(Website, , , )Series: Lux #4
Published by Macmillan on August 27th 2013
Genres: Love & Romance, paranormal, Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
Origin by Jennifer Armentrout, Book Four of the bestselling Lux seriesDaemon will do anything to get Katy back.After the successful but disastrous raid on Mount Weather, he's facing the impossible. Katy is gone. Taken. Everything becomes about finding her. Taking out anyone who stands in his way? Done. Burning down the whole world to save her? Gladly. Exposing his alien race to the world? With pleasure.All Katy can do is survive. Surrounded by enemies, the only way she can come out of this is to adapt. After all, there are sides of Daedalus that don't seem entirely crazy, but the group's goals are frightening and the truths they speak even more disturbing. Who are the real bad guys? Daedalus? Mankind? Or the Luxen?Together, they can face anything. But the most dangerous foe has been there all along, and when the truths are exposed and the lies come crumbling down, which side will Daemon and Katy be standing on? And will they even be together?
“Area mother-freaking 51. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.”
Just when I thought all things might work out for once, the Luxen’s and hybrid’s attempt at rescuing Beth and Chris from Daedalus’s secret facility proved futile. Daemon and Katy being together is an important aspect to this series, but at the beginning of Origin, they weren’t together. Katy was stuck with Daedalus, while Daemon was doing whatever he had to do to rescue her. What’s the plus side, you ask (because there is one)? Origin is told in dual perspective!
Getting inside Daemon’s head might have been the best part about this book. Up until this point, Katy had always been the sole narrator, but without Daemon’s side of things, I wouldn’t have known how hard he worked to get to her. If you’ve read Opal—which I recommend reading before Origin and after Obsidian and Onyx—Daemon not being able to express his feelings verbally played as an underlying, mundane issue. Instead of having to wait for him to announce his undying love for Katy—because, I mean, really?—I knew it before she did. Well, not all of the time, but Daemon’s character, as well as his unique personality, came to the forefront of things.
I had a fear that the first half of the book would be a waiting area, possible like in New Moon when Bella was waiting on Edward, because that’s all she did was wait. Katy Swartz, while she was waiting for someone to come rescue her, kept thinking positively, even in the worst situations. That’s not to say all of her thoughts were about beautiful sunsets and happy-ever-afters; she was practical, too. Her character’s development rested highly on whether or not she still had some good left in her after all of the things that she had done, things such as killing and not being too kind about it. Without someone there to define that gray areas, she had to rely on what she knew to be true when she didn’t know if she could be trusted.
It’s impossible to talk about these books without talking about the steamy bits between Daemon and Katy, but Origin shifted their relationship. Since the bond, there was a deeper connection, albeit the initial attraction (the one Daemon had to convince Katy of) was still there. In the first three books, they don’t go long without seeing or being near one another—they are neighbors, after all. Going without each other was part of it, but going without that deep connection with someone that understood them was another. They aren’t contingent, per se, but they do make up two halves of a whole. Katy can hold her own without Daemon, but you know what they say—two are better than one.
Throughout this series, I’ve enjoyed figuring out what the titles meant. Obsidian for the weapon against the Arum; Onyx for the Luxens’ weakness; and Opal for the thing that increases a Luxen’s power. Discovering why Armentrout titled the book Origin kept me on my toes, and once I knew—yeah, I didn’t really know what to say.
Start this series. If you’ve already read it, go you! I understand why I’ve heard about it for a long, long, long time. I’ve finally discovered the world of Daemon Black and the Luxen, and I love it.
About Jennifer L. Armentrout
# 1 New York Times and International Bestselling author Jennifer lives in Martinsburg, West Virginia. All the rumors you’ve heard about her state aren’t true. When she’s not hard at work writing. she spends her time reading, watching really bad zombie movies, pretending to write, and hanging out with her husband and her Jack Russell Loki.
Her dreams of becoming an author started in algebra class, where she spent most of her time writing short stories….which explains her dismal grades in math. Jennifer writes young adult paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary romance. She is published with Spencer Hill Press, Entangled Teen and Brazen, Disney/Hyperion and Harlequin Teen. Her book Obsidian has been optioned for a major motion picture and her Covenant Series has been optioned for TV. Her young adult romantic suspense novel DON’T LOOK BACK was a 2014 nominated Best in Young Adult Fiction by YALSA.
She also writes Adult and New Adult contemporary and paranormal romance under the name J. Lynn. She is published by Entangled Brazen and HarperCollins.
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