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Mask
Hiding behind the safe mask of Obsidian, his online persona, Kain Mitchell woos Nick Anders, an untouched artist. Nick tells himself that Obsidian is merely his erotic muse, but when Kain drags him down into his dark world, echoing the myth of Hades and Persephone, Nick discovers he wants to see him, touch him, and move beyond the limitations of masks. Because as seductive as Obsidian is, Nick senses Kain’s real isolation. Implicated for the murders of young men matching Nick’s description, Kain lives under a shadow, and troubled by the mystery, Nick pushes to get closer. Driven to prove Kain’s innocence, Nick pursues the killer with Kain’s reluctant help―and strives to become the human submissive and tender lover needed by the lonely and otherworldly warrior.
265 pages, Paperback
First published August 17, 2009
4 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
Jan Irving
51 books199 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
romance author
Jan Irving has worked in all kinds of creative fields, from painting silk to making porcelain ceramics, to interior design, but writing was always her passion.
She feels you can’t fully understand characters until you follow their journey through a story world. Many kinds of worlds interest her, fantasy, historical, science fiction and suspense—but all have one thing in common, people finding a way to live together—in the most emotional and erotic fashion possible, of course!
Visit Jan's blog at http://jan-revealed.livejournal.com.
romance author
Jan Irving has worked in all kinds of creative fields, from painting silk to making porcelain ceramics, to interior design, but writing was always her passion.
She feels you can’t fully understand characters until you follow their journey through a story world. Many kinds of worlds interest her, fantasy, historical, science fiction and suspense—but all have one thing in common, people finding a way to live together—in the most emotional and erotic fashion possible, of course!
Visit Jan's blog at http://jan-revealed.livejournal.com.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 4, 2010
This book is a paranormal plot. There is vampires and werewolves. There is magic and mayhem.
Kain and Nick work together even though the relationship is quite obsessive and stalkerish in parts. Tragic in other parts and sexy as hell at other times.
Kain is a new vampire which is unusual for a main character and he actually doesn't know too much about his condition. He is resisting getting an understanding. The people that can help him are the people that turned him and set off a tragedy that has left him scarred, scared and isolated. An enemy is setting him up to look like he is a murderer and blackouts he is having don't help convince himself or anyone else that it isn't a set up.
It was a darkish, intense story that was very magnetic in many ways. I didn't want to put it down but I wanted to get to the resolution, if that makes any sense.
Kain and Nick work together even though the relationship is quite obsessive and stalkerish in parts. Tragic in other parts and sexy as hell at other times.
Kain is a new vampire which is unusual for a main character and he actually doesn't know too much about his condition. He is resisting getting an understanding. The people that can help him are the people that turned him and set off a tragedy that has left him scarred, scared and isolated. An enemy is setting him up to look like he is a murderer and blackouts he is having don't help convince himself or anyone else that it isn't a set up.
It was a darkish, intense story that was very magnetic in many ways. I didn't want to put it down but I wanted to get to the resolution, if that makes any sense.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 14, 2013
It's very rare that I give a gave-up book a not-1-star-rating if rate it at all, but this was, as Shawn said, a very odd book.
dnf at about 55%, five or take a couple pages.
I was sort of...weirded out. It was like in Bound for the Forest. I kind of liked it, but then it was all SEX, SEX, SEX EVERYWHERE AND ALL THE TIME AND THE MEANS AND THE ENDS AND SEX.
It got a bit tiring.
I was sad because I rather liked the whole shrouded mysticism sort of thing. I didn't like it when it started solidifying because of the way it went about it. Instead of throwing out tidbits and answers to the hints, it threw in...I dunno, it just somehow became trite. It wasn't really an unveiling; it was us unwittingly catching them doing the nasty while they indulged a really awkward fetish/kink, like...sex while popping balloons and dressed in pearl necklaces and froufy wigs...on a trampoline.
It jarred with the tone of the first part.
The online/chatroom correspondences went from being another layer to the mysticism to sort of a gimmick -- we can't communicate in person; no, of course not. We need to resort to conversing from afar through electronic means. Okay.
And then there were random parts thrown out that I feel like might have originally supposed to have some purpose, but the author got distracted by another plot bunny and forgot about it.
It makes me sad. I was all enjoying the atmosphere and shit (I mean, there was tons wrong with the way things were progressing and shit, but I DID rather like the atmosphere while it lasted; part of the reason it has such a comparatively higher rating)
I also wanted to know more about the art. I mean, Nick's an artist. The LI Who Shall Remain Unnamed claimed to be an artist in his own fashion. And yet, as you get more and more into the book, references to art become few and far between and even then only referenced in passing or on the sly. It actually reminded me of Art of Death for a while-ish, but the difference with the issues I had with this and that are that I rather liked that AoD actually talked about pieces of art and stuff.
dnf at about 55%, five or take a couple pages.
I was sort of...weirded out. It was like in Bound for the Forest. I kind of liked it, but then it was all SEX, SEX, SEX EVERYWHERE AND ALL THE TIME AND THE MEANS AND THE ENDS AND SEX.
It got a bit tiring.
I was sad because I rather liked the whole shrouded mysticism sort of thing. I didn't like it when it started solidifying because of the way it went about it. Instead of throwing out tidbits and answers to the hints, it threw in...I dunno, it just somehow became trite. It wasn't really an unveiling; it was us unwittingly catching them doing the nasty while they indulged a really awkward fetish/kink, like...sex while popping balloons and dressed in pearl necklaces and froufy wigs...on a trampoline.
It jarred with the tone of the first part.
The online/chatroom correspondences went from being another layer to the mysticism to sort of a gimmick -- we can't communicate in person; no, of course not. We need to resort to conversing from afar through electronic means. Okay.
And then there were random parts thrown out that I feel like might have originally supposed to have some purpose, but the author got distracted by another plot bunny and forgot about it.
It makes me sad. I was all enjoying the atmosphere and shit (I mean, there was tons wrong with the way things were progressing and shit, but I DID rather like the atmosphere while it lasted; part of the reason it has such a comparatively higher rating)
I also wanted to know more about the art. I mean, Nick's an artist. The LI Who Shall Remain Unnamed claimed to be an artist in his own fashion. And yet, as you get more and more into the book, references to art become few and far between and even then only referenced in passing or on the sly. It actually reminded me of Art of Death for a while-ish, but the difference with the issues I had with this and that are that I rather liked that AoD actually talked about pieces of art and stuff.
March 29, 2012
This book was....odd. I gave it 3 stars because I liked the characters and the world, but this piece is really flawed. The writing is disjointed. The timeline of events feels off at times. The secondary charactera are very 2D. And the plot....big twig in the story about half way through.
And the end! Irving has the worst book endings of any author I've ever read. The story just stops. I hate it. It was the same with The Hired Man (which is a much better offering than this work).
I don't know. Interesting read. Would I give it more than one read.....prob. not.
And the end! Irving has the worst book endings of any author I've ever read. The story just stops. I hate it. It was the same with The Hired Man (which is a much better offering than this work).
I don't know. Interesting read. Would I give it more than one read.....prob. not.
April 20, 2016
This book was not my cup of tea. In parts it was quite enjoyable and exiting but I had a few problems with the book.
But this is only my own hang-up and if you ignore this part of the book (the first part) it is okay.
But this is only my own hang-up and if you ignore this part of the book (the first part) it is okay.
June 8, 2010
Very nice, but I was frustrated that the interesting world and secondary characters were not given more substance, but rather just hinted at. Thus I rate it only 3 stars.
May 27, 2019
I remember this author mostly because he wrote one of the worst Ancient Rome "historical" fictions that I have ever read, a book so awful that I do still regret the time I wasted on it. But being the reader I am, I do never judge an author on a single book. I do always read at least two books to see if there's something more interesting in the horizon. Result? There isn't. This author's style is apparently as bad as I pictured it in the previous book I read. It isn't even the style that's wrong in depth, it's just the content... when a content is abject or badly mastered, the outcome can't be outstanding. I feel bad for all the people who wasted their money in this, really.
And, of course, the next time I read Jan Irving on a book, I will do what I should have done twice: ignore it.
Some authors think that they can write books without sweating, obviously. 1 star as a goodbye rating!
And, of course, the next time I read Jan Irving on a book, I will do what I should have done twice: ignore it.
Some authors think that they can write books without sweating, obviously. 1 star as a goodbye rating!
November 12, 2013
I think I liked this one because one of the characters wasn't physically perfect.
November 3, 2017
This story was weird, and not in a good way.
From the bad word choices (describing a cock as 'distended' is NOT the word to use; having three different characters being called 'pissy' over the course of about 15 pages is...unfortunate; saying a character has 'sherry'-colored eyes...I was so confused I googled it and it comes in every color, from palest yellow diamond to deep, almost black-brown) to the absolutely bizarre story structure (frequently, the author references something that happened earlier in the book's timeline but that wasn't mentioned. Then, we get a flashback to that exact thing. Why? Why not put things in the right order?), this was a trainwreck of a story.
Also, the author doesn't know the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman. And thinks that it's funny to suggest that one of the aforementioned 'pissy' men needs evening primrose, a well-known herbal remedy for PMS. And has a whole one character of color. And has at least three romance novel plots in this story.
Possibly the worst thing, though, is
Also, our loup garou character is obviously from the ba-yuuuu because he calls a character 'cher'. And stalking is cool! Because Kain cares about Nick. And emotional infidelity is just fine, because Miguel and Nick are not right for each other.
My main reaction to this story was this:
From the bad word choices (describing a cock as 'distended' is NOT the word to use; having three different characters being called 'pissy' over the course of about 15 pages is...unfortunate; saying a character has 'sherry'-colored eyes...I was so confused I googled it and it comes in every color, from palest yellow diamond to deep, almost black-brown) to the absolutely bizarre story structure (frequently, the author references something that happened earlier in the book's timeline but that wasn't mentioned. Then, we get a flashback to that exact thing. Why? Why not put things in the right order?), this was a trainwreck of a story.
Also, the author doesn't know the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman. And thinks that it's funny to suggest that one of the aforementioned 'pissy' men needs evening primrose, a well-known herbal remedy for PMS. And has a whole one character of color. And has at least three romance novel plots in this story.
Possibly the worst thing, though, is
Also, our loup garou character is obviously from the ba-yuuuu because he calls a character 'cher'. And stalking is cool! Because Kain cares about Nick. And emotional infidelity is just fine, because Miguel and Nick are not right for each other.
My main reaction to this story was this:
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews