BOOK REVIEW - ​VICTORIA BY JASON PARENT

​Victoria by Jason Parent is an action-packed battle between good and evil filled with delicious, unexpected plot twists.  The main character, Victoria, lost her parents at the age of seven.  The vulnerable little girl became host to a small spider called Chester who used Victoria to search tirelessly for other “Chesters” in the world.  At first I thought maybe Chester wasn’t real, that she was an imaginary friend generated as a response to the trauma of losing her parents.  But no - Chester is really an ancient evil demigod called a Gal-zu who wishes to team up with others of her kind so that they can take over the world.  Chester’s cumulative knowledge and evilness manipulates Victoria into living a life of crime, so Victoria picks up some pretty handy skills and is mentored by some pretty talented thieves in the process.
 
Much of the story takes place in Italy, where Chester sends 18-year-old Victoria to sneak into the holy library at the Vatican in search of ancient texts from the Kassites (an ancient Babylonian civilization) that may mention the existence of other Gal-Zu creatures.  The church tries to hide evidence of the Gal-Zus and the only people who know of them are a small number of people in the church tasked to destroy them.  At the same time Victoria and Chester are searching in the depths of the library, a young man named Armani is trying to destroy another Gal-Zu in another part of the library.  They actually meet while they’re both escaping from the explosion Armani created trying to kill his targeted Gal-zu, whom Armani calls X.
 
The rest of the story follows Victoria and Armani, as Victoria tries to rid herself of Chester and Armani tries to destroy X.  Can Chester and X be destroyed before they come together and bring destruction to civilization as we know it in preparation for their Evil Kingdom?
 
I really enjoyed Jason’s writing style.  He is very good at describing fast-paced action scenes without leaving out important details.  I hate when there are action scenes and the character starts out holding a gun, but then all of a sudden doesn’t have the gun, but you don’t know where it went (for example).  Not the case with Jason.  You can tell he put a lot of thought into elaborate action scenes because it’s written out like how it would play in a movie.
 
A favorite chapter of mine is one told in Chester’s point of view.  Chester can leave her host for only short bouts of time, as it’s safer for her to nestle within a host’s brain so that she can be protected from predators or getting squashed.  One night Chester walks out of Victoria’s ear and tries to use her laptop to search the Internet for recent information on other Gal-zus.  I had a lot of chuckles reading this chapter.  I never really thought about life from the point of view of a spider, and here we are watching Chester work out how to use a computer she’s seen Victoria use hundreds of times.  In fact, there was a line, “Then she backed that ass up,” that cracked me up.  I didn’t expect to read that.  But Chester is a wise-ass, so hearing from her was pretty amusing.
 
The pace of the book is very steady.  I don’t recall any real lulls in the storyline so the book kept my attention.  I sometimes felt the book was a little long, but I don’t think anything should have been left out of the book because every twist and turn plays well into the overall plot.  The ending was unpredictable, almost made me mad, until I realized it was necessary to the overall story.
 
This was the first book I’ve read by Jason Parent.  Apparently while this is a stand-alone story, he has an earlier book called What Hides Beneath which also features Chester.  I think you could read Victoria before or after reading What Hides Beneath because I didn’t feel like there were any plot holes for me even though I read Victoria first.
 
I am not sure whether I will read What Hides Beneath.  I like more horror/scary books, and these books feels to me more like an action/crime books.  Truly a matter of preference in the types of stories I read, because Victoria was fabulously written.  I highly recommend Victoria to anyone who loves getting lost in an action-packed crime story.  5-star rating from me.

VICTORIA BY JASON PARENT