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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.