One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Fantasy Romance
Series: Royal House of Shadows, Book 4
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 264 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




He was the youngest of the four royal children of Elden when the Blood Sorcerer conquered his kingdom and slaughtered his parents. Prince Micah had been saved along with his siblings by the powerful spells the king and queen cast with their last breaths. Saved, but thrust far from his homeland, no memory of who he is or what was done to him almost twenty years ago.

He knows only that he is Lord of the Black Castle, Guardian of the Abyss, powerful in both form and magic. He hunts the souls of evildoers, casting them into the Abyss beneath his castle to suffer unending torture for their sins. He is darkness, feared by all and alone in his reign.

Then a homely young woman shows up in his castle, full of prickly attitude, daring to look at him and speak to him as no one ever has. It perplexes and intrigues him.

Liliana has secrets she's keeping from the imposing master of the castle, and time is running out. She has risked everything to find Micah. Now she's got to stir the memory of a prince who has no recollection of his past, no knowledge that her own father killed his parents, destroyed his homeland. And she can't ever let him know that she is truly her father's daughter, a blood sorcerer like him.

The horrors that her father visited on her as she was growing up are unspeakable, but they forged in Liliana a fiery determination to end his existence. She will do whatever it takes to bring Micah back to himself, get him to Elden. Only then will her father's brutal reign end and the four royal siblings be able to reclaim their heritage and heal their land.

And Liliana understands and accepts all the impending sacrifices that will be required of her to assure it.


The Royal House of Shadows series has had highs and lows for me, but overall, I ended up liking the concept of the series more than the books included in it. Until this one, anyway. I waited a long time to read this, despite Nalini Singh being one of my favorite authors. I just wasn't convinced even her considerable skill would deliver on what would have to be, by design, the most important book of the entire set.

Yeah...about that... My bad.

I loved the story of Micah and Liliana. Loved it. And I loved them. Singh kept the storyline relatively simple, focusing on the main characters and their evolving relationship, with a few threats from the Blood Sorcerer thrown in for good measure, including a few scenes of Liliana's past that were...suitably horrifying.

That simplicity served the tale well, giving Micah and Liliana a chance to spend quality time together. There were tons of priceless moments between them and I loved every one. Unburdened by much in the way of secondary characters, the relationship the two of them forge while awakening Micah's memory and falling for each other was fabulous for me.

Micah is an oddly innocent man-child in ways, one that's also scarily powerful and commanding, comfortable in his role as Guardian but oblivious in interpersonal niceties. He lives a very black-and-white existence that I found compelling. Liliana is resolute and self-sacrificing, but also surprisingly strong and delightfully impertinent when dealing with the growly Micah. I loved that she is a homely young woman, and I loved that Micah thought she was beautiful.

I stopped caring how these books fit into the series a couple of books ago, but still enjoyed the closer connection to those story elements. The familial connection between Liliana and her father, rotted and corrupted as it was, made this book seem more relevant to the quest to defeat him.

Maybe that's why the climax of this story was such a disappointment to me. For all that I loved Micah and his Lily, the great battle between the siblings and the sorcerer that has been building through four different tales was utterly anticlimactic and abrupt. Maybe it had to be. Maybe the nature of four books by four different authors demanded that it be so. I had hoped otherwise and was disappointed.

It was, though, my only disappointment in this particular story. The romance between Lily and Micah and the whole of their tale up until its climax was a thrilling and satisfying read in every way. This book includes a second story by Singh, Desert Warrior, originally released back in 2003. That story was not to my personal taste in any way and I skimmed through most of it. My dislike of it, however, did not impact my appreciation for Lord of the Abyss, and my rating is for that first story only.

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Royal House of Shadows, Book 2
Line: Harlequin Nocturne
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 288 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.



Goldilocks and the Big Bad Bear

Survive. Avenge.

Once upon a time, in a land of magic and all manner of beastie, there lived a pampered but restless princess. Though resigned to duty, her dreams are her own, and those dreams are filled with a man who make her pulse pound and her blood heat. Then, one horrible night, the sweetest of dreams is interrupted by the terrifying sounds of battle. A siege is being laid on the castle, an evil sorcerer laying claim to the kingdom of Elden.  Princess Breena races to save her younger siblings, then tries to make it to her parents to aid in battle.

When she finally makes it to the throne room, a dire situation becomes so very much worse. Her parents have been captured and tortured, bleeding out on the thrones they're secured to. The princess, wild with despair and fear, can only watch as they struggle to touch, ignoring their surroundings, ignoring everything but their dying intent to save their children and exact vengeance. Their power surges up, fast and fierce, and they cast it out to their children. Fueled by fury, terror, and their own innate magic, the spell is like a raging inferno. It picks her up and sweeps her away, body and mind, casting her out of the castle, beyond the lands of the kingdom, and stripping her mind of her memories. She has exactly two things with her, all that's left of her heritage. One is a gift given to her and her siblings when she was a child, an engraved watch that she wears around her neck...the other a dark compulsion that burns deep inside her.

Survive. Avenge.

Once upon a time, in a land of magic and all manner of beastie, a powerful and proud people known as the Ursa were viciously attacked by creatures wearing the colors of a supposed ally. All but one newly matured warrior and his two younger brothers perished. The three were the last of their kind.

Ursa warrior Osborn never knew why Elden attacked them. For years the rage and hunger for revenge robbed Osborn of his honor and he turned to mercenary work to slake the beserker's hunger for death, until he was a shadow of the proud warrior he'd once been. Out of concern for the future of his two young brothers, Osborn retreated from the world of killing-for-hire and sequestered his broken family deep in the land of the bears who are his heritage. His days are full of work, his nights are full of passionate dreams of a woman who is the only source of peace he knows. His life, though, is still filled with the bitter need for revenge.

Survive. Avenge.

A lost princess with no memory of her past stumbles into the empty cottage of a broken warrior and his two brothers. Nearly starved, she gulps down their porridge, exhausted, she falls into one of their beds. And in that instant, it was...just right. When Osborn comes home, though, his warrior instincts flare and he follows the scent of an intruder. In his room he is startled and intensely moved when he recognizes the slumbering enchantress from his many, many dreams.

After all, somebody is sleeping in his bed...and she's still there.

This second book of the multi-author Royal House of Shadows series offered a far more concrete connection to the fairy tale on which it was loosely based. In fact, it wasn't until this book that I became aware that the first installment by Gena Showalter, Lord of the Vampires, was a mystically imbued off-shoot of Alice in Wonderland...or maybe Through the Looking Glass...I'm not really sure, though in retrospect I can see the similarity to Showalter's work in both of them. Regardless, the idea was for the series to provide mystical twists on classic fairy tales and Monroe did a nice job of it.

With the unique Ursa and berserker mythology Monroe introduced, the insight into the castle's siege, and the careful consideration given to the romantic development throughout, I had high hopes for this book. The storyline of Lord of Rage was far more cohesive and easily comprehensible than Showalter's, in my opinion. It didn't have the plot holes or weakly defined backstory of that novel. In that regard, this book was a far better read for me.

That being said, I still found myself frustrated by the too-abrupt external conflict and feeling short changed by the hasty resolution. Maybe I'm hoping for too much from a Harlequin Nocturne limited to under 300 pages, and if that's the case, than the fault lies in me, not in the book. I still would have been happy to have a chapter or two trimmed from the time Breena and Oswald were at his cabin in exchange for a better developed - and therefore more threatening - final conflict. Still, what's there is great strides beyond the confusing and ill-defined elements of the first book.

Lord of the Vampires wasn't without its strong points. Showalter rarely writes a character I don't like, and I was truly enamored with Nicolai and Jane. They seemed a bit more visceral and easier to relate to than Monroe's Breena and Oswald, with a few more personal foibles and issues, as well as charms and appeal, that left a larger impression on me than our hero and heroine in this book.

There's nothing really wrong with Breena and Oswald, but I can't say that there was much to their character definition nor their backstory that made them particularly notable to me, either. Oswald had a bit more internal angst than Breena did, as a result of his race, his history, and the raising of his brothers, but either could have just as easily been lead characters in any historical romance without the paranormal elements. Point of fact, this book read quite a bit like a historical romance to me, even more so than a paranormal. That's not a criticism, just an observation.

I still like the concept of this series, and I'm still very interested in how the arc of the series will play out over the next two books. I hope that the Blood Sorcerer gets what's coming to him, because the universal truth through both of these first two books in this series is that he is one very bad dude. One who needs a healthy dose of being heartily vanquished. In as painful a manner as possible. Here's hoping the next two books in the series see that come to fruition.

Royal House of Shadows Series:

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Royal House of Shadows, Book 1; Harlequin Nocturne
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 288 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.


The king and queen of Elden were brutally slaughtered by a power-hungry Blood Sorcerer, their dying breaths given over to the spells that would save their four children and secure their kingdom. It didn't quite work out that way, though, and their eldest son, crown prince Nicolai, was cast into a slave market and sold as a sex slave, his memory stripped from him by a vicious master. The only connection he had to who he was, to his younger brothers and sister, was a timepiece that was stolen from him.

Nicolai isn't a normal prince. His queen mother was a witch, and his father an intensely powerful vampire. Nicolai is both. He casts a spell for help, reaching across dimensions to another world and bringing quantum physicist Jane Parker into his realm. She's been dreaming of vampires for months - one vampire in particular, actually - so when she receives an odd package containing a peculiar book, and reads from it's pages a story of a vampire that is as familiar to her, she's not sure what to think.

When she passes out and wakes up in another realm, however, then comes face to face with a stunning specimen of masculinity locked in a cage, Jane knows exactly what to think. Come to mama. She knows what he is, has seen others of his kind in her own world... experimented on them...but this one, Nicolai, stirs things in her soul. Freeing him from slavery is hard enough, dangerous enough, but what Nicolai needs is his memory back. She has to help him before she slips back to her own world and loses him forever.

I'm a Showalter fan from way back. I love the humor that she threads into her stories, the sizzling sensuality, and the lovable characters. And all those things shine brightly in her newest book, Lord of the Vampires. Jane and Nicolai were a lot of fun to read. The chemistry between them was smoking and I loved how Nicolai got all überalpha when Jane was threatened.

Their story was enjoyable, the external conflict well-executed, and the romance arc rather typical for the genre, but entertaining. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series by the other authors.

Where this story started to falter for me was with Jane's shaky backstory. The science stuff was very sparse and ill-defined, her history a quagmire of half-explained comments and alluded to events. It's never quite clear just what she does in the human world beyond being a scientist of some kind, and how that relates to her being able to move between realms is a mystery that's never suitably solved.

My issue with that aspect of the story led me to notice other holes in the plot, or developments that were a stretch to believe. I was never sure how Nicolai got the book to Jane, not once but twice, and never clear on why his spell would cross realms and work on Jane but the witch's magic didn't. And I have no clue why Jane was able to do what she could do by - seemingly - force of will alone. I had issues with other aspects of the plot, and the ubiquitous relationship conflict fell completely flat when Jane's presence in Nicolai's world was at risk for an event that took place in her very shaky backstory that was never suitably fleshed out.

This is a book that had fully entertaining highs and some pretty big lows. Showalter fans should enjoy Jane and Nicolai, but the plot holes and ill-defined gaps in world building and backstory kept me from enjoying the book as much as I'd hoped. It's a series I look forward to continuing, though, because one of the aspects that did appeal was the glimpse Showalter gave at Nicolai's siblings' and their history before everything went so horrifyingly wrong in Elden. It'll be interesting to see what the collaborating authors do with their tales.

Royal House of Shadows:

   
And the final installment by Nalini Singh: Lord of the Abyss

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Draicon Werewolf, Book 10; Harlequin Nocturne
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 288 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Release Date: Paperback - 8/23/2011; Kindle - 9/1/2011
Note: This book includes the previously released novella, Darkness of the Wolf, published by Harlequin Nocturne Bites (2009)
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me for free by Harlequin via NetGalley. The rating, review, and all thoughts and comments therein are my own.


Her kind is feared and loathed by the Draicon werewolves, rounded up and enslaved on an island of rigid controls and inhumane treatment. Shadow wolf Megan Moraine will risk her very life to get her twin seven-year-old cousins off their island prison and to New Orleans, grimly determined to get them to the one Draicon who may be able to give the two little shadow wolf girls what they need most, a father. To do so, she has to make contact with the underground group that helps her kind and get the girls to one of their safe houses while avoiding discovery and staying away from the Enforcers, Draicons who hunt and sometimes kill shadow wolves.

No sooner have the bedraggled and scared trio made it to a safe house than the most feared and violent Enforcer of them all strides into the hotel restaurant where Megan and the girls are shakily eating the first real meal they've had in days. Terror grips Megan and, desperate to get the girls to safety, she tries to get them out...only to end up captured by her worst nightmare, Gabriel Robichaux.

Gabriel knows that Megan has every reason to fear him, but not for the reasons she thinks. He is both her ticket to freedom and a deadly threat. One scent and he realizes she is his destined mate, but Gabriel's secrets are deep, deadly, and a danger to everyone he cares about, especially a feisty shadow wolf who has put her life on the line for her two innocent cousins. When a dark force of unmitigated evil blows Gabriel's plans to hell and ups the ante on an old vendetta, Gabriel has to rely on the monster inside him to keep his mate and wards safe...but revealing himself and displaying that darkness in his soul may very well damn them all.

One of the most frustrating things for me as a reader is coming across a book with all the right plot points, full of fascinating and thrilling story elements, set in a unique world with plentiful danger, genuine threat, and likable characters that have lots of chemistry, only to have all those great pieces, for whatever reason, fail to come together in a cohesive whole that provides an entertaining read. Sadly, such is the case with Vanak's The Shadow Wolf.

I thought part of the problem may have been that this was my first foray into a well-established Draicon Wolves series, and given that this is the tenth story (including a mix of novels and novellas) that has been released in the series, it wouldn't have been a stretch to lay the blame there. Then I visited Vanak's site and read that each of her stories can be read separately and in any sequence, which indicated to me that they were, essentially, intended as stand-alone books in the same world. So the problem isn't my late arrival into a previously explained and well-established world.

Bummer.

Keeping that in mind, I ordered my thoughts. The Shadow Wolf failed for me on three different levels. The first is perhaps the easiest. There just wasn't enough exposition to explain in a comprehensive fashion not only the world of the Draicon wolves, but their history, abilities, and their mythos as a species and as a part of the human world around them. The world-building was severely lacking on all fronts. Of course, it's a shorter-length novel, so part of that, I guess, has to be accepted, if not liked. Still, I was so impressed with the elements I could glean from the storyline that I yearned for more and would have happily sacrificed a sex scene or two to get more detail about the world.

That, though, led me to the second major issue I had with the book. The storyline was crammed with plot points and raced through them all at high speed. Sure, the points were fascinating and juicy with conflict, but they raced by so fast, there was never time to thoroughly develop and flesh out any of them. I spent most of the book wondering not only what was going on, but why, and when did it all start, and how it got to that point, and so on, and so on. In short, none of my most pertinent questions got answered in the mad dash to fill the pages with multiple conflicts. One major conflict is enough for a book, especially of this length, when it's developed completely and layered with character definition (lacking here) and a romance plot thread (not lacking, but could have been better developed). I would have happily embraced a pared down novel with plentiful detail.

Thinking about plot development led me to the third and final major area of my disappointment in this book and presents the most dangerous and encompassing issue of all. Using both stories featured in this book as a yardstick, it's obvious that Vanak tends to rely far too heavily on telling the reader about story elements as opposed to showing them to the reader as they occur. That's a very prevalent bad habit in fiction, and it's such a shame, because it really keeps the reader at emotional arms length from the characters. For example, telling readers about Megan's traumatic trip off the island via dialogue between the main characters drains the scene of its emotional impact and tosses away a golden opportunity to build a rapport and sympathy between character and reader. Too many opportunities got tossed here. In both titles featured in the book.

Speaking of Darkness of the Wolf, and I suppose I should, I'll say this: while the issues I've mentioned are also in evidence in this story, the shorter length and narrower focus of the novella lessened their severity. Were I rating it on its own, I'd probably rate it as three stars. Given the story line, though, I question its inclusion in this book. There were too many similarities in theme and plot to The Shadow Wolf, and because it was only the second story I've read in the series, and it followed the featured story here, it ended up seeming more like a shorter rehash of what I'd just finished reading. That did no favors for the book as a whole.

Vanak has a gift. She's created this fabulously dark world full of complex politics and a precarious social structure and peopled it with emotionally complicated magickal characters with imaginative powers. She writes lusty characters with the sort of emotional wounds that make a paranormal romance book shine. And I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is to recognize it and realize that far too much of it didn't make it into this book in as richly developed and thoroughly explained a format as it could have. Unrealized potential. The bane of every avid reader.