His passion — Beyond immortal…All her life, Ashlyn Darrow has been tormented by voices from the past. To end the nightmare, she has come to Budapest seeking help from men rumored to have supernatural abilities, not knowing she’ll be swept into the arms of Maddox, their most dangerous member — a man trapped in a hell of his own.Neither can resist the instant hunger than calms their torments . . . and ignites an irresistible passion. But every heated touch and burning kiss will edge them closer to destruction — and a soul-shattering test of love…Though they carry an eternal curse, the Lords of the Underworld are irresistibly seductive — and unimaginably powerful… Don’t miss this incredible new paranormal series from Gena Showalter!
So I’ve had this series on the back burner for a long while. I seem to be the last person in the world to read this so I figured it was about time I jumped on the bandwagon. I read The Darkest Fire prequel in the Into the Dark anthology first, and then moved onto this one. I liked this a lot better than the prequel (of course, it’s not a short story though), but I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would.
The main reason I didn’t give this four stars was because I thought it lacked a more solid storyline. Most of the story was just about Maddox and Ashlyn, which is fine, but it was lacking a “bigger picture” kind of feel. The series’ I tend to like the most are the ones where there is an overall story going on in the background of all the love stories. I just think it adds a certain layer to the world that I’m reading about.
In addition, I thought that a little action could have gone a long way in this story as well. There really wasn’t much action at all and while I’m a sucker for the romance and the sex (which was great btw), I also like to have a bit of action going on in between. Since there wasn’t too much of a background story going on, there wasn’t really a place for too much action to happen.
However, I will say that near the end of the book (probably the last 50 pages or so), there seemed to be a bigger picture forming. We get to hear from the daughter of a god named Anya who I believe will play a bigger role in the future books. I like her personality a lot so far so I hope we get to hear more from her. Also some other things happen later in the book that seem to be driving at an overall storyline for the series. This is good, but I thought that it could have happened earlier in the story so that more could have played out in this book.
Now, onto the things I did like. I really liked Ashlyn as a heroine. I thought she was a kick ass heroine. She wasn’t whiny, scared all the time, or bitchy. I truly liked her character. I also liked Maddox, but I think that he could have showed a little more emotion sometimes. I get he has his demon (Violence) to deal with, but sometimes he would just say these really short sentences (fragments, if you will) that were absolutely void of emotion even when he was telling her he loved her. It’s hard to explain. But I did still like him and I liked how their story came full circle in the end.
Overall I liked the story, but it wasn’t my favorite first in a series for sure. I will give it the benefit of the doubt though in that this one was really setting up the series, characters, and world, so that might be why it was a little slower. I really like the concept though and I think there’s a lot of room for really interesting stories and different types of heroines to come into play. I look forward to the rest of the series and learning what kind of heroine ends up with each of them.
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