Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Elisabeth Staab - King of Darkness

Scorned by the vampire community for her lack of power, Isabel Anthony lives a carefree existence masquerading as human--although, drifting among the debauched human nightlife, she prefers the patrons' blood to other indulgences. But when she meets the king of vampires this party girl's life turns dark and dangerous.
Dead-set on finding the prophesied mate who will unlock his fiery powers, Thad Morgan must find his queen before their race is destroyed. Their enemies are gaining ground, and Thad needs his powers to unite his subjects. But when his search leads him to the defiant Isabel, he wonders if fate has gotten it seriously wrong...
 


Comment: Another one of the huge pile I have to read... it's so not my fault, I think I understand much better why some people just can't stop gambling or why so many women in the worl buy a lot more shoes than the days exist in the year for them to wear them...anyway...

This is the first book in a series by the author, called Chronicles of Yavn. It's about a race of vampires living in the human world and how they're in trouble unless their new leader  - Thad - gets his head on track and starts...ruling. So, the best way to start that, in his mind, is to follow a very old prophecy saying he needs his mate and so on. There he goes, with his older but still best friend Lee, looking for the woman for his heart and he finds her in the USA, in particular in a club. When he finds her, she's in the process of feeding from a  woman, which confuses our poor vampire into thinking his mate might not play for his team. An interesting drama all right. But subtlety is his middle name and he tells her she's his mate and they should rule the vampire wold together.
Isabel is the young woman in question and although Thad seems good looking enough she really doesn't want anything to do with vampires since they turned their backs on her parents.However, Thad is alluring on his own and somehow she ends up having sex with him, although she keeps saying she won't be his mate. of course things happen and there she is, at the core of the vampire race home, which is actually the royal house. She ends up giving royal advice and everything...

Ok, I've been a little bit sarcastic in my poor attempt to describe the main events of the first chapters. Things aren't that bad, but I guess it's obvious I didn't take the story that seriously, right? I mean, some stranger looks at you and say you're going to be his queen and you say no but a few minutes later you just can't help having sex with him. This is normal, right? So not.
At first I was very curious over Thad and his inner thoughts of fear and doubt because he didn't know he would be a good king, normal things for someone at a new "job", but as the story developed I started to question many things and I wasn't that eager about the romance, which I think was forced at the reader, they had to be together, let's get that out of the way. I don't think it's was the best strategy. Not even the finding out about their complementing powers was that special.

I was curious over some secondary characters, but I've never felt there was much structure to things, I mean, even without naming other books, I'm sure we can think of many "worlds" where the authors have created a solid structure to base their story lines...I didn't feel that happened here. This means some of those secondary characters never looked like they belonged there either. One of them seems interesting but I'm not sure I want to spend a whole booking finding out.

Like I said, the story line also didn't intrigue me, there are the villains but once again, noting to make me want to read more. The overall feeling I got wasn't strong enough to secure me in this "world" and that was it.
I guess it might work for others but for me it's one of those cases where you expect diamonds and it's a fake glass after all. But you never know unless you investigate.

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