Overall Quality 3.5 / 5.0
No Gay Content

Another straight supernatural romance comedy. Refreshingly, MacAlister departs from the more common realm of vampires and werewolves to deal with demons and were-dragons.

Aisling (ASH-ling) Grey is, unbeknown to her, a Guardian of a portal to Hell. She discovers this small fact after a trip to Paris to deliver a valuable statuette, which is promptly stolen by the sticky-fingered Drake Vireo, when they both find themselves at a murder scene. Drake, a wyvern (i.e., leader of a group of dragons) escapes, and Aisling becomes the prime suspect. She must clear her own name, stop a series of gruesome murders, and prevent the destruction of the world, all the while fending off her attraction to the infuriating wyvern.

On the plus side, it’s a very funny, fast-paced, and entertaining read. You know there’s some real humor in the story when the line “You are now officially a demon lord” (p. 152) makes me laugh out loud. (Another favorite line – “This place looks like a reject from a Harry Potter knock-off,” p. 143.)

The ending is a bit anticlimactic, however. I felt unsatisfied when I put the book down, like I’d tried to make a lunch of cotton candy. (This may be personal peccadilloes, however: straight romance is not a genre I read frequently. This was just a taste test for me, so to speak).

The novel’s real weak link, however, is the characterization. Don’t get me wrong, I like Aisling. She’s smart, sharp-tongued, and no nonsense. She’s also one-note. She deals with every situation with the same degree and tone of humor. As a result, she doesn’t feel fully fleshed out. One or two scenes of real, heartfelt emotion would have been well-placed.

Meanwhile, the author tries to tread a fine line between creating a believable attraction between Aisling and Drake, while maintaining a mutual disdain that promotes sexual tension. She overshoots. Drake’s an irritating character, and Aisling annoys me with her continued infatuation. Again, it’s the one-note thing. If MacAlister had given Drake one or two really good scenes to display his basic good-guy-ness instead of his arrogance and selfishness, I’d buy into their romance a lot more readily.

Overall Quality 4.0 / 5.0 (recommended)
No Gay Content

Vane is a werewolf (the author uses the term “Were-Hunter”) on the run from his pack, who have betrayed him and his brother Fang. Then he runs into a human named Bride (I’m totally not making these names up) for whom he falls hard. In fact, it turns out she’s his mate, and they either get together or Vane turns into a virtual eunuch for the rest of his life. But how can he convince a human to love a werewolf, especially a werewolf who’s being hunted by his own pack?

Okay, yeah, it sounds pretty silly, but it’s actually a compelling and well-realized story. Although the central emphasis falls on the straight romance (and trust me, we’ve got some major straight girl wish fulfillment goin’ on), the story itself has enough meat to pull even me into the story. I’d almost call it an action-adventure more than a romance. The plot moves at a fast pace, and I like the characters quite a bit. That helps involve me in the story tremendously – both Bride and Vane are likable, flawed, complex people.

I also like the fact that the book deals with a werewolf; I think vampires are overdone.

I find some aspects of Kenyon’s mythos odd, and I don’t really understand her terminology – are vampires and daimons the same thing, or sometimes, or never? Why are were-creatures called Were-Hunters? What’s a Dark-Hunter? I’ve heard Kenyon compared to Anne Rice, but I don’t find the mythology she’s created to be as intuitive.

Unless a romance makes you sick, I’d recommend this action-adventure story to anyone who enjoys supernatural fiction. Although this is not the first book in Kenyon’s series, it’s a standalone that’s easily readable out of sequence.