Mike and Dez, vampire and half-demon, are just pursuing a
relationship together after a long period of friendship; confronting the fear
that everything may irrevocably change between them.
But a far greater fear is stalking the world – a demon
has managed to breach the barrier between worlds and seeks the stone that will
allow him to open the doors wide and bring his forces across the great divide.
Mike and Dez, joined by Mike’s heart broken brother, Lucas and backed by the
council of witch and vampire covens race to catch the demon and stop him before
it’s too late.
First of all, this book is a short story/novella start to
a new series and, I have to say, I don’t think that’s a good idea.
The first book in a series is your hook, your bait. It’s
the tasty morsel of joy you hang in front of me that lures me into the series
and makes me look for book 2. It has to drag me in, it has to get me invested
in the series and want to see the story continue.
Which means it has to develop some decent characters. It
has to showcase a brand new world. It has to show off your writing style to the
best possible extent. It has to establish a story, both interesting enough to
make this book good and with sufficient points left open to make the next book
necessary so I have a reason to stay with the series
All of that is a tall order in a full length book. In a
novella it’s nearly impossible.
And I don’t think this book really achieved any of these.
The world has vampire, witches and demons. The witches
and vampires are organised into covens and the demons want to do bad things because,
well, they’re demons, it’s what they do. And that’s kind of it. I don’t know
the why of anything, how these things interacts, how the magic works – I know
there was a war deep back in history but that’s about it. I don’t even know how
old the principle characters are beyond “very”. The world is hollow, the world
is generic, the organisations that make up the world – the covens, the record
keeper, the guardians – they’re all just words. This becomes especially glaring
when the guardians seem to be utterly incapable of actually guarding anything.
The characters – well the most developed characters two
me were introduced in the prologue, their personality, their relationship,
their feelings are more real than anyone else’s – and they become pretty irrelevant
once the prologue is done.
The main characters, Deziree and Michael feel much more
shallow. Michael has one element – attraction to Dez. In fact, their whole
romance is an unnecessary distraction, in this short book, from the actual
end-of-the-world plot that is supposed to be their main attention. Michael
feels almost… distracted by the end of the world. Especially since that’s
pretty much all we have on Michael – he’s a mercenary (totally unexplained what
that means and who for) who was called in for REASONS and he loves Dez, that’s
it
Now move to Dez and we do know a lot more about her –
she’s a thief and a bar owner and we know her position on a range of topics –
because Dez doesn’t have issues, she has entire compilation volumes. Dez has
mother issues over her dead, raped mother. She has daddy issues that come to
the fore. She has issues over falling in love and immortality (or at least
longevity). She has issues with her adoptive mother. She has issues with loving
Michael. She has issues with her own demon blood and what that means for her.
