Blood Rights by Kristen Painter

Synopsis from Goodreads.com
The lacy gold mapped her entire body. A finely-wrought filigree of stars, vines, flowers, butterflies, ancient symbols and words ran from her feet, up her legs, over her narrow waist, spanned her chest and finished down her arms to the tips of her fingers.
Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarré—a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the mortal world…and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks.

Now Chrysabelle and Malkolm must work together to stop a plot to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. If they fail, a chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen will threaten to reign.

My review:
Chrysabelle gets this book off to a great start - she's on the run after finding her vampire patron dead, killed in a way only a comarré could, with a lethal blade that would behead him, but not turn his body to ash; a blade that only a comarré can wield. Chrysabelle is one such comarré, a human hybrid covered in gold shimmering tattoos, bred for the pure existence of providing untainted blood to vampires in return for youthful looks and long life. Although she only looks about 20, Chrysabelle is over 100 years old.

However she wasn't the one who killed him, so now she's on the run to save herself from being killed by the vampire Tatiana who is next to rule the vampire House, to which Chrysabelle's patron was affiliated.

Chrysabelle runs off to her aunt's house, an ex-comarré herself, who in turn sends her to find another vampire Mal for help. This vampire is anathema, a vampire who was once a noble but is now an outcast. Their initial meeting does not go at all well as Chrysabelle stakes him and when they meet again, they both have issues and prejudices that they need to overcome if they are to work together and help Chrysabelle to prove her innocence.

I really liked the build up between Chrysabelle and Mal - there was no romance at all between them, almost a pure hatred for one another, but at the same time a dependency on each other in order to survive. I do think and hope that something will blossom between them in time especially as they are now bound to each other, despite neither of them wanting to be and unless they find a way to break that bond, they are stuck together indefinitely.

When Chrysabelle's aunt is kidnapped and used as bait to entice Chrysabelle to Tatiana's mansion, Chrysabelle enrols the help of Mal, Dominic, another anathema vampire friend of her aunt, Doc, Mal's half were companion and Fi, a ghost, turned human again who was formerly bound to Mal in her ghost state. This strange army go up against the very strong Tatiana, her sidekick Mikkel and a demon of sorts. Not everything went according to plan, but Chrysabelle and Mal made it out alive so hopefully they'll be able to continue the story and carry on the good fight!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can't wait to read the next one in the series. I would like to thank the author and publishers for letting me review this book honestly through NetGalley.

Blood Rock by Anthony Francis

Synopsis from Goodreads.com
Dakota Frost is back, and the ink is about to hit the fan-again.

Graffiti comes to life in the dark heart of Atlanta’s oldest cemetery, slaying one of the city’s best loved vampires before the eyes of his friend Dakota Frost. Deadly magick is at work on the city’s walls, challenging even the amazing power of Dakota’s tattoos to contain it. The hungry, graffiti magick loves to kill, and the Edgeworld is no longer safe from its own kind.

Dakota begins a harrowing journey to save those she loves and to discover the truth behind the spreading graffiti-even if that truth offends the vampires, alienates the werekin and creates police suspicion of her every action.

Saving Atlanta may cost her everything, including custody of her “adopted” weretiger daughter, Cinnamon. But failure is not an option. If the graffiti isn’t stopped, Cinnamon could be the next victim.


My review:

Well Anthony Francis has done it again! I totally loved Frost Moon, the first book in the Skindancer series and wasn't sure if his next one would live up to the same expectations, but boy did it ever!

Dakota Frost is a magic tattoo artist who uses her skin dancing magic to make her tattoos come to life to aid in any way she needs them to. She is called to a very bizarre crime scene where her vampire friend Revenance is being held captive and tortured by...wait for it...a graffiti tag on a cemetery wall. Try as she might with all of her powers, but she cannot set him free before the sun catches hold of him. This is a rather new, strange and very dangerous form of graffiti and no-one knows what to do to stop it. Of course it is up to Dakota to find out! Revenance wasn't the first vampire to die in this way either and soon it becomes apparent that this graffiti magic is becoming a very large problem in Atlanta, where non-one, not vamps, weres or humans are immune to it.

On the side Dakota also has problems with the police - they want to charge her with the murder of the serial killer in the last book so she's on the run. She breaks up with her Special Agent boyfriend, sleeps with a vamp, falls out with Saffron her vampire ex-girlfriend, her daughter is diagnosed as a genius and with Tourette's simultaneously, loses said daughter and gets kidnapped by 2 different sets of vamps. This book sure didn't slow down on the action at all. I really felt for the poor woman as she never seemed to get a break until near the end.

I totally love Dakota - she feisty, strong, willing to defend those closest to her and also has a sensitive side. I love the image I have of her in my head as well - completely tattooed, huge multi-coloured mohawk and a fab leather vest coat! I wanna be Dakota Frost LOL

I can't wait for the next book in this series to come out!

I would like to thank the author and publisher for allowing me to review this book free of charge through NetGalley.

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kawaga

Synopsis from Goodreads.com
Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a vampire city. By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten.

Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of them. The vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself is attacked—and given the ultimate choice. Die… or become one of the monsters.

Faced with her own mortality, Allie becomes what she despises most. To survive, she must learn the rules of being immortal, including the most important: go long enough without human blood, and you will go mad.

Then Allie is forced to flee into the unknown, outside her city walls. There she joins a ragged band of humans who are seeking a legend—a possible cure to the disease that killed off most of humankind and created the rabids, the mindless creatures who threaten humans and vampires alike.

But it isn't easy to pass for human. Especially not around Zeke, who might see past the monster inside her. And Allie soon must decide what—and who—is worth dying for.



My review
Although this is classed as a young adult book, I didn't think it was really. OK so the main character was a teenager, but I felt it veered more towards adult urban fantasy than just YA. I'm not a great fan of YA books in general, but I am a fan of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series, so I was hoping this would be as enjoyable, but I was wrong. It was better than the Iron ?Fey series, much better.


Set in a future world where vampires run the world and humans are either bloodslaves, registered to a vampire master, or Unregistered scavengers living on the brink of the vampire cities, doing whatever they can to survive, begging, stealing, even killing for food.

Allie is one such Unregistered, who hates the vampires with a passion - her mother had been a registered and died through a combination of an illness and donating her monthly supply of blood to the vampire king of their city. Ever since then Allie has lived in the abandoned buildings of the city and has a little gang of her own. One of her jobs is to hunt out food and when she can find none in her usual scavenging places, she decides to go past the city walls to the Ruins, where the Rabids live - vampires turned into rabid, flesh eating, crazy zombies.

Allie's luck was in to start with - she found a hidden basement full of tinned food and bottled water. She managed to get back to the refuge she's living in after a close encounter with a vampire, who for some reason doesn't bite or kill her. She convinces her gang to go back for the food, but that's where her luck almost runs out. A very close encounter with some Rabids, leaves her with 2 very simple choices - either die or turn into a vampire, the thing she despises the most. She chooses the latter of the two evils and becomes that which she never wanted to be.

Her life takes a turn of strange events and she meets up with a roaming group of humans, none of whom suspects what she is. This group are on the way to find some human only place called Eden, which may or may not exist and Allie travels with them as far as she can, but the Hunger in her keeps rising. She knows she must drink human blood soon before she turns into a raving monster, so she does, only to get caught and cast out.

Things go from bad to worse for this group and Allie helps them as much as she can, even if they really don't deserve her help. Along the way she soon discovers that she may be a vampire, but she sure doesn't have to be a monster.

I really enjoyed this book and can't wait for the next one in this series. I doubt it would happen but I would like to see if Allie and Zeke ever meet up again. I know Allie has to go and help Kanin, her sire, but will she do that alone or with the help of another vampire?

  I would like to thank the publishers and author for allowing me to receive it for free through NetGalley.

The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice

Synopsis from Goodreads.com

A daring new departure from the inspired creator of The Vampire Chronicles (“unrelentingly erotic. . . unforgettable.”), the Lives of the Mayfair Witches (“Anne Rice will live on through the ages of literature”), and the angels of The Songs of the Seraphim (“remarkable.”). A whole new world—modern, sleek, high-tech, and at its center, a story as old and compelling as history—the making of a werewolf, re-imagined and re-invented as only Anne Rice, teller of mesmerizing tales, conjurer extraordinaire of other realms, could create it.

The time is the present.

The place, the rugged coast of northern California. A bluff high above the Pacific. A grand mansion full of beauty and tantalizing history set against a towering redwood forest.

A young reporter on assignment from the San Francisco Observer. . . an older woman, welcoming him into her magnificent, historic family home that he has been sent to write about and that she must sell with some urgency . . . A chance encounter between two unlikely people . . . an idyllic night—shattered by horrific unimaginable violence. . .The young man inexplicably attacked—bitten—by a beast he cannot see in the rural darkness . . . A violent episode that sets in motion a terrifying yet seductive transformation as the young man, caught between ecstasy and horror, between embracing who he is evolving into and fearing who—what—he will become, soon experiences the thrill of the wolf gift.

As he resists the paradoxical pleasure and enthrallment of his wolfen savagery and delights in the power and (surprising) capacity for good, he is caught up in a strange and dangerous rescue and is desperately hunted as “the Man Wolf,” by authorities, the media and scientists (evidence of DNA threaten to reveal his dual existence). . . As a new and profound love enfolds him, questions emerge that propel him deeper into his mysterious new world: questions of why and how he has been given this gift; of its true nature and the curious but satisfying pull towards goodness; of the profound realization that there are others like him who may be watching—guardian creatures who have existed throughout time and may possess ancient secrets and alchemical knowledge and throughout it all, the search for salvation for a soul tormented by a new realm of temptations, and the fraught, exhilarating journey, still to come, of being and becoming, fully, both wolf and man.



My review:
I've not read an Anne Rice book for years, since the Vampire Chronicles, so I was really looking forward to this one, and it did not disappoint. Although it was a werewolf book, it was more than that.

Other reviewers have stated how Reuben was a bit up himself, but I really liked him. He was a charming, good looking young man, with a bit of family money behind him. I mean he was 23 and drove a Porsche, but that does not necessarily mean he was self-conceited or selfish or anything else - he just had money. He did come from a fairly high achieving family, mother is a top surgeon, father is a poet (can't remember what he did before that though!), brother is a priest and gave up all his money for the priesthood and Reuben felt that he hadn't actually achieved much in his short life, so maybe he should have been a bit more grateful for his life, but still I liked him. He did cheat on his girlfriend quite early on in the book, but actually I didn't like Celeste from the beginning. She was always putting him down and making comments about his job as a reporter and I would have cheated on her too if I was him. I didn't think they were right for each other at all and as we found out later, she did the same to him too, so that makes them equal right?!

Anyway on to the actual story! Reuben goes out to visit Marchant, a middle-aged woman who has just inherited an absolutely huge, gorgeous old house up on a hill overlooking the sea at Nideck Point. I so wanted to go and visit this house - the descriptions of it were just amazing. Marchant had inherited this house from her uncle, an explorer who had been missing for years, now presumed dead. She was selling the house and wanted Reuben to write a newspaper article on it to generate some interest. However that interest all changed when she was killed, by her jealous brothers no less and consequently Reuben was saved by a man wolf. This "saving" changed Reuben - he gained the wolf gift and soon found he could change into a humanoid wolf type creature. This story basically told of his journey through the development of his gift, how he used it to protect those in need and how he finally came to accept it. There wasn't such much of a single story plot, typical bad guy, good guy stuff, although there were some bad guys and some good guys.

I loved this new twist on the legend of the werewolf in that they were not full shapeshifters, but rather a half human - half wolf who still maintained his human conscience when in wolf form, could talk and have wolf/human sex, which did creep me out a bit. These ones, Morphenkind, could sense evil and hear voices crying for help from miles away and Reuben managed to save those in need several times. However as usually happens with vigilantes, he was glorified to superhero status by some and hunted by others, including some "doctors", who had a major part to play in Marchant's uncle's disappearance.

Without giving too much away, Reuben meets other Morphenkinder, one of whom explains the history of their kind, being the first one to transform and I totally loved this myth building. I want another book just on this first one of their kind.

Laura, the love interest after the fiancée Celeste, I thought was a bit weird. She liked sex with the Man Wolf in wolf form for starters! She seemed to completely accept Reuben for who he was very easily, despite knowing that he has killed people, ok not innocent people, but still he has killed. She moved in with him in the blink of an eye and seemed to have no real personality that came through the book. I just thought she was a bit drab, but maybe that is the balance that was needed between Reuben and herself. And I think she's the main reason I didn't give this book a 5 star rating - she didn't enthral me much at all. In fact I didn't really care what happened to her at all.

I thought this book was really good. Love the fact that Anne Rice is back on the writing scene as it were with a fantastic new story and hopefully new series! Can't wait to find out if there is going to be a sequel.

Thank you to the publishers and author for allowing me to receive and review this book honestly through NetGalley.

Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh

Synopsis from Goodreads.com
Once upon a time…the Blood Sorcerer vanquished the kingdom of Elden. To save their children, the queen scattered them to safety and the king filled them with vengeance. Only a magical timepiece connects the four royal heirs…and time is running out.…

As the dark Lord who condemns souls to damnation in the Abyss, Micah is nothing but a feared monster wrapped in impenetrable black armor. He has no idea he is the last heir of Elden, its last hope. Only one woman knows—the daughter of his enemy.

Liliana is nothing like her father, the Blood Sorcerer who’d cursed Micah. She sees past Micah’s armor to the prince inside. A prince whose sinful touch she craves. But first she has to brave his dark, dangerous lair and help him remember. Because they only have till midnight to save Elden.

My review:
This is the final book in the Royal House of Shadows series and this one was the best of them all.

Liliana transported herself to find Micah, the youngest brother of the royal family of Elden, but rather than find herself in the woods near his castle, she found herself in the castle itself in front of Micah, or the Lord of the Abyss as he now is. He instantly puts her in the dungeon and it is now her task to try to make him remember who he is and tell him what he must do in order to restore Elden to its former glory.

Unfortunately for Liliana, Micah doesn't even remember his name, let alone anything else about his previous life, so she has a hard task in front of her. He is hard, cold, moody and downright scary, but Liliana isn't afraid, not after what she has been through. She convinces him to let her cook for him, so she doesn't have to spend the nights in the cold dungeon and soon they begin to feel a deep attraction towards one another. Liliana believes this cannot be real and she thinks she is rather ugly and deformed. The idea of Beauty and Beast runs through this book, but which one is which I haven't yet worked out LMAO!

She also begins to tell him stories about himself and his brothers and sister, although at the time he doesn't know who these people are and whilst he loves hearing about them, they also enrage him at one point, causing him immense pain.

The Blood Sorcerer is also on the hunt for Liliana, for she is his daughter and no one defies the Blood Sorcerer, but she keeps this little bit of information from Micah, believing that he will kill her when he finds out who she really is. The Blood Sorcerer sends his army out to attack the castle and find her, but Micah uses his powers as the Lord of the Abyss to defend it and the people of the village and so they have a temporary defeat. Liliana eventually tells him what he doesn't really want to hear, but he now has only a short time to return to Elden. And off they go on a perilous journey back to the destroyed kingdom of Elden.

He does manage to defeat the Blood Sorcerer, but I do think the actual fight scene was very short and over before you knew it. I know Micah is meant to be powerful, being an heir to Elden and all, but the Blood Sorcerer was also meant to be very powerful and he was overthrown very quickly. His spell lifted off the land. Micah's brothers and sister returned and everyone lived happily ever after!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and this series and loved how it all tied together in the end battle against the Blood Sorcerer.

Thank you to the publishers for allowing me to review this book honestly through NetGalley.

Lord of the Wolfyn by Jessica Andersen

Synopsis from Goodreads.com
Once upon a time…the Blood Sorcerer vanquished the kingdom of Elden.

To save their children, the queen scattered them to safety and the king filled them with vengeance.

Only a magical timepiece connects the four royal heirs…and time is running out.…

For practical Reda Weston, nothing could explain how reading a sexy version of "Little Red Riding Hood" catapulted her into another realm—face-to-fang with the legendary wolf-creature who seduced women. A wolf who transformed into a dark, virile man….

Dayn cursed the Sorcerer that turned him wolfyn and damned him to a lonely fate. As a beast, he mated with women to gain strength.

Strength he needed to rescue his royal parents. But as a man, he craved Reda's heated, sizzling touch. With little time left, Dayn had to either embrace his wolf to save his kingdom…or fight it to save his woman.

My review:

This is the third book in the Royal House of Shadows series; this time focussing on Dayn, the second brother of the kingdom of Elden.

Reda Watson, a police officer who has just lost her partner in a bungled convenience store robbery, has finally found the book she has been searching for. A very old version of Red Riding Hood, one which her mother used to read to her before she died. After reading this book she wakes up to find herself in a world not of her own, having travelled through a vortex using a spell her mother had taught her.

She meets Dayn, the second eldest prince from Elden and he realises that she is the one, his guide, who can open the vortex and transport him back to Elden to defeat the Blood Sorcerer, who killed his parents and took over his home kingdom. Dayn is a vampire the same as Nikolai, his brother from the first book and he lives in close community with a pack of wolfyn, werewolves in other words. However, they have no idea he is a blood drinker, except for the wise old woman who he confided in and they cannot know simply because they will kill him if they do.

Reda and Dayn have a strange relationship. There is the usual attraction between them the you would expect from a PNR, but she came across as being a bit wet to be honest. Maybe the idea that she was constantly being a coward didn't enthral me to her at all. Dayn needed a guide back to his kingdom and when she turned up that was all he focussed on, not really caring if she would ever return to her own world or not. But as can be expected they fall in love and blah blah blah!

Then out of nowhere some blood sorceress called Moragh turns up trying to find some special artefact which she needed to be able to rule Elden instead of the Blood Sorcerer, but I thought that the Blood Sorcerer was the ultimate evil and to be able to defeat him all four of the Elden siblings needed to be back in the palace. This seemed a bit of a random thing to just plonk into the middle of the story, but I guess it meant that the wolfyn would find out about Dayn being a blood drinker and therefore start the ball rolling as it were.

Dayn and Reda have a bit of a trek across the realm in order to find another vortex, which would transport them both to their respective homelands. Obviously things never go to plan and Dayn has to reveal his other nature - he is a wolfyn, having only ever called upon that power within himself once before. This sends Reda into a panic, ensuring that he had bespelled her into feeling for him the way she does after only a few days, but nope he didn't. She felt that way all by her little self!

Eventually they make it back to Elden, although not together and Dayn realises who he needs to be in order to finally defeat the Blood Sorcerer and they head into the castle for the final showdown.

This was an ok book, not quite as good as the first one, which is my favourite in this series so far. I'm guessing that the conclusions are all revealed in the final book and the siblings all finally return to defeat the Blood sorcerer.

I still have no idea where the wolfyn idea came from, because there is no mention of this at all in the other books. It has been said several times that the king was a blood drinker, whilst the queen was a healer mage, but wolfyn was not at all spoken of. It was almost as if they needed a different type of character for this episode in the series and again plonked it in without explanation. Something needed to be said about his heritage a bit more.

I would like to thank the author and publishers for receiving this ARC free from NetGalley and my review is completely my own!

Lord of Rage by Jill Monroe

Synopsis from Goodreads.com
Princess Breena had been dreaming of her warrior lover when she was ripped from her Elden castle and thrown into a strange, dangerous realm. Lost and alone, she prayed for survival and vengeance for her stolen kingdom. She found both in a woodland cottage…in a dark bear of a man.

The golden-haired beauty had eaten his food and slept in his bed when Osborn found her. Though he wanted to awaken his virgin princess to carnal pleasures, Breena wanted more—including his warrior skills. Skills the once-legendary mercenary had long buried. Now Osborn had a choice—risk his life or deny his princess her fairy-tale ending.


My review: 
This is the second book in the Royal House of Shadows series and focusses on Brenna, the princess of Elden. She wakes up after being magically whisked away from the scene of her parents' gruesome demise with an urge to follow a certain path. She knows she must survive and take revenge but at the moment she's not sure why and against whom she must take this revenge. Onwards she plods through a forest, clearly marked against intruders by the bare skulls hanging up. She stumbles across a wooden cottage and the scene that follows made me chuckle - it was Goldilocks and the Three Bears paranormal style. She enters the unlocked cottage, eats some oat porridge, breaks a chair and then goes to sleep in one of the beds. When she is awoken a while later, the gruff, angry man is the man of her dreams, literally. She has been dreaming of this warrior and the passion between them for a while now, but he is nothing like the man in her dreams. He also recognises her as the woman who has been invading his dreams and whilst he feels an attraction towards her, does not want to get involved with her at all.

Osborn is the oldest of 3 brothers, the only survivors from an slaughter on his village by whom he believes were soldiers/vampires from Elden. He is a berserker, following a ritual of manhood at the age of 15 in which he had to kill a bear and join their spirits together. He can call on his Ber when wearing the pelt of the bear he killed and develops an almost uncontrollable rage and strength, against which no-one will survive. Osborn's 2 little brothers were cute. They needed a big sister or mother figure in their lives and were so desperate for Brenna to stay even when Osborn made it clear that she should leave.

There is a great attraction between Brenna and Osborn right from the minute they meet. He believes she only wants him for his berserker power and the revenge she wants to take. She believes that he is her warrior, the man in her dreams who would protect her at all costs. Their relationship is not quite a smooth ride and even at the very end, I thought Osborn was going to leave her for good.

Brenna came across as a typical "princess". She only wanted Osborn to fight for her against those who killed her parents and didn't really care about him and his brothers initially. It was obvious she had a very good upbringing (she didn't know how to cook for example, something in this world, women would have done if they had to) and her selfishness irritated me a bit at the beginning. She did eventually start becoming more independent. Her own magical powers developed a bit, although we didn't see a great deal of that and she did learn how to fight with a sword, taking many hours practising and training physically. But ultimately Osborn, her warrior, had to save her!

Osborn was an angry man! Yes he had to go through 2 life changing events in the same day - his Bärenjagd (the bear killing ritual) and the battle in his village which cost him the lives of his parents. Not something I can imagine was an easy thing to do. He also had to bring up his two brothers on his own and became an assassin to help feed them, but boy he could have smiled some times! With Brenna's help, he realised that he had sheltered his brothers too much and was not preparing them to become the men and Berserkers they have be.

I was also a little confused to the timing of this book. Nikolai, in the first book and Brenna's brother, had been kept in the witches' palace for 20 years as time moves differently there, but this one seemed to take place immediately after Brenna's teleportation. Not sure how all the books will merge together or even if they will. I hope so! Would be good to see all 4 siblings back together, taking on the Blood sorcerer.

This book was ok. I liked it, but didn't think it was great. I think because it was so short the relationship between Brenna and Osborn was developed fully and the characters themselves were not fully developed either. I will be reading the rest of this series as I want to find out about the other 2 brothers from the kingdom of Elden - Dayn and Micah.

I would like to thank the publishers for providing this ARC free through Net Galley.