Sunday, January 22, 2006

Review: Fantasy Lover & Night Pleasures

Written by Sherilyn Kenyon & published in 2002 by St. Martin's. Fantasy Lover is the prequel to Ms. Kenyon's Dark Hunter series, now totaling eleven. Sherrilyn Kenyon/Kinley MacGregor seems to be a love her/hate her type of author. I've yet to hear of anyone who was in the middle. Personally, I'm not a crazed fangirl, but I do like her work. I've many of her titles in Mt. TBR.

Kenyon set up a complex world wherein Greek mythology & vampires & were-animals & humans cooexist less than peacefully. Her heroes are tortured alphas without being too over the top & the heroines are modern women with typical strengths & weaknesses. It threw me off a bit, but these two stories are set in New Orleans. At first I had a hard time setting Katrina aside, but after a while I was ok.

Fantasy Lover has Grace Alexander, therapist & man hater after one scorching experience, as the heroine. Why is it that in Romancelandia the characters all swear the opposite sex are ALL, ______fill in the blank with your favorite negative adjective, after one single bad experience? While I admire Grace's unwillingness to hop in the sack with every hot guy who crosses her path, it was overshadowed by this cliche.

Julian of Macedon, former General, all around military genius & total hottie, pisses off one too many immortals & gets himself banished into a scroll (later a book) as a sex slave (for thiry days) for any woman who opens the scroll. Cursed forever, the only way to escape his punishment is to remain celebate during his thiry days with a woman who has Alexander in her name. Plus an assortment of other requirements.

The crux of the matter being, can they do it? Will the gods reneg on Julian's punishment? Will Grace's patient succeed in killing her? I liked it & it will occupy a space on my keeper shelves because of the mythology aspect.

Night Pleasures is the 'official start' of the Dark Hunters series. The heroine is Amanda, a lady completely in denial of her paranormal powers & acutely embarrassed by her weird family. Kyrian, the hero, is an ex princeling who gave up his immortal soul to exact vengeance on his faithless wife. He is now an immortal demon killing being who owes allegiance to a vengeful goddess.

Will Amanda embrace her nascent powers to save Kyrian in the end? Can Kyrian let go of his past so they can live in the present? Will the Goddess let him go? Undecided if this will be a keeper. It'll hang out for a while, but after that we'll see.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm quite a fan of the Dark Hunter series and read each book as it's published. I think the reason I like it so much is because of the intricate world Sherrilyn Kenyon has created and all the mythology behind it. Some of the books are really good. Some of them aren't quite as good. But I've kept them all for some reason. I guess so I'll have the complete set. lol.

And get a load of this. I just ordered a leather paperback book cover because my husband thinks he might like to read them, but the covers are just a bit too much for him. LOL!!

Kristie (J) said...

I'd read all the Dark Hunter books up to Seize the Night, started it, hit a wall and just couldn't read anymore. They started off pretty good but as I continued reading the series, I got the feeling she was too busy setting up the next few books in advance to concentrate on the one I was reading. This feeling intensified with each book. Plus while the heroines were all different, the heroes all started reading alike. Poor tortured misunderstood hero yada, yada, yada. On top of that I'm a bit peverse. The more popular she became and the more I read on boards about Ash and that annoying and idiotic Simi the more annoyed I became. Now I have no desire to read another Dark Hunter book at all.

Bob & Muffintop said...

Jenster- Quite a few paople like to have a complete series even if they didn't like them all. Me- there simply isn't enough space here, so I only keep the ones I Really like.

Kristie(J)- I definitely see the possiblity of overload in this series. I tend to read paranormals in small groups & then move on & return later. Makes things easier. There is another series where I'm on the verge of giving them up entirely for the reasons you list. We'll see how it goes with the next one.

Anne E- I did review the Iris Johansen book & I'm glad you're enjoying it!