I grabbed the Dominion series, by S. E. Lund, from the Amazon free list.

Dominion
Ascension
Retribution

Description from Goodreads:
When pre-med student Eve Hayden searches for a translator for an ancient French illuminated manuscript she found in her dead mother’s research files, she gets more than she bargained for: Michel de Cernay, a former priest and eight hundred year old vampire and his identical twin brother Julien, a former knight. The manuscript details their death and rebirth as vampires in 1224 during the Cathar Crusade at the hands of an ancient vampire.

Michel wants to prevent Eve from reading the manuscript or becoming a vampire hunter like her dead mother before her. He hopes Eve will instead pursue her studies in music. Unable to compel her to forget him and all about vampires, Michel asks Eve to become his Adept, working cases with him protecting the Treaty of Clairveaux that keeps vampires in the closet and peace between the two species. He also wants her to become his sexual submissive and despite her initial reluctance, Eve is drawn to the idea of submitting to this beautiful vampire.

She also meets his brother Julien, a brash and mercurial opposite to Michel’s calm determination. The temperamental opposite of Michel, Julien tries to complicate the budding romance between Eve and Michel in the hopes of winning Eve for himself. The brothers play a dangerous game of power with an ancient enemy in an effort to prevent Dominion — when vampires rule over humans.

Gifted with paranormal skills, planning to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a vampire hunter, Eve is torn between loyalty to her mother’s cause and her desire for these twins.

Review:
I’m not really getting the impassioned ravings for book. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. I finished it with a bit of a ‘meh’ feeling, mostly because everything (characters, history, world, etc) felt sketched out instead of solidly established. Even the sex was little more than being told how amazing the feelings were and then “he shoved it in.” Really? That’s all?

Eve was whiny and weak-willed. Her internal monologue was repetitive and generally consisted of ‘I want to submit, but I’m a modern woman and therefore shouldn’t desire to submit, but I do.’ Around and round she went. She had no backbone. Not because she wanted to submit to Michel, that’s a valid life choice. But because she didn’t even have the strength-of-will to make a decision. And since she couldn’t remember what made her that way, it all felt hollow. How can the reader know Eve if Eve didn’t know herself?

Michel was actually kind of cute in a damaged sort of way, but the whole Dominant/Submissive thing felt really, really forced. It didn’t fit his personality. I understood what Lund was trying to set up, with his history and all, but the switch between normal, clingy, insecure Michel and dominant, demanding, master Michel was jarring and inconsistent. Plus, the whole insistence that Eve submit completely, in all things, made very little sense to me (and that’s before I even get into the fact that they’d known each other for about a day when he started trying to demand this). As if there can’t be a hierarchy of command between two people without one bending COMPLETELY to the will of the other. Hmm, makes me wonder about every soldier to ever obey his/her commanding officer. There could be an interesting M/M story in there somewhere.

About the only character I got a firm grasp of by the end of the book was Julien (because of his manuscript) and he’s not even one of the main characters, at least not in this book. There does seem to be an interesting battle of Biblical forces building. Perhaps it will come to fruition in the next book. It sure didn’t in this one, since the book ended on a very abrupt cliffhanger. It was so sudden, actually, that I’d assert this isn’t a whole story. It’s half, maybe a third of one (if the next ends the same way.) Why do modern authors do this? It drives me completely bat-shit crazy.

The writing was pretty good though. I did notice a few grammar/editorial foul-ups and the e-formatting was painful (no paragraph indicators, broken sentences, random spacings, once I even found the first half of a sentence relocated to the end of the chapter). But I will be reading the next in the series, Ascension.

Description:

Book 2 of the Dominion Series, Ascension, follows Eve as her world is turned upside down when events separate Eve from Michel and she must remain in the care of Julien. As she is drawn more deeply into Julien’s life, she develops an attachment to him that she cannot deny. 

Review:
Ok, I have a problem. I want to write a review of this book, but if I’m honest and mention all the points I feel worth bringing up I’ll just sound like I’m ranting and spewing hate. So, what to leave out? It’s gonna be a long and unpleasant one. I apologise up front.

Suffice it to say I didn’t like Ascension. I thought Dominion was OK, but this book was horrible. It wasn’t that the writing was bad, but that I HATED the characters, ALL OF THEM. I found Eve to be the most pitiful and disgusting female lead I’ve ever encountered. She might as well have had Victim, Victim, Victim stamped on her forehead. Julian was just an ass and Michel turned out to be so selfish it was hard to face. Seriously, I wanted to shoot them all…except Vasily. Vasily was all right. He was about the only one I could tolerate.

My first issue was that this book seemed to have one theme that was repeated over and over and over and OVER again—’You must submit and obey, Eve.’ My god, I got tired of reading that, especially in the first half. The thing is, while I understand the fantasy appeal of reading about submitting sexually to a strong man (it’s why I picked this series up), watching first Michel and then Julien try to force…no, not force…talk Eve into submission by repeating ‘you must,’ ‘you have to,’ you’ve got no choice but to,’ etc got damn tiring. Plus, they didn’t want just sexual subordination, but complete submission in all things. I know it’s a personal opinion, but I found it all so far from sexy I almost couldn’t take it, for two reasons.

First, part of what I think makes the submission fantasy erotic is the fact that the woman is indulging herself in something she wants. However, Michel and Julien’s continued nagging for submission suggests that she didn’t in fact want to. The author threw the occasional “she found it secretly appealing” in there and I did understand that the men were supposed to be reading her real internal wishes, but Eve’s conscious mind rebelled at the idea of being a slave, especially a mindless blood slave. So if it wasn’t something Eve wanted, but something the men were trying to impose (which it very much felt like), it’s lost the very element that made it appealing to me in the first place. And despite their constant demands of obedience, they never allowed her time to learn to trust them or showed any inclination to take her needs into consideration, thereby proving themselves trustworthy. Jackasses, the both of them.

Secondly, the D/s fantasy kind of requires a man to have a forceful enough personality that Eve would want to submit to him. It’s a falsehood, of course, but part of the whole erotic fantasy, not reality. However, Michel and Julien came across as wheedling. They may as well have been begging. “Please submit to me.” Please do what I say.” Please give me all the power.” The fantasy doesn’t work both ways.

I think what Lund was probably trying to create is the impression that the men had such powerful personalities that they could force Eve’s to want to submit, but because they cared for her were willing to indulge her fruitless attempts to resist. But it didn’t work. It can’t. Either they are strong, dominant men that the woman chooses to submit to or they are the softer sort who try to cajole her into subordination—one or the other. Well, I suppose this could become a true bondage and rape themed book and they really could force her, but that option wouldn’t accomplish the book’s goals either.

There also seemed to be some disconnect about the whole dominance thing to start with. Book one suggested that this was a quirk Michel had developed after his time with Marguerite, a form of self-protection or something. But here Julien acted the same, as did Luke. He even referred to it as “the old ways.” If this was a vampire-thing, as opposed to a Michel-thing it’s a very different story and it feels like evidence of plot drift on the author’s part. I can’t know this for sure, obviously, but it felt like she started writing it one way, then ended up with something different and never went back to match the two up.

Then, when the history of rape was brought in I almost just dropped the series. Is there no other way available to authors to show a woman’s vulnerabilities? Seriously, it was predictable, unoriginal and just plain tawdry. It crept up to ruin almost any pleasant moment Eve, and therefore I, had in the book.

I get that Eve had had a tragic past and, therefor, deserves a little slack. I really do. But I have never had so little respect for a female character. I can tell you exactly when I lost my last dregs of respect too. I made a Kindle note at 54% saying, “If she gives in to him, I’ll lose what little respect I have left for her.” Then a paragraph later posted a second note saying, “There you go. I no longer respect this woman at all. Pathetic.” That’s how I feel about Eve. She’s pathetic, spine-less, gullible, and apparently has no respect for her own self-worth. So why should I? The things she accepted, the way she let Julien repeatedly devalue her and then crawled to him sickened me. And this was not within the confines of a structured D/s relationship. It’s just the way he treated her.

Plus, she’s just about too stupid to live. Example: a co-worker risked his life to bring her some research related to a clue she knew to be important. She then refused to read it because she didn’t believe the mythology it referred to. Listen bitch, if a person thinks it’s important enough to risk his life to bring it to you, you read it. If not out of self-preservation, then at least out of basic courtesy. Besides, she’d accepted vampires, telepathy, miraculous healings, etc already. So why be so ridiculously obstinate about other supernatural occurrences? I don’t think I’ve ever liked a character less and I know I’ve never had less respect for one.

Julien was only slightly better. Of the three main characters, him, Eve and Michel I liked him most. But that’s still not much. He was a complete jerk to Eve, constantly making unreasonable demands and treating her like dirt. And he was always pushing drugs, booze and blood on her as a way to steal her control and force her to release her inhibitions. However, there were hints that, had the two of them had a little longer, he might have improved. Problem is that about 20% from the end Michel returned and Julien was essentially dropped from the plot completely. I have no idea where he went. I mean the warehouse was HIS home, but he up and vanished. It was as if he and Michel couldn’t occupy the plot at the same time.

Probably worst of all, though, is that apparently a war was going on, but it’s all behind the scenes. The men…you know those all important men who can go out and effect the world, unlike us little women, were constantly disappearing to do who knows what. But all the reader got was Eve’s drivel and internal confusion about her hope that someone would come home and fuck her that night. I get that this is erotica, but if the plot is based on a Biblical war, then the reader needs to see at least a little of it.

Again, the writing here was fine—pretty much not worth discussing, good or bad. I’m not trying to impart anything about the author’s actual skill. But, I hated this book with a level of vitriolic passion that surprises even me. But I have book three on my Kindle and I have this horrible morbid desire to read it and see if the series manages to redeem itself or can somehow manage to get worse. I’ve checked out other reviews and I can see I’m in the minority here. People like the book. I don’t see the appeal. In fact, even though I usually enjoy a little foray into fantasy domination, much of what was written here repulsed me.  But I respect ‘to each their own.’ I’d give this a one star if I could. But I generally hold that a complete, properly structured book deserves at least two stars. So, that’s what I’ll give it.

Description:
Eve trains as a Blood Witness and Vampire Hunter for the Council of Clairveaux’s Special Cases Unit. As she prepares to protect humanity from Dominion, she’s torn between the beautiful de Cernay brothers, Michel and Julien.

 Review:
I didn’t hate it! I know, normally that wouldn’t be a recommendation for a book But considering how I felt at the end of book two, a basic, ‘I didn’t hate it’ is high praise indeed.

Michel never managed to endear himself to me and for much of this book I wished he would disappear again. But at the VERY end, he showed a side I could maybe like. Eve was still pitiful. She just showed no real volition. She basically went with any man who came for her. Yea, she complained about it, but when Michel came for her she went with him, then when Julien showed up she scarpered with him, then Michel took her again, and then Dylan snatched her up and she just floated along with him too. She went along with Soran’s plans and basically allowed herself to be used by everyone. She was a seriously, wimpy woman who I didn’t enjoy at all. BUT, I didn’t want to slowly scrape the skin from her scalp as I did throughout Ascension. That’s an improvement right? Julien however, Julien I fell a little in love with. I think it was the first time in the whole series I actual connected with a character. Too bad he was so easily controlled.

I’m still lost about Michel’s insistence on total submission from Eve. It just made no sense. Every-time Eve asked why he wanted it, he responded with some variation of, “I don’t want it, you do” (which already annoys me because it inferred she was too stupid to even know her own feelings, but he of course could) or “we have to do it to fool Soran.” Both answers bother me.

The first because it’s an occluded fallacy. It ignores the fact that he wanted it very much and not just for her benefit. It’s what he liked in general. This was made apparent on numerous occupations, though he seemed to continue to deny it. Plus, if it really were just for her, all that would be needed would be sexual domination, which she was willing to give him. It was blind control of the rest of her life she chafed about and that non-sexual domination (what she wore or ate, whether she was or wasn’t on birth control, where she lived, when she was allowed to speak, etc) in no way addressed her personal issues that submission was claimed to free her from.

Second, how exactly was her act of submission supposed to fool the super-evil, TELEPATHIC bad-guy? It just wouldn’t. So why bother with the act? It all felt like Michel’s lie to get control of her, which made me hate him and lose respect for her for allowing it.

Though most of the writing was fine, the whole ‘for’ thing became like nails on a chalkboard to me. Here is an example sentence, “He pulls me into his arms and I let him, not fighting his touch for I need it now.” Multiply that by about 400. The patter started to grate.

The book did drag a bit in the middle, but Eve was finally allowed to leave the bedroom long enough to participate in at least some of the action—even if it was blindly, without being told the details (little more than an animate tool). I swear there wasn’t a single man in the book(s) who thought she deserved to know anything, let alone be party to a decision and she let this pattern ride. I still think the vampire/angel Biblical battle plot is an interesting one. Too bad it’s being drug over so many books. Though this book does actually have a conclusion of sorts, a new arc was established at the tale end. So, there must be more books to come.