Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales
Quick & Dirty: Great installment for fans of the series, with a dark and creative world. Had me hooked, can’t wait to start this series from the beginning.
Opening Sentence: The abandoned silver mine in the Mojave Desert wasn’t the first place someone would expect to encounter Styx, the current Anasso.
The Review:
Fear the Darkness begins with Cassie and Caine on the run. Cassie is a prophet and many people would like to use her to further their own power. Cassie has spent most of her life locked up before she was rescued by Caine. Because of her imprisonment, Cassie is quite naive and inexperienced with the world. She doesn’t really know how to act around people. Her immaturity is quite funny at times and Cassie eventually learns to adapt to her new life as a much stronger woman. Meanwhile, Caine is uber-dedicated to Cassie. He doesn’t like to leave her side even when he is checking on their safety. He was a little clingy but I still found him to be quite hot.
Starting a series, nine titles in can be a little bit intimidating. The Guardians of Eternity is a complex world of vampires, werewolves and other supernatural creatures. I was immediately swept into this world that also includes hidden dimensions. Unfortunately, I wish I hadn’t started at book nine with Fear the Darkness. I was never really lost in the story but keeping track of the huge cast of characters was a little bit daunting. I also felt like the previous books secrets weren’t ruined for me, just enough information was revealed to further the plot, and there were enough hints that make me really want to pick up the rest of this series.
As I mentioned above, the cast of characters in this series is quite huge, so almost half of this book isn’t focused on their relationship but the ongoing storyline with the Dark Lord. The point of views jumps from many different characters, good and evil. The only real problem I had was in the middle where a battle had obviously happened but it really wasn’t discussed except to know that it had happened. (I wonder if this event happened in one of the previous novellas? If that is the case, then I understand why it was omitted.) Thankfully, the final battle was not glossed over at all.
While the relationship wasn’t the focus of Fear the Darkness, the novel does focus on a world that has been creatively built up with a truly evil villain and supernatural creatures who just want to save the world. With just this one taste of the world, I would pick up the beginning of this series just to see how it got to this point. I definitely want to learn about certain characters from this series, especially Styx.
Notable Scene:
He ruthlessly arranged her slender body beneath him, settling between her legs and propping himself on his elbows to gaze down at her startled expression. “Let’s get two things straight,” he growled.
She remained silent a long minute, no doubt trying to decide whether she wanted to hear what he had to say or punch him in the nose for behaving like a caveman.
At last curiosity won out. “What?”
“I was born to become your mate.” He placed a hand over her mouth when she would have protested. “Just listen.”
She rolled her eyes, waiting for him to remove his hand before muttering her opinion of males and their deficient DNA. But thankfully she made no effort to escape. “Fine, I’m listening,” she at last conceded.
“My destiny has always been to protect you. Always.” He caught and held her gaze, laying bare his heart without hesitation. “And if you ever try to take that away it will destroy me.” He heard her breath catch at his blunt honesty, a startled tenderness flowing through their mating bond.
FTC Advisory: Zebra/Kensington provided me with a copy of Fear the Darkness. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.