Selene

by Lilith Saintcrow

Life isn't easy for a sexwitch. Even your own body betrays you. It's bad enough that Selene is part slave to Nikolai, the Prime Power of Saint City, but she's got her brother Danny and she's got her job at the college. In the postwar wreckage of an uncertain world, it's pretty much all she's ever allowed herself to want. Then Danny ends up murdered, and Selene finds herself a pawn in a dangerous game. Indentured to a bloodsucking Nichtvren and helpless, told to stop trying to uncover the identity of her brother's killer, Selene has nowhere to turn. If she's a good girl, Nikolai will leave her a little bit of freedom. He'll take care of her, and she'll be safe--if she obeys. But Selene hasn't survived this long by being obedient to her cursed powers, or to the men who buy her time. Her brother was all she had, and now she's ready to borrow, beg, lie, steal or kill--whatever it takes to avenge him. And if Nikolai gets in the way, Selene will use every tool in her arsenal to make him regret it... This special edition also contains the prequel short story Brother's Keeper and the sequel short story Just Ask .

Genres: Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, Romance, Vampires, Paranormal, Fiction, Magic

314 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2008

About the author

Lilith Saintcrow was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as a child, and fell in love with writing stories when she was ten years old. She and her library co-habitate in Vancouver, Washington.

Reviews

[Mfred · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alright, I quite literally just finished the epilogue moments ago and I can only say...

Ugh.

Selene made one stupid decision after the other. Terrible things happen and Selene followed them with wrong-headed, poorly-formed judgments that I feel even a child would know better than to make (SPOILER ALERT-- if you give a supposedly dead vampire blood, it comes back! I'm pretty sure most children know that. Selene? Not so much).

Unexplained, confusing plot devices were never resolved (Danny's voice in her head? Nikolai's medallion?). Selene's narrative voice tells me over and over vampires can't be trusted and the world is an unsafe place for sex-witches, yet over and over Nikolai (the vamp) saves her, succors her, makes safety for her in the dangerous world. Rejecting him the first four or five times-- I get her motivation. But nineteen chapters later, she still makes the same bad decision?

Instead of feeling like I was in a powerful story with increasingly complex chains of consequence and suspense drawing me to a nail-biting end, I felt frustrated, bewildered, confused... and that makes me angry.

In case you think I am judging Selene (the character) unfairly, I understand being confused and angsty when the world goes topsy-turvy and the things you take for granted reverse themselves and must be re-evaluated on the fly. But Selene-the-character never actually evaluates anything. She acts on instinct and her instinct is so often wrong, and is followed by such disastrous consequences, it raises incredulousness in me for Selene-the-story. Did I make up that word? YES, because I'm ANGRY that I read NINETEEN chapters and an epilogue of this crap!

[Cynthia Armistead · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whine, bitch, moan, complain. Occasional sex. What does Nikolai see in Selene, anyway?

I finished it. I still have the same opinion, after 19 chapters and an epilogue, as I did after the first five chapters. The first bit was published in the anthology Hotter Than Hell.Selene is an utterly ungrateful bitch who couldn't catch a clue during clue mating season if she stood in a field covered in clue musk. Nikolai healed her with his blood, right? So when he's injured, why doesn't she at least try to do the same? D'oh.

Yeah, I'm off Saintcrow.

[Feminista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 24 December 2014.

Apparently Lilith Saintcrow has taken down the free copy of Selene online and instead published a paid version.

I have taken an issue with this author. I very rarely, as in only once before, have taken an issue with an author. I usually take issue with their books and their contents.

I don't appreciate that she has published this novel as a paid version when before she had stated it would be a free story. She pulled it without any warning whatsoever. This was her only free story online and I sort of feel cheated. I have supported her writing and her varied novels but I don't appreciate what she has done with Selene.

This brings me to my second issue with this author. I don't appreciate how much her novels cost. Compared to the other novels in the same genre, her prices are excessive and I honestly don't see any point in buying and reading them anymore.

Maybe sometime in the future, I'll change my mind and go back and buy her yet to be published novels but for now I won't.

-------------------------------
Lilith Saintcrow is re-releasing Selene.

One chapter every Wednesday.

Subscribe and/or read here

OR:
http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journa...

[Poonam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a story about a Sex-Witch (Selene) who harnesses her powers using sex to perform magic. I actually did not like this concept and was unable to get into it.
This book has a lot of inner monologue from Selene which I found really boring and irritating at times. I felt like skipping ahead a lottttt due to this.
The story starts of a bit interesting then goes round and round and the ending is really anti-climatic The death of the villian Grigori wasn't as interesting as I had expected
So why a 2 star instead of a 1 is because of Nikolai- the vampire who is in love with Selene. I am not categorizing this as a romance as there was none from Selene's side.
Overall a very average read bordering towards boring.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review also posted at A Bookish Compulsion

**This prequel offshoot to the Danny Valentine series following two of the side characters, Selene and Nikolai, was released as a serial on Ms. Saintcrow’s website in 2008; the website has since been rebooted and this content has yet to make a re-appearance.**

Selene was an edgy ride right from the beginning. Even knowing the end result thanks to reading the Valentine series it still managed to be a thrill that rode the border between excitement and fear right till the very end. The characters in this book were flawed and damaged—none of them particularly likable but all thoroughly relatable, even in the instances when I wanted to slap some sense into them. Selene spent most of the page-count fighting against being the damsel-in-distress no matter how apt the description and Nikolai took alpha to the extreme; bypassing feelings for safety and not really giving a damn about the consequences. The largest problem I had with this story is one shared with most of Ms. Saintcrow’s work: the ending. Saying it was a cliffhanger is a bit of an understatement; it felt more like ending things at intermission, so much was left in loose ends the only conciliation I could find was in the fact that a gosh-o-mighty number of years later they are both content and able to help Danny out, so things must have gotten resolved…eventually.

I enjoyed this story and am happy to give it four shiny stars.

[gremlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first started reading this, I noticed this in the copyright:
“Brother’s Keeper” originally appeared in Hotter Than Hell (Harper, 2008)
“Just Ask” originally appeared in The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance (Running Press Book Publishers, 2011)
Because it wasn't clear in the table of contents or copyright, “Brother’s Keeper” is about the first 14% of this, and “Just Ask” is the last 8%. The middle is “Selene” but the three together make a complete story. And now that all of that's clear, and I know there is content I haven't read, I'll go back to reading.

I got surprisingly emotional about this. Selene hated what she was so much, it made me tear up, but by the end of the book she was in a much better place, physically and emotionally.

It's been long enough since I read the Dante Valentine series that I didn't recognize any overlap other than the city, but I don't think you need to read that series to enjoy this.

[Di · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the hot mess that is the relationship between Nikolai and Selene. Will there be a sequel?

[ScholasticPerturbation · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author seems to have a very serious knack for writing messy relationships filled with angst, miscommunication, often one-sided passion or at least very-nearly unrequited devotion. This and some of her previous works make me believe she has worked closely with the sex trade or at least had some real life exposure. While I see a lot of reviewers who don't feel favorably about this relationship style I really appreciate it. I have a harder time with fictional off-the-rack relationships formed from tried and true formulas known to be suitable to a general audience. People are self centered and flawed. Functional relationships are hard to accomplish and maintain, requiring phases of change for all involved either by trial and error, manipulation, coping mechanisms or personal growth. I can see how a lot of people prefer their fictional relationships to be just that (who doesn't have enough realist BS in their lives?) but I enjoy the struggle, particularly in the ways L StC usually presents it.

If this is your first Saintcrow book and didn't like it, I'd say give some of her other series a try. They have relationships but there are usually bigger issues as plot centers, making the romance/relationship issues secondary.

[Lady Entropy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I went and bought this and reread it.

I still think it's worth a 4 stars, but I am slightly more disillusioned with the main character. Not only does she call for God and Jesus every page, but I couldn't wonder how she pretended she wanted to escape Nikolai but then, somehow couldn't -- until she could at the end. I can deal with some "denial" about how she doesn't get he loves her, but it reaches some silly levels as the novel goes along. It also makes Selene come across as stupid, which is a pity.

Also, how much this takes inspiration from World of Darkness was both distracting and very amusing, because I'd spend more time checking what bits of the WOD\Vampire: the Masquerade she was using than focusing on the story itself.

[DemetraP · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this vampire novel. She is a "sex witch" and he is a vampire. He gets power from feeding off of her. She gets power when he has sex with her.

The vampire hero does some bad things. He is so in love with her and just wants her to love him back. He does things without her permission.

I would have liked more of an ending and a longer epilogue. But I have re-read Selene many times.

[Jayah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked: basic plot and Nikolai
I really disliked: ending and Selene.

[Taldragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life isn't easy for a sexwitch. Even your own body betrays you. It's bad enough that Selene is part slave to Nikolai, the Prime Power of Saint City, but she's got her brother Danny and she's got her job at the college. In the postwar wreckage of an uncertain world, it's pretty much all she's ever allowed herself to want. Then Danny ends up murdered, and Selene finds herself a pawn in a dangerous game. Indentured to a bloodsucking Nichtvren and helpless, told to stop trying to uncover the identity of her brother's killer, Selene has nowhere to turn. If she's a good girl, Nikolai will leave her a little bit of freedom. He'll take care of her, and she'll be safe--if she obeys. But Selene hasn't survived this long by being obedient to her cursed powers, or to the men who buy her time. Her brother was all she had, and now she's ready to borrow, beg, lie, steal or kill--whatever it takes to avenge him. And if Nikolai gets in the way, Selene will use every tool in her arsenal to make him regret it... This special edition also contains the prequel short story Brother's Keeper and the sequel short story Just Ask.

[Debby Tiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I have read this before, maybe I haven’t. I had a sense of deja vu in some places but that could just be because of the Dante Valentine series. Hard to say.

It’s also hard to say how I feel about Nikolai. His relationship with Selene isn’t so much morally grey villain as toxic abuser. He’s manipulative, violent, and a rapist. However, the story also clearly shows why she would keep turning to him. It’s a situation with no good answers.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It’s explicit in a variety of ways, so be cautious reading it.

Favorite character: Marina. The healer is so sweet and yet strong-willed, and I loved the spice of mystery about her.

Favorite quotes:

“We all live our little lives in his long dark shadow.”

“Well, if she was a pet, there was no reason not to chew on the furniture and piddle on the rug.”

"I'm not stubborn." Her voice sounded very small. "You're just a manipulative, spoiled sucktooth."

[Nicole Luiken · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the same gritty world as and set before the Dante Valentine books, this gives the backstory of two characters we met there, Selene and Nikolai.

Strong opening, with Selene getting a panicked phonecall from her brother that sets up the central mystery. As usual Saintcrow's writing is very vivid. Selene's sexwitch power, or as she rightly calls it a curse, is very different and interesting, and the push-pull of her relationship with Nichtvren Nikolai adds a lot of tension to the story. Is it bad that I now kind of want a book about Rigel and Marina?

Quibble: Having read all the Dante Valentine books first, in which her nickname was Danny, it felt weird for Selene's brother to also be a Danny (even tho Dante isn't in this book)

[Glennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in the same story universe as Saintcrow’s Dante Valentine series, you don’t need to have read any of the previous books to understand what is going on. Set in a post-apocalyptic where supernatural powers are out in the open but discriminated against. Selene is trying to find her brother’s killer. She is a sex witch that has been hiding her talent from the general population. Nikolai is a vampire that has had her under his protection even as she denies it. Sex witches are rare and wanted by many supernaturals to use them. The killer is Nikolai’s creator and Selene has to accept Nikolai’s protection if she wants to survive and avenge her brother. Nikolai is also attracted to Selene but she isn’t but her sex witch powers do betray her. This book also has a short story that talks about the two of them many years after the events in the main part of the book.

[Renee Elizabeths · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review was cross-posted from my blog. To read the full post (and more!), click here.

From what I can gather, Saintcrow released this story a while ago, but I hadn't discovered the wonder that is her writing at that point, so I missed it. I did catch it when she rereleased it as an online serial and I loved it. Reading in installments over a period of months is not my usual style. I tend to devour books whole in less than 12 hours. Waiting a week for the next chapter nearly killed me every time. We will not discuss how I felt when I found out she was taking a break in the middle.

I reread the entire Dante Valentine series to pass the time. So that killed, you know, a week.

When she decided to release the whole things as a novel, combined with two short stories I'd also missed, I was ecstatic. I downloaded it and jumped right to the short stories, because hey, new fiction! Then I went back and reread the novel in the middle, because hey, awesome novel!

Selene is a fabulous character and I really loved seeing her origin story, as it were. The glimpse of her relationship with Nikolai that I got in the Dante Valentine books struck me as one that really had a wealth of intrigue just waiting to be explored. You just know there's more there.

Selene did not disappoint, either on the original reading or the reread. There's so much tension and fire and passion and trauma burning out of the pages whenever Selene and Nikolai are in a room together. Half the time, I didn't know if I wanted them to rip each other's clothes or heads off. Either would be a totally believable outcome.

Selene is such a badass character. Being a sexwitch, there was the potential for her to be softer, but Saintcrow doesn't write like that. She hates her curse, she hates the life she's forced to live because of it, and she's not proud of a number of the choices she's made, though she wasn't exactly presented with a whole host of better options. Still, she takes all that frustration and rage and pain and channels it into power. She's strong and determined and she doesn't take anything from anyone. Unless she wants to.

Nikolai is also a badass character, though I wasn't as interested in him as I probably should have been. I usually get a lot more out of a good bad guy/antagonist/whatever. He's hot and strong and powerful, but he's also an asshole and a very intelligent and cunning idiot. I kinda want to punch him in the head, and I grinned with savage pride whenever Selene took him down a peg.

As a warning, you should know that this isn't a romance. I mean, it is a gritty sort of love story, but not in the traditional genre sense of the word. If you've read the Dante Valentine series, you know where Selene and Nikolai end up (if one can really they've ended up at that point), but this is not some grand sweeping romantic story with feels and flowers at the end.

[Artemisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

So witch with magik triggered by sex, fine, I like it. Se likes a vampire, even better. Apocalyptic, dystopic world, with paranormals and vampires running the shots, known in the world, love it.

I liked Selene, I found the story compelling. After chapter 2 I couldn't stop until chapter 9. And that is a good pause. It's about the middle of the book, the story unties a little, and it really closes a chapter. You can stop, get some sleep, or just take a break from the computer. But as I said it is just a pause in the rhythm of the book. After I started to read again it was hard to stop.

Then Selene changes to a vampire and all hell breaks loose. We get action scene, after action scene, with a little love scene in between.

And to then a good ending and a lousy prologue. I hate prologues were I don't get to know what happened with the main character. And I believe the name on the top of the screen was Selene, not Nikolai...

now the bad... I didn't get it, was this world a dystopic futuristic earth or some totally fantastic world? In either case, saying the live was a Twilight Zone is a bad choice of a reference... I only noticed this on, and only in one place, but I stared at it for a couple of minutes...

[Sandra Rosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welcome to Selene, a serialized Saint City novel by Lilith Saintcrow. New chapters will be posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Selene is a novel posted in blog format. The short story Brother’s Keeper, in the anthology Hotter than Hell, is a prequel. Selene and Nikolai will be familiar to readers of the Dante Valentine series.

i actually liked this, sure Alpha Male Arrogant Bastard, but i did kinda like it, maybe because i read it in small doses...
i'll try to do a full reading some time from now and see what i still think about it.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the same world as the Dante Valentine series, this standalone novel was originally published as a serial novel on the author's Web site (http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal/), but I believe it is no longer available for reading since the site's revamp.

The story follows the adventures and romance of Selene, a psychic whose abilities are derived from sex, and her paramour, the city's vampire lord. These are two minor characters in the Valentine series, and I enjoyed reading about their history and how they eventually came to work together.

[Lady Entropy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really, really liked this book. The main character was engaging, dramatic as was her plight. Her bond with her brother realistic, her issues with her Vampire Master and her own curse suitably claustrophobic.

I loved how this writer is one of the few actually managing to create believably old and powerful characters. THAT is how a vampire elder acts. Quite a few Urban Fantasy writers need to learn from her.

And, more than anything else, the ending was heart-achingly liberating.

... and this book is for free. Can't praise it enough.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Lilith Saintcrow and I've read the Dante Valentine series, which is the world "Selene" is set in. However, Selene took way too long to get her act together, in my opinion. She spends two thirds of this book whining, and railing against her fate. Yes, she finally starts opening her brain to other interpretations of life, but she felt like a weak heroine, which is not what I'm used to from Saintcrow. It was only in the "epilogue" that Selene was a character that I wanted to know more about.

[Mari · Rating 1 out of 5]

OK. I only read ONE excerpt in a anthology. I already know she should probably trust Nicholai. NOTHING he says sounds incorrect, and its not his damn fault she was born a sex witch. He probably didn't ask to be a vampire either, but he isn't crying over spilt milk. What an angry, contrary cunt. In fact, I'm thinking she is lucky she is a sex witch, because otherwise she would be even more useless.

[WillowBe · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite LSC story. I wish she'd do a full book on them. The first time I read it, it was so hawt, I could barely stand it, esp since I was reading it at work! Though Selene gets on my nerves with her running hither and thither, Nickolai is an antihero who can't be denied. I actually love hime more than Jafrimel, and that's saying something!

[Amira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only time Iv realistically liked, and not just humoured Lilith Saintcrows over the top angst. If only it had a definitive ending (Not even going to go into the disappointment that was Just Ask haha). Very enjoyable read, Selene was an interesting character, wish she did more rather then have things happen and solved for her. But I suppose that could be said for any Saintcrow female lead.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually refuse to read books on-line and wouldn't have ever thought of a serial if I hadn't read the rest of Lilith Saintcrow's books. It was good. Ok, it was addictive! Hopeful that it gets published in "real" book fashion at some point so I can add it to my collection...

[Mandeep’s reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes Selene is whiny, yes her inner voice sometimes sounds as neurotically rabid as Dante Valentines (another Saintcrow h from the same world), yes there are confusing unexplained plot elements (the medallion), but I still love Saintcrows world and writing. Dark.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so glad that Ms. Saintcrow decided to publish this with both short stories included. I had read Selene as the free serial on her web page a few years ago but had never tracked down the epilogue "Just Ask". This ebook version now gives readers the entire story!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully done but needs to finish the storyline.

[Lothloriengale · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite Lilith's books!

[Jennifer Sweet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paranormal romance at its best

I loved the characters . I loved how they navigated through the morass of what is and what should be, and what is desired.