Nicolai the Vampire is renowned for his virility, but in a cruel twist of fate “The Dark Seducer” has become a sex slave in the kingdom of Delfina—stripped of his precious timepiece and his memory. All that remains is a primal need for freedom, revenge—and the only woman who can help him.
When the wanton vampire summons Jane Parker, she is helpless to obey. She’s drawn to his dark sexuality and into his magical realm. But for this human, all is not a fairy tale. For saving Nicolai could mean losing the only man she’s ever craved…
When I first heard about this new multi-author series, Royal House of Shadows, I was very much intrigued. Two of the authors — Gena Showalter and Nalini Singh — are two of my favorites, and I have never read a multi-author series before. However, upon seeing some other reviews prior to reading it, I started to get a little bit skeptical.
It has to be hard to be apart of a multi-author series. Which is probably why it’s not really ever done (at least not that I’ve seen). But then, having to set up an entire series to allow for three other author’s portions of the story, like Gena had to do, would be even more of a challenge. I have to hand it to Gena for the world she’s set up here though. It’s a very unique and intriguing world. It’s not your typical paranormal romance, it’s almost more of a fantasy romance because we end up in another world parallel to ours. So while we are in our ordinary human world for a little while, the majority of the story takes place in this magical and mystical kingdom called Delfina. I pictured sort of a medieval type of world and loved that about this.
I also liked the characters. I didn’t feel like I got enough to love them, but both Jane and Nicolai fall in love very fast and are quite the sweet and adorable couple. They did fall a bit too fast for my usual liking though. I would say it was pretty much as “love at first sight” as you can get. Which is hard to write and make believable.
The other thing that kind of bugged me were the mechanics of the world and magic seemed a bit confusing and all over the place. It just seemed like there were capabilities being added along the way, without much forethought. There were also some things that just didn’t seem to fit right:
The most notable to me being how Nicoli sends her the book with the spell in it at the end. How did he get it to her? Did he just pop it in the inter-dimensional mail? This wasn’t explained and made absolutely no sense to me.
Overall, as much as I love Gena, this wasn’t at all as good as I was hoping it would be. It seemed a little bit flat and thrown together. Perhaps the upcoming stories will round it out better. But as it’s own novel, I wasn’t very impressed. Like I said though, it has to be a difficult position for Gena to be in having to setup a multi-author series. But, I just don’t think it worked out as well as I’m sure everyone was hoping it would.
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