2*
Warrior of Darkness is one of the most convoluted, chaotic and confusing stories I have read in a long time. There are so many elements thrown in that it would have required a very deft handling to bring them successfully together, which unfortunately did not happen in this case. Too many things happen, but none of them have a satisfactory or even logical explanation or resolution. We have the heroine, who is suppose to be very smart and powerful but most of the time comes across as a nitwit and ninny and even after finishing the book, I am still not entirely sure what her powers suppose to be and why the bad guys are after her. The hero is cardboard, totally lacking character or appeal, and for a shifter so much of a dud that he almost kills his mate and wife because he DID NOT RECOGNIZE HER! (That is AFTER they were mated and all that connection jazz). All the characters’ exist in one of 3 states: aggravation, arousal or confusion. At one point in the book, when our heroine’s BFF demands that she tells others why she is there I actually stood up and cheered – Yes, thank goodness, finally something, maybe even some reasonable explanation!!! Well, no, no such luck - the heroine clamped up, the explanation did not happened and this reader continued to be kept in the bemused state for the rest of the book. There are several scenes in this made me go” yuck!!” -one of them is when our hero’s grandfather tells him (our hero, his grandson) that his (hero’s) wife would not kick him(grandfather) out of her bed, because he (grandfather) looks exactly like him (our hero, his grandson) - you think this is confusing?. Try to read the rest of the book! If all of this was not enough, what was the last nail in this coffin was winking. EVERYONE WAS CONSTANTLY WINKING!!! Once or twice is OK. More than ten is annoying and starts to look more like a medical condition. The abrupt ending, which took the story in to different direction left me wondering :'What the hell just happened?" I would have rated his book as 1* if not for a character of Che - who knew that the book could be elevated by the monkey?