Rating: 3.5 stars
This is book 10 in an ongoing series, so really not the place to start. The first book in the series is Angels' Blood. This review will contain some spoilers for that book.
Holly Chang, who for a while renamed herself Sorrow, was the only survivor of the terrible carnage perpetrated when the archangel Uram went crazy and kidnapped her and all her friends and proceeded to torture and kill most of them. He forced Holly not only to drink his blood, but to watch the atrocities he visited on her friends. The archangel of New York, Raphael, challenge and defeated Uram in a battle above New York, his consort Elena becoming an angel in the process. Elena, a former Guild Hunter, also found and rescued Holly, who was forever changed by her ordeal, not just emotionally, but physically.
Not really a vampire, but certainly not entirely human either, Holly now has lightning reflexes, small fangs, can paralyse her victims with extremely potent venom and while she enjoys and still consumes human food, she also has to drink blood to not lose control. While she's worked to process her traumas, reconnected with her family and is working with the Tower to help the less fortunate in society (so she can feel useful, and the Tower can make sure she doesn't lose control, Holly still feels like she's being kept on too tight a leash, while also being terrified of the changes she's still experiencing inside. She doesn't dare tell anyone of the strange voice that seems to be speaking to her, for fear that she will be deemed crazy and put down for the safety of everyone.
The only other individual working for the Tower with any understanding of venomous toxins and bloodlust is Venom, one of Raphael's Seven, the ones closest to him and most trusted. Turned into a vampire in India by the archangel Neha after she discovered he seemed to be immune to snake venom, Venom is a wholly unique creature, a vampire with snake eyes, whose saliva is also highly venomous. Interestingly, the Tower scientists have concluded that Holly and Venom's toxins cancel each other out. While they are both extremely dangerous to most others, they are immune to one another. Hence Venom has been given special responsibility in Holly's training, and adores frustrating and teasing her every chance he gets. For the past few years, their weekly lessons have been by phone, but now Venom is back in New York.
While Holly finds Venom extremely annoying, she cannot deny that he, like all of Raphael's Seven, is also gorgeous and very attractive. If she's being totally honest with herself, he also seems like the only one who doesn't treat her like a victim or some volatile thing about to explode and that he does seem to have useful things to teach her. Venom and Holly have to spend a lot more time in each others' company once it becomes clear that someone has put a five million dollar bounty on Holly's head. She's to be taken alive, and it seems very likely that the reason she's to be abducted is because someone wants to to figure out exactly what surviving Uram did to change her physically. Venom is assigned as her bodyguard, and the two work together to find out who's hunting her.
During their search, it's clear that whatever alien thing is within Holly is trying to manifest in some way. She starts having acid green lines glowing on her chest, and the voice inside her is becoming more insistent. Holly has no choice but to confide in Venom and Dimitri, the head of Raphael's Seven, and they need to figure out if she's going to be overtaken by whatever bloodlust drove Uram crazy.
I finished this at around 2.30 am on January 1st 2020, meaning I can count it both as my last book of 2019 (anything finished before sleep belongs to the day before - them's the rules), but also don't feel too bad about reviewing it as my first entry in Cannonball 12. Based on what a scramble it was for me to reach the double in the final days of December, I'm not going to have the luxury to skip reviewing anything I read this year (I'm aiming for a single Cannonball, but hoping for a double).
The Guild Hunter books started out focusing on Elena Devereaux, a smart and fierce warrior who through extremely unusual circumstances became an angel (believed to be impossible) and fell in love with the archangel Raphael. Some of the books in the series focus on her and Raphael and the wider changes going on in the world and the complicated politics between the archangels. Other books in the series, such as Archangel's Blade, Archangel's Storm and Archangel's Enigma focus more one particular member of Raphael's Seven, and how they end up with the love of their life. There is also Archangel's Shadows, about Elena's fellow hunter Ashwini and how she gets her man. The quality of the various instalment vary, and how interested you are in the protagonists in question absolutely play into how effective the books end up being.
In the case of Holly and Venom, the romance very much takes the backseat to the twin mysteries of what exactly is happening to Holly and what the changes she's going through will mean, and figuring out who wants to kidnap her and why. Venom always seemed overly arrogant and smug to me, and as I find snakes kind of unnerving, he wasn't exactly one of the supporting characters that appealed to me all that much. Holly has appeared as a supporting characters in a few of the books, as she works through her horrible trauma and tires to reclaim her life.
Venom insists on calling her "Kitty", "Kitten" or "Hollyberry", all to get a rise out of her. Even when Holly repeatedly asks him not to, he keeps up this "fun" game, which got really tiresome to me. Good-natured ribbing is one thing, but continuing with patronising nicknames despite the express wishes of the other person in question is akin to bullying and a d*ck move. I seriously think he calls her by her actual name exactly once in the entire book. Another frustrated book reviewer on Goodreads claims that he calls her variations on kitty/kitten over ninety times over the course of the book. The really bad thing is that a few of the other supporting characters do it too, and he has the gall to be annoyed, because that's HIS thing. Urgh
For enemies to lovers to work, I need to be convinced that the initial antagonism and dislike stems in part from repressed feelings, which I really didn't get here. Venom seems to consider Holly more as a child than a grown woman in the early chapters, although he keeps having to re-check his assumptions. Holly finds Venom a pain in the ass, and considering the way he keeps patronising her and ignoring her wishes, that's not really surprising. Once Venom notices that Holly seems terrified of really using her new abilities, he starts pushing her and showing her that repressing will probably be more harmful in the long run than exploring her them in a controlled environment.
One of the things I really did like with the book was Holly's interactions with her family, who love her profusely no matter how different she is now, as well as with her new found family at the Tower. Venom's flashbacks back to his own family and how he ended up being turned into a vampire were also interesting, and I would have liked him a lot more if Singh hadn't insisted on him keeping up the "kitty"-thing throughout.
The next two books in the series (I'm really quite a ways behind, I used to read one of these a year) both seem to focus more on the bigger picture and Raphael and Elena again. I should probably get round to reading those at some point.
Judging a book by a cover: Oh heavens, does the cover model they've gotten to portray Venom look smug and self-satisfied and douchy on this. Which to be fair, seems pretty in character. I think the only think they should possibly have changed is the style of sunglasses, these don't really look like the wrap-around ones that Venom keeps being described as wearing.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
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