Shadow's Claim

I love and found the main character's jewelry/weapon/design skills unique. The main male was a little to Alpha. I knew how it would end but I mostly liked the twists and turns throughout the book to get to the ending. I like the tournament that added good fight scenes. I love the elaborate world but to throw in random slang or pop culture from our earth world sometimes was jarring. I also was taken out by the last complication Trehan had during a battle. It seemed so, sweep under the rug, problem solved. The nicknames where a little repetitive. Fun read. I like the writing style. Think I will try one of Cole's other series.

This is one of those books I love to hate. It's an average story, containing average characters. Our two main narrators here are a lustful, possessive vampire assassin and his bride a powerless virgin sorceress/demon (man did it irritate me how he seemed to always talk about her like an object, like something he owns)...there were no surprising plot twists or thought provoking revelations here. But let's face it–that's not why I picked the book up. I picked it up for one reason, and that would be the sex. So...Let's talk about sex, baby! The sex in the book was really well written (4 out of 5 stars for those scenes). Definitely made me blush. And if you are in the mood for some really good sexy times, then this is the book for you. Without those scenes though, the book really fell short. I would probably rate it a 2.5 out of 5 for the characters, language, and pretty much everything else that I love about fantasy novels. I didn't like Trehan very much (yes, I'll admit that he is one of the more sexy vampires and he would do almost anything for Bettina...but he was awful).

“Just because someone desires you, does not mean that they value you.

Read it over.
Again.
Let those words resonate in your mind.”

Well, the last book by Kresley Cole that I read started with the male love interest raping the protagonist, then we got to watch her fall in love with him, so this was better than that. Mostly just entertaining for me because my name is Dacia, and everyone talking about “Dacia's bubbling blood fountains” made me smile. Also rife with sex scenes, no surprise there.