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Book Review of Stephanie Rowe’s Darkness Seduced & Darkness Surrendered

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I bought Stephanie Rowe’s Darkness Seduced and Darkness Surrendered after reading Darkness Awakened (which I reviewed here). They are the second and third books in the Order of the Blade series. 

Description from Goodreads:
Immortal warrior Gideon Roarke made an oath five hundred years ago to the woman who died for him. The ancient Calydon is ruthless in his quest to honor that promise, even if it means risking everything by teaming up with the one woman who will either destroy him, or finally bring redemption to his blackened, hardened soul.

After escaping from a two-year imprisonment at the hands of a madman, the only thing Lily Davenport wants is to go home and reclaim her life. Unfortunately for Lily, standing between her and that goal is a sensual, demanding protector whose dangerous seduction threatens to claim her life…and her soul.

Review:
This is the second book in the Order of the Blade series, and it was a fun little read. It picked up where the first left off and, as expected, followed the soul mates Gideon and Lily. I liked Lily. She was a strong survivor, which is good since she also seemed like a perpetual victim. I also like Gideon. He was a strong, honorable man, and anyone who has read many of my reviews knows that I like that character type a lot. Unfortunately, I didn’t like Lily and Gideon together very much. 

I could get over the insta-love. It’s really to be expected in this genre. I even accepted that they had an extra strong attraction to one another due to her magic and his whole Sheva thing. What I had trouble with was that she essentially condemned him for doing what he was supposed to. Yes, she accepted him eventually, but she still made him grieve his previous actions, grovel and apologize. I don’t mean that she forced him to do it, but she made him feel like he needed to.

No doubt this was meant to be read as her bringing the ice-king to life and teaching him to feel again. In fact, we’re essentially told so. However, to me, it just felt wrong. Soldiers do horrible things during times of war, and the Order is at war. Why should he have to apologize for difficult but honorable actions? His personal need to atone undermined the unavoidable necessity of those situations. It felt like it weakened his commitment to the cause, and I simply didn’t like it. This is, of course, a completely personal opinion and nothing more. 

The ultra baddie that they were up against kept me interested, though his minions seemed awfully easy to beat. I thought the ending was a little sappy for my taste, but the threads left open for Elijah and Ana’s story is really tempting. I’m torn because I like the characters and would like to know more about the rest of the Order members, but I already kind of feel like I’ve had enough of the series. Maybe there just wasn’t enough of a difference between the first and the second books. I don’t know. I’m still undecided. 

As an interesting (probably just to me) aside, I wonder if Ms. Rowe has something against cunnilingus. I’ve read a lot of PNR lately, and there is almost always at least one scene in which it occurs. It’s a PNR/Erotica staple, but not once in either book one or two did it happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bemoaning the lack of oral sex or anything. It just seemed notably absent, like an expected step had been skipped. I wonder if I should be embarrassed to have noticed it.

darkness surrenderedDescription from Goodreads:
Six hundred years ago, Elijah Ross was tortured into insanity and thrust into a mental hell that no living creature has ever survived…except him. Now, that same evil is back, and Elijah is all that stands between it and the destruction of all of humanity, but each step he takes drags him further back into the nightmare that once consumed him. Elijah’s only chance is Ana Matthews, whose sensual kisses and passionate fire thrust hope and light into his blackened heart and fragmented mind, but her deadly past could be the final trigger for his descent into irretrievable madness and the destruction of his soul…and humanity.

Review:
Once you get a couple of books into a series, it gets harder and harder to review them. What can you say beyond I liked it more or less than the previous ones? Book 3 of the Order of the Blade series falls right in the middle for me. I liked it more than the second and less than the first. Rowe still manages to hit all of the right emotional notes with her überprotective males but still overplays the hand a bit by telling the reader repeatedly how desperate they are to actually protect their mates. Ana and Elijah are a good pairing. Well, actually, they’re a horrible pairing, and they know it, but they work.

I have to admit I really felt sorry for ultra-baddie Ezekiel in this one. He was a psycho and all, and I certainly didn’t want him to triumph, but I did sympathize with him a little bit. It made for a nice emotional conflict. The whole double-branding thing (you’ll know what I mean if you read it) didn’t sit well with me. I felt like it undermined the sacredness of the soulmate bond, but I kind of got the point too. As the series progresses, I keep waiting for some sort of divine architect to come into play. I guess I’ll just have to keep at it to see if that happens.

Book Review of Stephanie Rowe’s Darkness Awakened

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I grabbed Stephanie Rowe‘s PNR novel, Darkness Awakened (Order of the Blade #1), from the Amazon free list. As I write this I notice that it happens to be free again too.

Description from Goodreads: 
The Calydons are a race of ancient immortals cursed with a dark side. Each Calydon is destined to meet his soul mate, to be so drawn to her that he is unable to resist bonding with her through the rituals of his race… 

…but their destiny is to destroy each other and all they care about the moment their bond is complete. 

Quinn Masters will stop at nothing to rescue his rogue teammate. To save his blood brother and ensure his brand of justice triumphs, Quinn will break every rule of his kind and partner with the sensuous, courageous woman destined to be his ultimate destruction. 

Haunted by a brutal past, Illusionist Grace Matthews will risk everything to save her kidnapped sister, including putting her life in the sinfully capable hands of an immortal warrior whose ravaging kisses and intense passion propel her ruthlessly toward a fateful destiny she can’t afford to believe in.

Review:
In some ways, this book is just like any other Paranormal Romance of its ilk. The Calydons are a group of hot-as-hell, rough-and-tumble defenders of the innocent, just like JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood, Elisabeth Naughton’s Eternal Guardians, or Zoe Forward’s Scimitar Magi. And like these other PNRs the Calydon’s run into their soulmate (insta-love anyone?), the one person who they simply can’t resist. Don’t we all love these stories? That’s why we read PNR, right?

What the Order of the Blade series is, that the others aren’t, is ALMOST a parody of the genre. Like the Brotherhood or Guardians, meeting one’s soulmate throws one hell of a wrench in the Order members’ works, but unlike them, this fact is sitting forward and center as part of the plot. The Maji meet their soulmate and still go about their mission, the Calydons exist and are the hard-asses they are because of their need to avoid those same soul mates. They and the men who love them are who they hunt instead of demons, vampires, or the eternal dead. (At least in this first one.)

It is so central to the plot that it enables the characters themselves to acknowledge it and joke about it. I liked that. It made for some really funny moments, quotes like this one: “You know, you’re hot, and you’ve got that badass manly man thing going, and I’m crazily attracted to you, but honestly, I suspect you’re going to be a little too bossy for my tastes. Thanks for the offer on the whole love-me-die-for-me thing, but I’ll pass.” Or how about this one, “I’m an Order member. We’re specifically chosen because we’re so damned trustworthy. We’re like Labradors.” Ha, I laughed at that one.

Now, by the same token, the whole loyal, trustworthy thing was beaten into the ground a little bit. At 15% through the book, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s romantic.’ At 90% through the book, when Quinn and Grace were still harping on about how much they trust one another and would be there for each other always, I thought, ‘Oh God, I get it already! Move on.’ I loved that Quinn was the type of man he was and that loyalty was a big thing for him. It was what Grace needed most too. I just got a little tired of being told about it.

The book had enough of a plot to keep the pace moving and an interesting assortment of side characters, though I wish I’d gotten to know them a bit more. I had a little bit of trouble with the whole Illusionist thing. I understood how the mind could be tricked into believing in an injury, but how was clothing convinced to tear? It has no consciousness. Grace’s illusions felt more like actual physical manifestations than illusions. Really this is a small point, maybe even semantics. I enjoyed the book enough to buy the second one, Darkness Seduced and Darkness Surrendered.

Review of Innok’s Curse

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I grabbed R.G. Porter’s novel Innok’s Curse off of the KDP free list, and I’m fairly sure this is the version I have. The cover is the same. I’m just thrown a little by Goodreads’ inclusion of this title: Curse of Innok. The synopsis makes it fairly obvious that it’s the same story.

I suppose the author may have published it twice, or one may be an updated version of the other. I don’t know. So confused over this (and just OCD enough to want to be sure I reviewed the right novel) I even messaged Porter to ask which one she wanted reviews posted under. In retrospect, this may not have been appropriate, but I can’t take it back. Oh well. I haven’t heard anything back anyway. Lacking any further guidance on the issue I am going with Innok’s Curse.

Description from Goodreads:
A man cursed by a demon.
A woman who’s memories are more than just her own.
An enemy sworn to destroy all their dreams.
A destiny that none of them expected.

Cursed to live by day as a dragon and by night as a man, Gabriel believes he will forever be alone after the murder of his beloved Danielle. That is, until the night he meets Alayia and everything changes.

Together, they must figure out the truth of the curse that Innok has placed on Gabriel as well as those from his visions. Their quest will bring them deep into the heart of the evil, but with her abilities and the spirit of the dragon within, they might just unlock the truth of the past
and break the curse. If they can keep the demon from winning too fast

Review:
I like the premise of this book. I suppose that ought to be obvious. I wouldn’t have downloaded it or chosen to read it if I hadn’t. The idea of a man cursed to live as both a conscious-less beast and a man carrying the burden of both his own and its guilt is an interesting one. The incorporation of earth magic, reincarnation, and boundless love and friendship only sweetens the pot. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the book lived up to its potential. The whole thing just felt too rushed.

Characters were introduced only to die in the next scene, and while it was obvious that the reader was meant to feel something at this loss, I didn’t. I hadn’t had enough time to come to care. Other characters acted abhorrently, but other than a mention by the narrator that the main character was surprised at their callousness, there was no suggestion that this was out of the ordinary, so it held no emotional impact for the reader.

There was no way to anchor yourself in time. The year 1025 was mentioned at one point, and Gabriel was known to have slept for 50 years. The story seems to begin when he wakes. However, there was no way to know how much time passed thereafter. He could have been living as the dragon for three weeks or two thousand years. I never could figure it out. This also made it hard to reconcile the language used. The narration had a distinctly modern feel, which only further muddled my attempts to settle on an era. 

Solutions seemed to magically appear at times. As an example, after learning about Gabriel’s curse, Alayia pulls a book out of her backpack that just happens to have had the spell she needs to break it inside…from her backpack, not the local library, or the university or even back at home, but from the one small bag she happened to be carrying with her. This despite there being no indication that she had any previous magic training and every suggestion that she came from a family that would disapprove of such a thing anyway. Why did she have a book of spells with her?

Worst of all, I have no idea why any of the events happened. Having finished the book, I still don’t know why Elroy was after Danielle in the first place. Did he think he was in love with her? Did he have some nefarious plan that required her and her magic? Did he have something against Gabriel, and she was just a handy way to torture him? I don’t know. The whole substructure of the plot was missing and felt hollow as a result.

This isn’t to suggest that the book wasn’t without merit. It did contain Talon, who happens to be one of the most colorful characters I’ve come across in a while. Granted, I have no idea why he was so wonderfully dedicated to Alayia, having JUST met her, but he was, and I loved him for that. I really hope the next book ends with him in the lap of luxury. He deserves it. The idea that Danielle and Gabriel’s love was so strong that it could transcend time was moving, and the message that it is important to accept all of yourself (even the parts you fear or don’t understand) is a good one. Such acceptance is an important first step toward…oh, enlightenment, self-improvement, acceptance into Heaven [choose your transcendental equivalent].

There is a lot of potential here. The storyline itself is a good one, and other readers may love the book. Everyone is different, after all. I, however, didn’t, and I cringe just typing that because I hate to say it about anyone’s baby. But in this case, it is unfortunately true. This one just wasn’t for me. 

Addendum:  I heard back from Mrs. Porter this morning. She thanked me for the review, which made me feel a little better because I really felt a little guilty for my honesty. I know I shouldn’t, but I really want to like every author’s book and cringe when I have to admit otherwise. She also said that the two titles are an earlier and later incarnation of the same story. Mystery solved. Thank you, Mrs. Porter.