An enjoyable, laudable addition to an increasingly complicated vampire saga with no end in sight.
A woman and her vampire boyfriend face rogue vamps and a looming evil darkness in this third installment of an erotic thriller series.
New Orleans emergency room nurse Erin Hamilton has come to terms with the fact that her lover, Dante Gabriel, is a vampire. But that’s just one of a handful of surprises: Erin learns that her best friend, Lucy, is a wolf shifter while Dante’s father, Julian, who’d been missing, has returned as a ghost. Dante searches for his father’s body so he can file a death certificate and claim Julian’s estate, using the money to fund a translation of the Vampyre Texts. He believes the ancient tome will have answers to his and Erin’s enigmatic blood bond as well as the inexplicable disappearances of patients (with the same blood type) at the hospital where she works. Unfortunately, his grandfather Bill is reluctant to let Dante have the book, certain that it will lead his grandson to “darkness.” As for Erin, her worries start to mount: Lucy mysteriously vanishes and a gang of rogue vampires pursues the nurse, whose scent is evidently “irresistible.” She’s also been experiencing vivid dreams, including the vampire gang cornering her for an obvious assault. Dante, meanwhile, who spent a decade in still-unexplained captivity, hones his unrefined vampiric glamouring skill but may be more powerful than he thinks. The voice of his former captor, the unknown “queen,” occasionally forces its way into Dante’s head, and it’s clear she has a sinister plan brewing. Hardt’s (Unhinged, 2018, etc.) ongoing saga shows no signs of slowing down. Series-long questions, like the queen’s identity, persistently linger, and the story adds a few mysteries to the mix. Erin discovers a doctor who’d disappeared along with the missing patients, but he remembers very little about the person who beat him and held him hostage. This volume, however, does allot time for supporting characters to take the spotlight. Voodoo priestess and medium Bea, who first appeared in the preceding installment, proves a formidable ally for Erin and Dante. Her spells offer some protection, such as masking Erin’s scent from the rogue vampires. Other characters are forming couples, precipitating engaging subplots (Dante’s sister, Emilia, is pregnant, and childbirth is difficult, sometimes fatal, for female vampires). But the continuing romance between Erin and Dante is the most appealing relationship while the copious sex scenes are erotic and healthy. For example, though Dante becomes gradually more aggressive in bed and Erin is typically submissive, it’s apparent that both partners are willing and content. Many of the mysteries, whether new or carry-overs, are unresolved by this novel’s end, which may frustrate some readers. Nevertheless, suspense remains high throughout, as characters are in all sorts of peril, including the indistinct but unnerving darkness. The author defines this abstract evil simply and persuasively: “An electric bolt jarred me back to normal. The darkness. It was here.”
An enjoyable, laudable addition to an increasingly complicated vampire saga with no end in sight.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64263-048-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Waterhouse Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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