#CBR6 Book 15: "Endless Knight" by Kresley Cole

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 2 stars

This is book two in The Arcana Chronicles and as such not the best place to start. This review will contain spoilers for book one in the series, Poison Princess, which is also where you want to begin, if you're interested in the series. Although if you read my review of that book, why would you actually want to read the books at all? Still, Kiala over on Vaginal Fantasy Hangout seems to love them, so what do I know?

At the end of Poison Princess, Evangeline, or Evie, or the Empress, or God Woman would you wake up and get a better taste in menfolk, as I like to think of her, has just made her first kill and stepped into the Game properly. She's accepted her powers and earned the awe in some cases and grudging respect in others among those of her companions who are also Arcana. Of course, Jack, her Bayou gutter trash object of her affection, now seems horrified by her. Matthew, the Aspergic kid who can also see visions of all the other players, seems to think that it's for the best that they are on the outs.

Upon Evie's defeat of the Hermit, it also sent a signal to all the other players nearby that the Empress is fair game, and the group are soon running from the zombie-like Baggers, hordes of cannibals and trying to stay hidden from other Arcana while travelling through the rain, mud and hostile terrain of the mountains. As they travel, Evie tries to discover if Jack is lost to her forever. They have finally settled their differences when Death, the current Arcana champion and his allies ambush them in the mountains. He takes Evie prisoner, determined to make her pay for the Empress' actions in earlier games. Evie can't remember and insists she is nothing like her earlier incarnations, and Death seems unable to forgive and forget.

As was quite obvious, Death is the third side of the inevitable paranormal love triangle. He does have going for him that he's not Jack, that he's got a big ol' mansion and clearly lots of style, he spends most of his time reading or fighting to improve his fighting prowess and impressive physique. Yet he acts like a total tool most of the time. When we finally discover what the Empress did to Death in previous games, it's clear that he has reason to be really pissy, but considering Evie isn't ACTUALLY physically the woman who broke his heart and then jumped on it with spiky shoes (metaphorically), his torturing of her, physically and emotionally, comes off as extremely unnecessary and cruel.

Evie spends the first half moping about Jack and slogging through mud, and despite her misgivings about surrendering her virginity in the previous book, now has no problem running off to canoodle with her drunken redneck suitor in while they're being pursued by all manner of dangerous individuals. She then spends most of the other half of the book pining for Jack, yet sending Matthew mental orders about keeping him far away, because she's afraid that he'll get killed if he tries to rescue her. Apparently the Empress is Death's only weakness, as she is the only person he can touch who won't die (ah, Kresley Cole and your convoluted ways to create fated mates). It's why a lot of the Arcana want to kill Evie - so they can further weaken the most powerful player. The rest want her to get close to him and seduce him, so she can kill him when his guard is down.

Even if he's an unreasonable tool, I did sort of like Death (or Aric, as his real name is). He's clearly had a pretty shitty existence, living through centuries alone and unable to touch anyone but a wicked temptress who's chief goal is to kill him. I don't approve of his hurting young women needlessly, though, no matter how cool his library and humongous mansion is. His actions towards the end of the book are also pretty reprehensible. Really, Evie has dreadful taste in men. I honestly haven't made up my mind whether I'll be reading any more of the series or not. Still, Kresley Cole's books are a bit like crack - so very addictive even when you know they're bad. I suspect that sooner or later I won't be able to contain myself, if only to discover which of the dudes Evie ends up with, and what major Arcana Jack is shockingly revealed to be in the next book (cause I promise you this will happen).

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 11: "Poison Princess" by Kresley Cole

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 2.5 stars

Sixteen year old Evangeline "Evie" Greene tells her story of woe and confusion to a creepy madman bent on chaining her in his basement dungeon. Before the apocalyptic Flash that destroyed the world as we know it, Evie was a rich and popular Southern Belle, with a dark secret. All summer, while her friends were off travelling the world, she was in an asylum, trying to suppress the horrific hallucinations and visions she suffered. Then the Flash hit and it turns out that all her horrible visions were just premonitions of what was to come.

In a world where most of the surface water evaporated in the course of one catastrophic event, after which most of the women in the world fell sick and died, Evie is one of very few females, and after her mother dies, she needs help and protection to get to her grandmother's, whom she is convinced must still be alive. She turns to her former classmate, the Cajun badboy Jackson "Jack" Deveaux, one of the few people from her past who seems to have survived the apocalypse. He agrees to assist her, and as Evie can't shoot, hunt or defend herself worth a damn, she needs all the help she can get.

Through her visions, and faintly remembering her grandmother's ramblings about how Evie is the "Empress" and has special powers, it becomes clear that Evie is one of twenty-two teenagers embodied with powers from the Major Arcana of the Tarot. These teens all have different and unusual powers, and the Flash seems to have been the beginning of a new era, where the various Arcana battle it out to the death.

This book was the alt book when the Vaginal Fantasy bookclub was doing their Kresley Cole month back in May 2012. The paranormal romance author, famed for her over the top supernatural pairings and frequent ThunderSex (tm) is trying her hand at young adult fiction here, which means that there are no actual smexy times, but there is a fairly steamy kiss.

Things I liked:

• The framing device was interesting, creepy and really gave you a sense of tension, really bringing you into the story. Of course, then Evie starts telling her story in WAY to much detail (more on that later).
• A fantasy world based on the Tarot is cool and a fairly unusual premise. No vampire, werewolves or angels here. So far only a handful of the characters based on the Major Arcana are introduced, but it's a promising concept.
• The dystopia after the Flash hits is really very disturbing and creates a very tense atmosphere for the story. 
• Evie turning out to be somewhat of an unreliable narrator. I don't want to say too much about it, as it could be quite spoilery to the story. She does warn us in the prologue that not everything she says is necessarily the truth, though.
• The final chapters, where everything suddenly turned around rather abruptly and I went from being super bored to being quite intrigued and suddenly interested in reading the sequel after all.

Things I didn't like:

• The first third of the book, after the exciting prologue is way too long. It drags massively, and there is far too much detail about Evie's life as a mix between a Plastic and Scarlett O'Hara. I understand that it's important to show just how much Evie lost and why she would think that she was completely insane because of the visions, but we really didn't in any way need a day to day, in painful detail, recap of the week before the Flash happened.
• Evie was a dreadful protagonist. She's spoiled, condescending, judgemental and spends far too much of the book being whiny, useless, wishy-washy and occasionally TSTL. I understand that she's just 16, and the entire world as she knows it has now been destroyed, but she could have tried to learn some new skills and adapt better, rather than hole up in her mansion until the food ran out, and then depending wholly on some guy to rescue her.
• Speaking of the guy. I get that after the apocalypse, most men apparently turn into either some sort of zombie, cannibals or apparently crazy rapists, so compared to them Jack is a saint and a paragon of virtue. But really, he's not much of a hero. He's arrogant, rude, pushy and creepily focused on Evie long before the apocalypse happens. He seems to be constantly swigging Jack Daniels, his Cajun accent drove me up the wall. A member on the Vaginal Fantasy Goodreads forum described him as an 18-year-old Darryl Dixon with Gambit's accent, and that's pretty much spot on. Most of the time, he treats Evie like property. He's overly possessive, yet constantly puts her down, frankly encouraging her helplessness so she's got no choice but to stay dependent on him. 
• There's all sorts of ways the world building doesn't make any sense, but I compared to my other complaints, that wasn't a big deal. 

Thanks to the final few chapters, where it turns out that Evie's story to the creep who's planning to make her his latest torture victim in his basement dungeon hasn't been entirely truthful, where she seems to finally embrace her new powers, and basically turns into Poison Ivy, I've upgraded the rating of the book from 2 stars to 2,5. I hope that she may have made herself seem extra pathetic and useless in order to lull the psycho into a false sense of security. The sequel also got rave reviews all over the internet when it came out last year (although this book is bafflingly rated 4.16 on Goodreads, there's no accounting for taste, I guess) and promises to have more of the character who embodies the Death card in it. I like what we've seen of him so far, and desperately hope that he's going to be the final third in the fairly inevitable YA love triangle, because Evie and Jackson make an awful couple.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 54. "Shadow's Claim" by Kresley Cole

Page count: 481 pages
Rating: 2.5 stars

Trehan Daciano is a Dacian vampire. Dacia is a realm hidden in mist (so hardly anyone knows where to find it) and Trehan's job, is to hunt down and kill anyone who finds out about Dacia or the Dacians before they can tell anyone about them, or how to get into their super secret realm. Being a Dacian vampire also means that you don't drink blood directly from their victims or some virtuous thing like that, they may even drink only animal blood, it doesn't really come up, but Trehan and his relatives are wicked smug about it. Trehan, one of the princes of the Realm, has lived for nearly nine centuries, and is pretty bored. All he does is read, play with his extensive weapons' collection, occasionally hunt down and with ruthless efficiency kill any threats to Dacia. He and his cousins, all in line for the Dacian throne appear to try to playfully murder one another, but even that seems to be losing its charm.

Then, as he is trailing a demon who visited Dacia and then broke the decree about never leaving, he meets his fated mate (all of Kresley Cole's vampires, and werewolves, and most of the demons have one fated person who they're waiting for, and once they meet them, they can't think of anyone else). Unfortunately she is in love with the demon he is determined to kill, and also the prize in an epic tournament, where the winner gets her hand in marriage, and control of the throne of Abbadon, her kingdom.

Princess Bettina (and yes, she is, at least on occasion, as drippy and dumb as that name makes her sound) is the orphan daughter of the demon king of Abbadon and a powerful sorceress. Unfortunately, her mother was brutally killed by a band of evil winged rival demons (there's a whole host of various demon breeds in Kresley Cole's fictional universe, not all of them unsympathetic) when she was little, and her father died trying to avenge his wife. After a gang of the same evil demons got hold of Bettina, and nearly killed her, her demon godfather and sorceress godmother (who hate each other, but love her) have decided that she, and her kingdom, needs a strong protector, and the best way to find one is to hold an epic tournament, where all the contestants fight in a number of challenges to the death, and the winner gets the kingdom, and Bettina. She is in love with her childhood friend (the one Trehan is there to kill) and hopes that he will enter the tournament, and win, so they can get married, even though her bestie (who's name I seriously cannot remember) only loves her like a sister.

Surprising to no one, Trehan and the best friend both enter the tournament, as do two hundred and something other dudes from various supernatural realms. Will Trehan win the tournament and be able to claim his fated bride? Will Bettina have to watch the man she's starting to have all sorts of tingly feelings for, kill her best friend? Will anyone care by the time they get to the end of the tournament?

I'm not going to lie. I've read a lot of Kresley Cole books. I sort of like the various crazy supernatural races and the extended universe she's created, populated with vampires (both "good" and "evil"), werewolves, vampires, ghosts, valkyries, witches, demons and what have you. The books definitely fit the label of paranormal romance, as central to each book it's all about getting the main couple together. They're also really rather smutty, which I think is one of the main reasons this book was selected as the main read for May in Vaginal Fantasy Hangout, where there's been some complaints that some of the recent books haven't had enough sex.

While Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series currently numbers 12 books (book 13 is out later this year), this is technically the start of a spin off series, about the various branches of the Dacian royal house, which means that each of Trehan's many cousins are likely to get their own stories and fated mates in the next few years. So in theory, it might be a good jumping on point if you haven't read any of the others. Unfortunately for new readers, this book is really rather tedious. The smexy scenes are plenty scorching, no complaints there, but I spent much of the book wanting to slap Bettina senseless, and Trehan isn't much better.

There is very little actual tension in any book that features fated mates. They have to get together. In most of Cole's books, I can at least have fun seeing how they get to the point where they do accept that they're meant to be together for all eternity (yeah, cause all her characters are supernatural beings who live forever - at least at by the end of their respective books). In this book, I mainly finished so I could cross off one square of my Book Bingo card. It doesn't help that the book is nearly a hundred pages longer than your standard Cole book, so there were more pages to get exasperated with the main characters in. One of the few saving graces, is that there are some cameo appearances by characters from earlier Kresley Cole books, most notably Lothaire, who is also a long lost Dacian cousin. If you've read his book, you also know who ends up on the throne of Dacia. Lots of people don't like him, here he threatened to smack some sense into both protagonists and I applaud him for it.

CBR4 Book 5: "Lothaire" by Kresley Cole

Page count: 506 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: January 15th, 2012
Date finished: January 16th, 2012

This is the 12th book in Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series, and hence will make very little sense to anyone who hasn't read the earlier books in the series. While each book centers around a new couple, by now the paranormal soap opera that is these books has become so complicated, that it won't make a lot of sense or be half as much fun to read, unless you have the requisite back story. So go check out one of the earliest books, like A Hunger Like No Other or No Rest for the Wicked instead.

Lothaire, the titular "hero" of this book is known as the Enemy of Old to creatures of the paranormal Lore in the Immortals After Dark, and has been an antagonist to several of the previous heroes and heroines in the series. Feared and hated by pretty much every faction of the Lore, due to his ruthlessness and the huge amounts of bargains he's struck through the millennia. As one of the oldest vampires alive, all that drives him is his quest for revenge. Before she died, he promised his mother he would become king over the two main vampire factions, and avenge her. He finally has the means within his grasp.

Elizabeth Pierce finds herself on death row after a demonic goddess possessed her and made her commit brutal murders. Lothaire springs her from prison as she is about to be executed, as he needs the aid of the vampire deity inside her to fulfill his plans. While he finds Elizabeth's form pleasing, he needs the brutal goddess to take up permanent residence inside her, and that means that she has very little time left to live.  At first she fears the vicious vampire, but she finds herself fascinated and drawn to him, and as she is only 24, Ellie doesn't really want to die. She'll have to use the only thing available to her, her looks and sensuality, to try to sway Lothaire into sparing her.

Lothaire has a lot of Old School romance tropes, and I can see that a lot of people might be bothered by how quickly Elizabeth falls for Lothaire, who is a ruthless killer and borderline insane. Having spent five years on death row, she is then trapped in a luxurious apartment, being taunted and belittled by him for her background, lack of refinement and general weakness as a puny human, constantly compared to the murderous deity that possesses her and falling short. Lothaire can't harm her, as he needs her body as a vessel for Soroya (the disembodied vamp goddess), but he threatens the lives of her mother, brother and extended family, and is generally an autocratic, condescending asshole. Yet she finds him deeply fascinating and devastatingly sexually attractive, snuggling up to him one minute and screaming "I hate you!" the next.

Still, as always, I found this installment by Kresley Cole incredibly entertaining, and had no trouble suspending my disbelief and just going along for the ride. The fated mates always work out in the end, no matter how impossible the journey to the HEA seems. She writes highly enjoyable banter, steamy sex scenes and it's fun that she's now working her way through some of the darker, more dislikable characters in her extended universe. Wonder what will be next?

CBR3 Book 18: "Dreams of A Dark Warrior" by Kresley Cole

Publisher: Pocket
Page count: 528 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: March 11th, 2011
Date finished: March 12th, 2011

This is the ninth book in the Immortals After Dark series, and it will make very little sense to anyone who hasn't read quite a few other books in the series. The book references events in two of the previous novels, and if you're bothered by spoilers for this or any of the other books, you probably want to skip this review. If y4ou're interested in picking up the series, the first book is A Hunger Like No Other.

Declan Chase works for an organization calling themselves the Order, who capture and experiment on supernatural beings in brutal and torturous ways to try to find their weaknesses and develop improved weapons for humankind. When he was 17, a gang of viscous supernatural creatures tortured and killed his family, and left him heavily scarred both physically and mentally. He was saved by an officer of the Order, and has devoted the whole of his adult life to hunting down and eradicating as many supernatural beings as he can. Declan is unaware that he is the reincarnation of a Viking berserker, who died a thousand years ago, shortly after consummating his relationship to the valkyrie Regin the Radiant.

Now he's been sent by the Order to capture her, and take her to their hidden island stronghold. He can't understand why she appears to recognize him just before he incapacitates her, and why he's inexplicably drawn to her, even knowing that she's not human. Regin is shocked to realize that the man who died in her arms a thousand years ago, and who's reincarnated three times to find her and reunite with her, only to die shortly after, is now a brutal and hateful man, completely consumed by his disgust for all creatures of the Lore, whether good or bad. The facility she's been locked up in is full of supernatural beings of all races, and as they are mostly immortal, the Order won't hesitate to vivisect them and then put them back together to find out what makes them tick. But if Regin can make Declan remember their shared past with a kiss, the curse that has taken him from her four times before, will cause his death.

I enjoy the Immortals After Dark series, and while there are similarities in the books, and they reference a lot of characters throughout the series, it's always interesting to see the pairings that Kresley Cole come up with. Several times, her two lovers are very different and frequently start out antagonistic towards each other, only to end up true mates. Declan Chase is possibly the most "villainous" of all her heroes so far - a man who has captured, tortured and killed hundreds and possibly thousands of creatures from the Lore, not all of them evil vampires or demons. He injects Regin with a painful poison while questioning her, and has no problem having people she considers friends or allies sent to hell dimensions or vivisected, then sown back together. As his family was brutally slaughtered, and he himself barely survived, then he was adopted by a military order and brainwashed further, it's understandable that he's so fiercely opposed to all things supernatural, and Cole doesn't excuse his actions. He's probably the most tortured of the heroes so far.

Regin's faithful berserker has been referenced in quite a few of the other books in the series, and it was very cool to finally see how their relationship started, and find out about the other incarnations of her Viking warlord, Aidan the Fierce. As a supporting character in previous books, it was never really emphasized just how much living for over a thousand years, reuniting with her lover every few hundred years or so, only to have him die from her again straight after, would suck for her. While she seems flippant and carefree, in effect being widowed four times in the space of a millennia would be pretty gruelling. Then to realize that in his most recent incarnation, the man is more of a monster than many of those he has devoted his life to hunting, can't be an easy thing.

They don't have an easy way to a happy ending, but it's a very entertaining one to read about. There are some pretty cool supporting characters, and I continue to be intrigued by Lothaire, the evil vampire and Enemy of Old, who Cole keeps throwing teasing hints about, and who's a fascinating antihero just waiting to happen. The big battle between the good and evil factions of the Lore is clearly coming closer, and I can't wait to see who the next lucky couple in her books will be.

CBR2 Book 29: "Pleasure of a Dark Prince" by Kresley Cole

Publisher: Pocket
Page count: 448 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: February 16th, 2010
Date finished: February 18th, 2010

Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series is one of my true guilty pleasures. The books are pure fluff, with absolutely no literary substance whatsoever, but I greatly enjoy them, they're a supernatural soap opera. The more books one reads, the more characters one is introduced to, and it is really only a matter of time before the central characters get their own book and romance.

Kresley Cole's books feature a number of supernatural races. There are the valkyries - who are born when warrior women near death are blessed by Odin and Freya and saved by them (I never quite figured out how this made them pregnant). So each valkyrie sort of has three parents. They are extremely fierce warrior women, attracted by riches and shiny things, and when they get angry or excited, lightning strikes. There are also various demon races, good and bad vampires and werewolves. Pretty much all the races in Cole's world have one fated mate. They know instantly when they meet said mate, and will do anything to get said person, even if all sorts of complications ensue.

In Pleasure of a Dark Prince, the Scottish werewolf Garreth MacRieve finds out that his fated mate is one of the valkyries, Lucia the Huntress. Lucia is a legendary archer and was granted her awesome archery powers by wowing to serve the goddess Skathi, and staying chaste forever (due to a really unfortunate first time when she was 16, this did not seem like a difficult promise). She hardly ever misses a target, but if she does, she experiences great pain. Garreth is overjoyed when he finds his mate, but Lucia is not happy. If she gives in and has sex with Garreth, she will lose her archery powers - and these are essential to save her from a really unpleasant fate (going back to that nasty event when she was 16). She needs to find an arrow that can kill a God, and get rid of the source of all her nightmares.

After chasing her for a year, Garreth finally catches up with Lucia on a riverboat going down the Amazon river. They are stuck together, and clearly absolutely mad about each other. Having learned from his brother and cousin, Garreth is determined not to force Lucia into the mate bonding, and Lucia keeps trying to hold him off, as her chastity is necessary if she wants to keep her powers.

Having found the other two books of Cole's with werewolf heroes a bit less enjoyable (partly because of the truly awful faux Scots brogue she insists of having them speak with) than some of the other installments, I was not sure what to expect from the seventh entry in her series. The book also confused me to begin with, as timeline-wise it starts before the events of the first book. The events that happen "one year later" are after the events that have already taken place, however. Both Garreth and Lucia are likable characters, who actually communicate fairly satisfyingly once they are trapped on a boat together. Yes, many of their problems could be solved if Lucia would just come clean with Garreth, but when he does find out most of her dark secrets, he deal much better with the truth than many other romance heroes would. A very enjoyable read.