I grabbed Donya Lynne‘s PNR Rise of the Fallen from the Amazon KDP list.
Description from Goodreads:
In the streets of Chicago exists an uneasy, centuries-old truce between vampires and their distant cousins, a race of shifters called drecks. Vampire enforcement agency, All the King’s Men (AKM), is charged with maintaining the truce, but when volatile enforcer Micah Black loses his mate and falls into the biological agony that results from the broken bond, he tests the boundaries of the truce by seeking out Apostle, a leader in the dreck community. Micah wants Apostle to kill him, a request Apostle is more than happy to fulfill.
When ex-Army medic Samantha Garrett inadvertently disrupts the plot and saves Micah’s life, a chain reaction sets Micah’s heart on a collision course with Sam’s, but he will have to protect her from Apostle and her obsessive ex-husband, Steve, if they will have a chance at forever. Can Micah hold his emotions together to keep Sam alive?
Review:
So, I’m not gonna mince words here. This is a Black Dagger Brotherhood knock off. It is. There are a lot of them out there these days. All the King’s Men (AKM), like the Brotherhood is set against another paranormal species in an attempt to protect the human race. Here they may be called Drecks instead of Lessers, but it’s all the same. Unlike in BDB however, AKM don’t seem to actually encounter the Drecks very often. Not once in this whole book did one of the AKM go out to do the job one assumes the AKM was created for–to maintain the truce between the two species. It felt very much like the Drecks only existed in order to provide a reason for the AKM to exist.
The same could be said for Sam’s abusive ex-husband. He was purposeless. He shows up three times in the whole book and played no significant role beyond providing Sam a victimised past to be used to excuse her for being a stripper. I suppose readers are more accepting of a woman who works in the sex trade if she does it reluctantly than just because the money is good, or whatever. I found it unnecessary.
Despite the above complaints I did enjoy the book though. The sex scenes were hot. They incorporated a little bit of male dominance, without making the woman feel abused or overly controlled. That’s a thin and uncomfortable line for me as a reader. Lynne played the card without going over board. Conversely I did feel like Micah’s history as an actual Dom only served to artificially make him feel edgier. Again, it wasn’t needed. It was nothing more than a distraction. (Though I see it comes into play in at least one later book.)
My favourite aspect of the story was the loose adherence to heterosexuality. It’s always seemed to me that if you were a vampire who lived for hundred’s of years there wouldn’t really be much reason to stick strictly to the social mores of the time. Why not open your horizons up? Lynne allowed her characters this. Some are flat out gay, others just aren’t concerned with male/female, a partner is a partner. I liked that.
The series may not be the most original, but it passed an enjoyable couple of hours so I have no real qualms with the book.