giveaway. I don't believe it affects my opinion however, I'd pay for it in a heartbeat, and I'll happily buy any sequels.(ETA to fix braindead flu-induced typo where I missed out half a sentence)