Title: Serpent’s Kiss
Author: Thea Harrison
Series: Elder Races, #3
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Berkley (Imprint of Penguin)
Date Published: October 4th, 2011
Edition: Paperback
Rating:
Recently, Vampire Queen Carling’s power has become erratic, forcing her followers to flee. Wyr sentinel Rune is drawn to the ailing Queen and decides to help find a cure for the serpent’s kiss-the vampyric disease that’s killing her. With their desire for each other escalating they will have to rely on each other if they have any hope of surviving the serpent’s kiss…
My Review:
Serpent’s Kiss is about Rune (a were-gryphon) and Carling (a vampire). Despite Carling’s almost-immortality being a vampire, she’s getting to be to the age where a lot of vampires (who actually end up making it to that age) end up going through these episodes that eventually kill them. So Carling is at the point where she is preparing to die. Until Rune comes along of course. He doesn’t give up so easily and as their feelings for each other grow they both are fighting to keep Carling alive, or at the very least delay the inevitable.
I actually didn’t like Rune all that much in Storm’s Heart and Carling I didn’t have much of an opinion of at all going into this book. But I really grew to like both of them in this book. Rune turned out to be a real sweetheart for the most part (at least to Carling). He does have his sassy pants moments, but it was more endearing in this book than annoying. Carling however sort of has a personality-swap problem though. You know when you get a background character who from afar has a very different personality than when you read about them in their own book? For example Xhex in Lover Mine by J.R. Ward. That’s the only problem with Carling. Don’t get me wrong, I liked her. But she just seemed like a very different person than the one portrayed in Storm’s Heart.
The story was actually pretty interesting though. The problems Carling is having and the surprising side-effects these problems cause were really intriguing. But I found that it seemed a little dragged out. Of course they weren’t easy problems to solve. But I think the time on the island could’ve been consolidated a bit because by the time we finally got another setting I was in desperate need of the change.
So far the best book in this series has been Dragon Bound, and while the follow-up books haven’t been bad, they haven’t quite lived up to how good Dragon Bound was (in my opinion). I’m definitely still going to continue the series though, at least for awhile, because Thea Harrison is a good writer and I’m curious to see how the future books progress.
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