Souls of the Damned (Kat Richardson Series #5) by E.S. Moore

Still reeling from the destruction of the Luna Cult, and beleaguered on all sides with demands for her attention, Kat didn’t expect Sienna to appear on her doorstep

The imprisoned child of the angel Levi in his life-sucking prison town of Delai. Kat has been meaning to take down Delai for a long time – and even promised Sienna she would rescue her. Sienna provides not only someone to protect, but finally a key to get Kat back into Delai

But she cannot go back as a vampire – the only way to get back into Levi’s world is as a human.

I think that the author is recognising that there are too many ongoing threads in Kat’s life. There are two master vampires both with an interest in Kat, one of which is using her as a personal assassin. There’s Adrian and his odd pack of wolves. There’s the Luna Cult. And there’s the ongoing issue of the angel Levi in Delai who Kat still has to deal with. It’s a lot and it’s starting to pull the books apart – so threads are being snipped. Last book we saw the Luna Cult be reduced a lot and this book built on it turning it more into a personal relationship between Kat and      than making it another major plot thread; which I quite liked (not least of which because the tension between them has long since needed resolving).

This book Kat deals with Delai, setting another plot thread firmly to bed, as well as making it clear the other major plots are going to be stepping to the fore in the next book. I like it – there’s a sense of everything being handled rather than perpetuating the constant feeling of being overwhelmed

The story in Delai isn’t as action packed as the past books – and that’s ok. It lets us see another side of Kat (through her transformation) and see a different way of resolving problems beyond Kat being so super dangerous that it doesn’t matter. Again, this is something that was touched on in the last book and has been expanded upon so much here; yes Kat is dangerous – very very dangerous indeed – but being dangerous isn’t a surefire way to solve every problem. The pacing was decent, perhaps a little world building absorbed in places, but it moved pretty well. And yes, there was a much quicker way to resolve things but I like the development that came with the long way round.

Blessed by a Demon's Mark (Kat Richardson #3) by E.S. Moore

 Kat has found some measure of peace in the strange town of Delai, even if things seem so very strange there. But she can’t remain – she made a deal with a demon to return and that demon is now using his mark to reel her in. With no choice she leaves her unusual haven, even though it feels more like an escape than leaving, and her old life with all its chaos and its pain rushes back in.

Ethan, in her absence has cemented even stronger ties with the Luna Cult. Worse, in her absence one of her brother’s murders has been pinned on her – and a powerful vampire countess has Kat in her sights – just as she is getting more people she cares about, more people who are vulnerable to being used and hurt to make her obey.

Then there’s Adrian, the Luna Cult rebels determined to drag Kat into their plans; the Left Hand of God is back in town, killing vampires and things remain eternally complicated between Kat and Jonathon. It’s almost enough to drive her back to Delai – until the demon shows her the truth about her erstwhile haven.

I think there’s probably one storyline too many in this book. or possible two or three too many. We have Kat’s ongoing issues with the demon, we have the revelations of Delai and what Levi is actually up tp. We have some unresolved issues with Adrian the rebel Luna Cult dragging Kat into her schemes. And then we have the evil conniving plots of the vampire countess who is gunning for Kat. We even have another vampire count that Kat pissed off for shits and giggles. There’s even the human hunters back for more killing and complications

That’s a lot of issues to deal with. I think part of that is intended as a way of showing how overwhelmed Kat is and to drive home the theme of the book which is Kat being pulled in too many directions with too many people having a hold on her. Still, I’m not sure if the return to Delai couldn’t have been handled in a later book, or Adrian pulled his grand plan in the next book. There’s just so many of these different threads that they distract each other and sometimes feel forgotten – I forgot Adrian was even looking for Kat until near the end of the book.

There wasn’t anything resolved in this book either. Now I love meta, meta is what keeps me plugged into a story, but it’s rare that a book can be nothing but meta; you usually have some sub-chapter of the book being concluded and there wasn’t one here

Still, the stories that are presented are great fun with lots of devious plotting I enjoy. I love the demon’s manipulations, Delai and its revelations are definitely intriguing and we all knew there was something sinister underlying it. I really want to know exactly who and what Adrian is and what he is plotting – I’d also kind of like to know why Jonathon tolerates Kat all things considered and if he has his own agenda. The ongoing theme of Kat becoming more and more beholden to more people, each of them having a lever against her is really well done as well – and shows how much her friends and loved ones are a weakness to her and leave her open to this manipulation.

Throw in some excellently well written fight scenes and a splash of gruesome horror and there’s some very fun moments in this book.

Unfortunately, this is the book on which I finally break on Kat as a character. I didn’t like her endless melodramatic angst in the previous 2 books and felt it swamped whatever vestiges of character she may have had. This book is the same - but even the angst is overwhelmed by Kat’s constant rage.

Kat is angry, really angry, all the damn time. No, she’s not angry, she’s rabid. She’s like a savage animal snarling and lashing out at everyone around her. No-one can speak with her without her snarling, snapping or advancing on them menacingly and that definitely includes Ethan, the human house mate she’s supposed to care about and value. I think she actually spends more time talking to her enemies than her friends, simply because her enemies have taken more precautions against her constant violent outbursts.

And the writing is still extremely long winded. We have endless monologues about just how very angry Kat is, her rage being sparked again, her fury rising etc etc.

Tainted Night, Tainted Blood (Kat Richardson #2) by E.S. Moore

Kat Richardson, vampire, Lady Death is on the hunt again. Another Fledgling House has stepped above and beyond the sadism that is so common among the vampires and needs putting down.

But when she arrives, someone has got there first. Every wolf, every vampire in the place has been brutally slaughtered. Worse, so have the innocent Purebloods kept as prey. To complicate things, this isn’t the first mysterious slaughter and rogues have been dying across town – and Kat, Lady Death, is the one who is being blamed for the indiscriminate slaughter.

Forging an unlikely alliance with both her old associates at the Luna Cult and a highly reluctant cease fire with Adrian’s rebels, Kat sets off to find the real killer and put them out of action. But along the way she finds herself pulled into a demon bargain, discovering a mysterious town that breaks all the rules and facing the terrible truth about her brother and what really happened to him.

This book explores and expands a lot of what we have been introduced to in the first book. We see more of the taint and a lot more about the effects of werewolf and vampire blood mixing. We have further exploration of the idea that the night is completely lost to humanity, areas where humans will risk death and even humans not daring to turn on lights at night for fear of being noticed and attacked. But at the same time the hints of humans fighting back (like supernaturals not being safe in hospitals because the staff may kill them in a weak attempt to regain control).

We get to see more of Adrian, confirming that the rebel Luna Cultists are going to be a major aspect in the series. Kat’s developing relationship with Jonathon is intriguing and would do a lot to challenge her world view on the monsters. We finally see Ethan’s demon and there’s a lot of power in how its described and the potential that

We have a lot of the action that makes this book work so well. The author is very good at writing combat and I do like a good fight scene, I do. Neither over nor under descriptive, and flowing with a nice neat action-packed pace, they really work.

We also have some excellent plot hooks for the next book – the demon bargain, the unusual and strange sanctuary of Delai, seemingly untouched by the vampires and werewolves that rampage everywhere else. There’s Kat’s relationship with Jonathon and potential fallout over the deaths attributed to Lady Death – while it resolved all the storylines in the book, there’s a lot left to draw me on to the next one.

I want to love this book. I look at the cover, I think of the world with its interesting and different elements, I think of the factions, the well written action sequences, the massive possibilities of this book and this series and I want to love it. I try so hard to love it.

But then I hit Kat Redding herself. Kat has 2 emotional settings 1) angry and 2) angsty. That is the entirety of her emotional range. And angsty is most certainly her default setting. Yes, having a vampire character who is unhappy about being a vampire for perfectly legitimate reasons made for an interesting read and concept. But there needs to be more to a character than her desperate, self-hating torture, her desperate, self-hating tragic past and her desperate, self-hating guilt fits interspaced with lashing out in anger because of her vampire aggression (and then succumbing to more desperate self-hating guilt because of said lashing out). In terms of character development, there is none – because this is all Kat is in this book and pretty much all she was in the last book (at least then there was some questioning about her treating the Luna Cult as people rather than monsters). Whatever scraps of other personality Kat may have is lost among the reams of angst

To Walk the Night (Kat Richardson #1) by E.S. Moore

 Kat Redding is known as Lady Death to the vampires. Armed with silver, illegal since the Uprising when vampires and werewolves drove humans into virtual hiding at night, she preys on the predators, saving the lives of the Purebloods, the untainted humanity, as much as she can.

But Kat is one of the tainted herself, a vampire desperately struggling to control her own hunger and anger. A drive that she cannot restrain and still has her leaving bodies in her wake; even as she tries to prey on the human predators, she cannot escape the truth that she is as much a killer as the ones she hunts.

And then came the Luna Cult, knowing more than they should, with an offer for her. A chance to take down a Vampire House she would normally consider too big to tackle, and save innumerable lives in the process. But it involves working with the werewolves of the cult, people she continues to see as enemy. Or, perhaps worse, people she is beginning to see as people.

There are a lot of vampires out there now and it can be hard to find a book that doesn’t follow some very predictable patterns. So I was very happy to see some of the original nuances that this book brought, The Taint that turns “Purebloods” into vampires or werewolves, the problems with mixing the Taint, the vampire houses, the Uprising causing humanity to pretty much cede the night to the Tainted: there’s a lot of elements here that make it very different from most vampire books. There’s an originality that makes it fascinating and a world I want to explore. The world building is also very solid and consistent with some decent development – not only do people stay in after the curfew but there are other problems as well, like college campuses being only a quarter full because they were hit first as an easy source of quick recruits by the vampire houses. Things like this, extra details, extra considerations of what other effects would come from an event like the Uprising really add a lot of meat to the world. It gives it a realness and makes the events more authentic rather than just useful story points the author makes up as they go along.

The story itself is also an interesting one and one that’s perfect for the first book in a series. It gives us a chance to explore several of the main characters (albeit not as much as I would like in one case as I mention below) as well as the world setting , all without much in the way of info-dumping (though we do get a fair bit of monologuing). The pacing is decent (except, again, for that monologuing) with plenty of action strung together without it just being action without plot. There was also plenty of twists with mistrust of the Luna Cult and then the revelation of the Luna Cult’s splinter group. From that there are still plenty of unanswered questions that beg to be answered in the next book – which is a hook in and of itself.