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Helsing: Demon Slayer
Book One of The Dragon's Paladins
A warrior bound by duty. A woman marked by fate. A world on the edge of darkness.
When the sky burns and the earth trembles, old powers stir beneath the surface. In the wake of a devastating solar flare, ancient evil rises to take advantage of a broken world. But the Elioud, a hidden race of angel-blooded warriors, have not stood idle. In the mountains of northern Albania, a stronghold has formed under the drangùe and his consort—a sanctuary where harmony and heroism might hold back the coming dark.
Ryan Helsing, a decorated Army Ranger with a past forged in fire, is sworn to that cause. Battle-tested and emotionally scarred, he never questions his orders—until he's sent to retrieve Dianne Markham, the younger sister of the drangùe's wife. What should have been a simple escort mission turns deadly when daemons strike Dianne's cruise ship just as it docks in Split, Croatia. Ryan barely gets her out alive.
Now they’re on the run across a crumbling Europe, hunted by forces both human and inhuman. Dianne never asked to be part of a war between supernatural powers. All she wanted was to survive the chaos and find something real in a world of shallow pleasures. But when Ryan storms into her life with steel eyes and a haunted soul, she’s drawn into a world where ancient bloodlines, harmonic technology, and dark magic collide.
Marked by an unseen enemy and carrying secrets even she doesn’t understand, Dianne may be the key to everything. And Ryan will risk his life to protect her—even if it means confronting the echoes of his past, and the possibility that fate has more in store for them than either imagined.
Helsing: Demon Slayer launches a pulse-pounding romantasy of survival, sacrifice, and the fierce first strike in the battle to hold the light.
Sometimes, one man is all that stands in the way.
A warrior bound by duty. A woman marked by fate. A world on the edge of darkness.
When the sky burns and the earth trembles, old powers stir beneath the surface. In the wake of a devastating solar flare, ancient evil rises to take advantage of a broken world. But the Elioud, a hidden race of angel-blooded warriors, have not stood idle. In the mountains of northern Albania, a stronghold has formed under the drangùe and his consort—a sanctuary where harmony and heroism might hold back the coming dark.
Ryan Helsing, a decorated Army Ranger with a past forged in fire, is sworn to that cause. Battle-tested and emotionally scarred, he never questions his orders—until he's sent to retrieve Dianne Markham, the younger sister of the drangùe's wife. What should have been a simple escort mission turns deadly when daemons strike Dianne's cruise ship just as it docks in Split, Croatia. Ryan barely gets her out alive.
Now they’re on the run across a crumbling Europe, hunted by forces both human and inhuman. Dianne never asked to be part of a war between supernatural powers. All she wanted was to survive the chaos and find something real in a world of shallow pleasures. But when Ryan storms into her life with steel eyes and a haunted soul, she’s drawn into a world where ancient bloodlines, harmonic technology, and dark magic collide.
Marked by an unseen enemy and carrying secrets even she doesn’t understand, Dianne may be the key to everything. And Ryan will risk his life to protect her—even if it means confronting the echoes of his past, and the possibility that fate has more in store for them than either imagined.
Helsing: Demon Slayer launches a pulse-pounding romantasy of survival, sacrifice, and the fierce first strike in the battle to hold the light.
Sometimes, one man is all that stands in the way.
348 pages, ebook
First published August 1, 2025
2 people are currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Liane Zane
7 books11 followersLiane Zane is the cover identity of a novelist who is an expert at hiding in plain sight. She has spent time interrogating a former Army intelligence officer and engaging in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) activities related to Italian slang words for naughty body parts and the proclivities of Eastern European criminals. She spends her days drinking New England chocolate-raspberry coffee and gazing at the magical brook in her backyard as she plots her romantic thrillers or walking her dogs along mountain trails near her estate-like home.
She writes about tough female leads and the even tougher male heroes who love them in her romantic supernatural thriller series, THE ELIOUD LEGACY and THE DRAGON'S PALADINS.
Visit Liane's Web site to subscribe to her newsletter for occasional updates and promotions.
She writes about tough female leads and the even tougher male heroes who love them in her romantic supernatural thriller series, THE ELIOUD LEGACY and THE DRAGON'S PALADINS.
Visit Liane's Web site to subscribe to her newsletter for occasional updates and promotions.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 7, 2025
Full disclosure at the outset: the author kindly donated me a paperback copy of this book in return for an honest review.
In the climactic novel of the author's Elioud Legacy trilogy, The Draka and the Giant, former U.S. Army Ranger Ryan Helsing, a decorated and physically formidable veteran of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, was introduced as a relatively minor character (I didn't remember him until I read this book; it's been a couple of years since I finished reading the trilogy). And as I recall from the prequel series, Unsanctioned Guardians, it was mentioned in the first book there, The Covert Guardian, that title character (and major figure in both series) Olivia Markham had a younger sister. These two people serve as co-protagonists of this new novel, intended as the opening volume of The Dragon's Paladins, a projected spin-off series from the original trilogy.
As readers of the latter know, Zane's premise is that, from antediluvian times on down to the present, there have been some sub rosa matings between angels (mostly fallen ones, but occasionally celestial ones as well) and humans, and that the children of these unions walk among us, sometimes aware of their heritage, sometimes not. These Elioud have (latent, or more developed) super-human abilities from their angelic genes; and in the ongoing cosmic strife between God and Satan, they may be knowingly enlisted on one side or the other, or just imagine that they can ignore spiritual realities and be neutral. (This premise is taken for granted in the present novel, which should definitely be read after at least the original trilogy, if not necessarily the prequel; the reader needs that to fully understand the situation and to really know some of the important characters.)
Our main setting is the Balkans, in the very near future, about six months after the final events of The Draka and the Giant. Dianne Markham is now a 29-year-old “social media marketing consultant” (and yes, that's an actual job). Secular-minded and not very close to her sister, in the past she's been something of a playgirl type, and cultivated a loose lifestyle along that line; but more recently, she's been aware of her biological clock ticking, and been feeling (and even acting on) some impulses towards a more serious and mature outlook and more responsible behavior. She has no clue about her family's bloodlines, or that Olivia and her husband, Mihail Kastrioti, are two of the Archangel Michael's top warriors and commanders. But they are; and Olivia, warned of danger by her “spidey sense” (which we've come to recognize as Divine prompting) is taking measures to gather her birth family into the relatively greater safety of the Kastrioti fortress compound in the Albanian mountains. When we first meet Dianne, she's on an Adriatic cruise, now winding down, with a bevy of her shallow “friends” (though Germaine Grimes is one she reckons as an actual friend). However, Olivia has sent our title character, who's now the Kastrioti's chief of security, to secretly watch over her sister on the voyage, and to bring her to Olivia as soon as they dock in the Croatian port city of Split. That may be a long and dangerous trip (especially after the registering of the largest EMP phenomenon in history), and their interpersonal dynamics may get interesting....
In its stylistic and other qualities, this book has a lot of the same trademark characteristics the author displays in her six preceding books. Narration is in third-person, past tense; the H/h alternate as viewpoint characters, with occasional scenes from other viewpoints as needed. While this is definitely in the supernatural fiction genre, centering on combat between demons and demi-angels and their human pawns or allies, much of it also reads like descriptive fiction action-adventure or an espionage thriller (and Zane's prequel trilogy actually is in the latter genre). This entails a lot of physical action and use of high-tech weaponry and communications. The development of nanotechnology here, and its tie-ins with “harmonics,” the energy frequencies underlying all reality and all living things, including people, which angels and their descendants can perceive but ordinary humans usually can't, is in the realm of the science-fictional (and probably already was in at least the last two books of the first trilogy, though my knowledge of nanotechnology isn't great enough that I could tell that on my first reading). Zane sets a very brisk narrative pace, with a gripping intensity that makes this a real page-turner (I read it in less than two weeks, despite the 353-page length, which is fairly quick for me; and I always hated to put it down when I had to.) As in all of her work, she displays a detailed grasp of the settings and real-life locations, derived partly from Internet research and partly from her own travels. Given the cover art, it's no surprise that Ryan Helsing is a highly capable action-hero; Dianne (who's depicted on the back cover, but just with her face) doesn't start out combat-trained, but she's got guts and determination, and grows naturally into an action-heroine role. Both characters are developed well, in three-dimensional fashion. Their romance (that's not a spoiler –Zane's imprint is Zephon Romance, after all!) develops very quickly, but being thrown together closely and continuously under mortally dangerous and stressful conditions that demand constructive responses will bring out people's mettle very quickly, and make it both easy and natural to assess and appreciate personal worth in a comrade-in-arms. Romance enhances the story and is a big part of it, but doesn't swallow it whole.
Demonic possession of humans is taken seriously in the New Testament as an actual reality (borne out in other nonfiction literature on the subject), but the biblical writers don't present us with a detailed theology of it. It's a major plot element here; but here (as in some of the other books), how it works is a bit murky, and that's probably my major quibble here. It's sometimes suggested, plausibly, that the possessed are usually willing vessels of evil, or that all those outside the actual protection of Christ through faith are under some risk for it (and there are New Testament texts that could indicate that). But we also have a case of apparent possession of a human who doesn't fall in those categories; and just as the St. Michael medals worn by some good characters here and in the other books have protective qualities, the demonically-cursed physical talismans here worn by some characters exert a malevolent spiritual influence. Related to this, although like all of the author's books, this one has a strong good vs. evil orientation which is explicitly understood in Christian terms of God vs. Satan, there's not a strong note of necessary personal decision to repent of self-will and turn to Christ in salvation. (Granted, Christian conversion is typically a gradual process of internal changes in response to moral and spiritual influence; but there does come a distinct tipping point in which personal loyalty flips Christ's way. We don't get a real sense of that here; Dianne starts out as essentially a heathen, albeit one who's having a bit of a moral awakening; but insofar as she changes spiritually, the change appears to be more about her relationship to Ryan than to Christ.) Some of this is probably influenced by the author's Roman Catholic faith, though none of her books harp on denominational distinctives; Catholic (and Orthodox) sacramental theology attributes real spiritual influence to physical objects or actions, where other Christian believers wouldn't go that far, and the former traditions place less stress on an actual, real-time decision for Christian conversion. (Many Christians, myself included, also wouldn't consider the whole idea of modern-day demi-angels fighting physical battles against demons as really plausible; but it has to be recognized that the author isn't necessarily claiming that it is. We should just regard the premise here as a fictional literary conceit that serves metaphorical functions, or allows the author to spin an imaginative story, not as a serious theological treatise.) It could also be argued that the climactic resolution of the conflict is too easy, though I didn't consider that a serious flaw.
Even though both Ryan and Dianne use a certain amount of bad language (realistically, given their backgrounds) there's no profane abuse of divine names nor actual f-word use here, and there's also no explicit nor implied sex. (There's no doubt that our H and h are strongly attracted to each other physically, but there's also a sense that the attraction is also, and more importantly, to each other's qualities of character.) Like the original trilogy, this can be recommended to readers who like clean romance (if they don't mind what movie reviewers –and this would make a great movie!-- would call “some sensuality”) and those who like action adventure, both male and female. It can also appeal to supernatural fiction readers who like the angels vs. demons theme, but the appeal wouldn't be confined to Catholic (or general Christian) readers; I think many secular readers could enjoy it as well.
In the climactic novel of the author's Elioud Legacy trilogy, The Draka and the Giant, former U.S. Army Ranger Ryan Helsing, a decorated and physically formidable veteran of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, was introduced as a relatively minor character (I didn't remember him until I read this book; it's been a couple of years since I finished reading the trilogy). And as I recall from the prequel series, Unsanctioned Guardians, it was mentioned in the first book there, The Covert Guardian, that title character (and major figure in both series) Olivia Markham had a younger sister. These two people serve as co-protagonists of this new novel, intended as the opening volume of The Dragon's Paladins, a projected spin-off series from the original trilogy.
As readers of the latter know, Zane's premise is that, from antediluvian times on down to the present, there have been some sub rosa matings between angels (mostly fallen ones, but occasionally celestial ones as well) and humans, and that the children of these unions walk among us, sometimes aware of their heritage, sometimes not. These Elioud have (latent, or more developed) super-human abilities from their angelic genes; and in the ongoing cosmic strife between God and Satan, they may be knowingly enlisted on one side or the other, or just imagine that they can ignore spiritual realities and be neutral. (This premise is taken for granted in the present novel, which should definitely be read after at least the original trilogy, if not necessarily the prequel; the reader needs that to fully understand the situation and to really know some of the important characters.)
Our main setting is the Balkans, in the very near future, about six months after the final events of The Draka and the Giant. Dianne Markham is now a 29-year-old “social media marketing consultant” (and yes, that's an actual job). Secular-minded and not very close to her sister, in the past she's been something of a playgirl type, and cultivated a loose lifestyle along that line; but more recently, she's been aware of her biological clock ticking, and been feeling (and even acting on) some impulses towards a more serious and mature outlook and more responsible behavior. She has no clue about her family's bloodlines, or that Olivia and her husband, Mihail Kastrioti, are two of the Archangel Michael's top warriors and commanders. But they are; and Olivia, warned of danger by her “spidey sense” (which we've come to recognize as Divine prompting) is taking measures to gather her birth family into the relatively greater safety of the Kastrioti fortress compound in the Albanian mountains. When we first meet Dianne, she's on an Adriatic cruise, now winding down, with a bevy of her shallow “friends” (though Germaine Grimes is one she reckons as an actual friend). However, Olivia has sent our title character, who's now the Kastrioti's chief of security, to secretly watch over her sister on the voyage, and to bring her to Olivia as soon as they dock in the Croatian port city of Split. That may be a long and dangerous trip (especially after the registering of the largest EMP phenomenon in history), and their interpersonal dynamics may get interesting....
In its stylistic and other qualities, this book has a lot of the same trademark characteristics the author displays in her six preceding books. Narration is in third-person, past tense; the H/h alternate as viewpoint characters, with occasional scenes from other viewpoints as needed. While this is definitely in the supernatural fiction genre, centering on combat between demons and demi-angels and their human pawns or allies, much of it also reads like descriptive fiction action-adventure or an espionage thriller (and Zane's prequel trilogy actually is in the latter genre). This entails a lot of physical action and use of high-tech weaponry and communications. The development of nanotechnology here, and its tie-ins with “harmonics,” the energy frequencies underlying all reality and all living things, including people, which angels and their descendants can perceive but ordinary humans usually can't, is in the realm of the science-fictional (and probably already was in at least the last two books of the first trilogy, though my knowledge of nanotechnology isn't great enough that I could tell that on my first reading). Zane sets a very brisk narrative pace, with a gripping intensity that makes this a real page-turner (I read it in less than two weeks, despite the 353-page length, which is fairly quick for me; and I always hated to put it down when I had to.) As in all of her work, she displays a detailed grasp of the settings and real-life locations, derived partly from Internet research and partly from her own travels. Given the cover art, it's no surprise that Ryan Helsing is a highly capable action-hero; Dianne (who's depicted on the back cover, but just with her face) doesn't start out combat-trained, but she's got guts and determination, and grows naturally into an action-heroine role. Both characters are developed well, in three-dimensional fashion. Their romance (that's not a spoiler –Zane's imprint is Zephon Romance, after all!) develops very quickly, but being thrown together closely and continuously under mortally dangerous and stressful conditions that demand constructive responses will bring out people's mettle very quickly, and make it both easy and natural to assess and appreciate personal worth in a comrade-in-arms. Romance enhances the story and is a big part of it, but doesn't swallow it whole.
Demonic possession of humans is taken seriously in the New Testament as an actual reality (borne out in other nonfiction literature on the subject), but the biblical writers don't present us with a detailed theology of it. It's a major plot element here; but here (as in some of the other books), how it works is a bit murky, and that's probably my major quibble here. It's sometimes suggested, plausibly, that the possessed are usually willing vessels of evil, or that all those outside the actual protection of Christ through faith are under some risk for it (and there are New Testament texts that could indicate that). But we also have a case of apparent possession of a human who doesn't fall in those categories; and just as the St. Michael medals worn by some good characters here and in the other books have protective qualities, the demonically-cursed physical talismans here worn by some characters exert a malevolent spiritual influence. Related to this, although like all of the author's books, this one has a strong good vs. evil orientation which is explicitly understood in Christian terms of God vs. Satan, there's not a strong note of necessary personal decision to repent of self-will and turn to Christ in salvation. (Granted, Christian conversion is typically a gradual process of internal changes in response to moral and spiritual influence; but there does come a distinct tipping point in which personal loyalty flips Christ's way. We don't get a real sense of that here; Dianne starts out as essentially a heathen, albeit one who's having a bit of a moral awakening; but insofar as she changes spiritually, the change appears to be more about her relationship to Ryan than to Christ.) Some of this is probably influenced by the author's Roman Catholic faith, though none of her books harp on denominational distinctives; Catholic (and Orthodox) sacramental theology attributes real spiritual influence to physical objects or actions, where other Christian believers wouldn't go that far, and the former traditions place less stress on an actual, real-time decision for Christian conversion. (Many Christians, myself included, also wouldn't consider the whole idea of modern-day demi-angels fighting physical battles against demons as really plausible; but it has to be recognized that the author isn't necessarily claiming that it is. We should just regard the premise here as a fictional literary conceit that serves metaphorical functions, or allows the author to spin an imaginative story, not as a serious theological treatise.) It could also be argued that the climactic resolution of the conflict is too easy, though I didn't consider that a serious flaw.
Even though both Ryan and Dianne use a certain amount of bad language (realistically, given their backgrounds) there's no profane abuse of divine names nor actual f-word use here, and there's also no explicit nor implied sex. (There's no doubt that our H and h are strongly attracted to each other physically, but there's also a sense that the attraction is also, and more importantly, to each other's qualities of character.) Like the original trilogy, this can be recommended to readers who like clean romance (if they don't mind what movie reviewers –and this would make a great movie!-- would call “some sensuality”) and those who like action adventure, both male and female. It can also appeal to supernatural fiction readers who like the angels vs. demons theme, but the appeal wouldn't be confined to Catholic (or general Christian) readers; I think many secular readers could enjoy it as well.
September 5, 2025
I really enjoyed this story. I picked it up because of the cover and the description and was not disappointed in the action, drama and intrigue. A paranormal romance with more than a hint of otherworldly charm.
August 31, 2025
Her name is Dianne Markham and she is on a cruise with her friends. His name is Ryan Helsing and he was sent by Dianne's sister to protect her from the daemons who attack the cruise ship she and her friends are on board. Unfortunately, a solar flare has thrown the world into chaos, and it will take all of the former Army Ranger, Ryan's, skill to get them to safety. Wow, this is an action packed and suspenseful paranormal fantasy romance that kept this reader engrossed from the first page. There are some surprising twists in the plot, as well as magic, demons, angels, and a lot of bloody violence in the very exciting book. Fascinating characters with complex personalities make this a must read. I recommend this book to others.
I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary ARC provided by Hidden Germs.
I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary ARC provided by Hidden Germs.
August 30, 2025
I received a free copy of this book via Hidden Gem books and I am voluntarily leaving a review.
LIKE THE BOOK
Action Packed
This is where I say the author gives enough information.
So, I do not give anything away.
LIKE THE BOOK
Action Packed
This is where I say the author gives enough information.
So, I do not give anything away.
September 4, 2025
A solar flare has brought disaster to earth and evil is rising to try to take control of the broken world. It will bring two people together to help stop evil taking control of the broken earth. A brilliant read
I received an advance copy from hidden gems and I loved it
I received an advance copy from hidden gems and I loved it
September 16, 2025
An awesome story full of exciting details. Characters journey together was action packed, lots of twists, and interesting to follow along to. Just the right amount of secrets, danger, suspense. Storyline pulled me in and kept my interest to the last page!!!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews