Grade: B+

For all intents and purposes, I should have hated this book. We’ve got a violent, unstable, slightly unhinged hero who’s a little too alpha for my taste; a heroine who admits to herself that she is “too stupid to live”, a bunch of sequel baits hanging around doing sequel bait shit that usually piss me off, and an ending that was a little too “we’re one big happy family ‘cause love conquers all” for me. I should have hated this book. My walls should have numerous dents from the number of times I should have flung this book at them. But they don’t. And I didn’t hate this book. I didn’t hate it. There are a handful of “forced seduction” scenes in this book that smelled like rape; the sissy, whiny, crybaby heroine was touted as feisty and fierce even though she didn’t deserve it, and the tennis match point-of-view changes between characters drove me nuts, but dear God, I didn’t hate it. I almost… loved it. What is going on here? I wasn’t on crazy pills when I read this book, wasn’t drunk, wasn’t high… I loved it because I couldn’t put it down. I loved it because I got hot over how forceful and dark and crazy the hero was. The sex scenes were crazy hot (even the “forced seduction” ones) and the final confrontation between the heroine and the villain was actually suspenseful. I read this book from beginning to end without once setting it down. Call me crazy, but I think Kresley Cole (totally a fake name) has the start of a potentially awesome series here.

As soon as I got my hands on this book, I read the back blurb to Tim. His reaction was, “Uh… half-vampire, half-what now? Valkyrie? What the hell is that? Did the writer just slap two V words that she thought sounded cool together?” I told him that there was also a werewolf who kidnaps her because she is his One True Mate and he just kind of shook his head and said, “What the fuck, are there goblins and trolls, too?” Well, from what I’ve read so far, I’d say that’s a safe bet. There’s a lot of stuff going on here, but Kresley Cole manages to weave them all together without making the exposition seem clunky or dull. I really dug this crazy ass world; I didn’t even mind the pop culture references and that shit usually drives me nuts!

Anyway, our heroine is half-Valkyrie, half vampire named Emmaline Troy. Her father was a vampire and her mother, who was a Valkyrie and died in childbirth was… Helen of Troy. That’s right, the Helen of Troy. I can feel you rolling your eyes, but really, it’s not as stupid as it sounds. Okay, it is, but nobody really makes a big deal out of it and it is mentioned in an off-handed manner. Emma was raised by a coven of Valkyries living in compound in New Orleans (one of whom had a short story in the anthology Playing Easy to Get), which was pretty much a convent considering how cloistered she was, but has never felt like she was one of them. In a search of information about her parents and her roots, she ends up in Paris, alone for the first time in her life, determined to prove to herself that she can do something on her own. While hanging out on the streets of Paris one day, she walks over the catacombs which are rumored to be underground, where Lachlain, the King of the Lykae (werewolves), happen to be imprisoned.

Captured by the vampires and trapped in the catacombs for almost two hundred years, Lachlain spends his days being roasted alive everyday. It is only his thirst for revenge against the vampires that has kept him sane all these years, but one day, while the very flesh of his skin is being cooked off of him, he catches the scent of a woman that he’s been searching for, for the past twelve hundred years. Gathering his remaining strength about him, he finally breaks out of his chains, cuts off his own leg, and hobbles after his ONE TRUE MATE, the one woman whose magical va-jay-jay can cure him of everything he’s suffering from, especially the crazies! What he never expected was that the woman of his dreams would turn out to be… a vampire! Nooooo! Damn you, fates! Anyway, Lachlain decides to make the best of things and even though Emma is a filthy blood-sucking leech, she is his mate and he has to somehow get his woo-hoo inside her magic va-jay-jay before the full moon, so that all of his suffering will end. But because he’s too busy lying to her, racking up charges on her credit card, molesting her, and pretty much wrecking every single hotel room they stay in, he doesn’t have the time to talk to her and find out that a) she’s not the filthy vampire whore that he thinks she is because she is, in fact, A VIRGIN, b) she’s not a blood-sucking vampire because she has never directly drank from a human, and c) she’s half-Valkyrie, which apparently makes a HUGE difference, because this means she’s not all vampire, which is bad.

Wow… the more I talk about this book, the more I’m surprised I actually liked it. For God’s sake, it has the one romance novel staple that I abhor more than anything: the all-innocent virgin who gets mistreated, but shouldn’t have been mistreated not because she’s a human being and no human being should ever be treated as such, but just because she’s a virgin. As if some useless glob of tissue makes her special and shit! I mean, the man practically rapes the poor girl, but only feels guilty about it when he finds out she’s a virgin? If she’d been a dirty, dirty whore who slept with every kind of creature of the Lore, male or female, and LOVED EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF IT, would he still have been sorry for getting her drunk, so he could fuck her? I mean, he doesn’t go through with it, but that’s some serious shit. What the fuck is wrong with me that I enjoyed every page of this book?

To top it all off, Emma is one of those helpless, weakling, “oh somebody save me” type of characters who lets everyone walk all over her. Sure, she gets all pumped up and butched out like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 and starts kicking ass, but none of that shit negates the fact that she’s just some pretty piece of fluff that does nothing but simper and whine and cry for sixty-five percent of the book! What saves Emma from being a complete and total waste of time is her rather convincing evolution from useless bimbo with nothing going for her to a kickass Valkyrie warrior who really does change. I even bought the progression of what she felt for Lachlain: 1) fear, 2) anger, 3) acceptance, 4) infatuation, and 5) love. Sure, it smelled an awful lot like Stockholm Syndrome—the author jokes about it to deflect from the fact that it is what it is—but in the end, I was convinced that she really loved Lachlain. Wait… no, I wasn’t.

What didn’t convince me so much was this concept of ONE TRUE MATE. Why do paranormal romances insist on using this awful, over-used plot contrivance? I’d rather read about two people who are completely, totally different from each other who come together, learn about each other, and slowly fall in love with each other, over two poor fools who are forced together by fickle fate because they’re meant to be together and have no say in the matter. That’s bullshit. I can’t help but think that if Emma hadn’t been Lachlain’s ONE TRUE MATE, he wouldn’t even have spared her a glance, and I think he even kind of talks about it. What kind of bullshit is that?

Man, there are really a lot of things I didn’t like about this book, huh? I guess I can venture a guess and say that it was Kresley Cole’s writing style that drew me in, but like I said, the constant point of view changes was horribly frustrating. Like I’d be reading about a pretty intense scene from Lachlain’s point of view, but before I can read about what he really thinks of it, the point of view would switch to Emma… or one of the Valkyries four thousand miles away and had nothing to do with the scene. And some of the dialogue just sounded awkward and false in an attempt to sound hip. Also, I don’t know where the author got this idea, but just because your character talks about what’s wrong with your story, like “Oh, I’m just too stupid to live… hee-hee” or “Hmm… if she hadn’t been my ONE TRUE MATE, I never would have noticed her,” it doesn’t make it less… wrong. It’s still there. Just because you’re drawing attention to it, it doesn’t make it less stupid and lame. It just makes me wonder: If you knew it was stupid and lame, why would you put it in your book?

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this book, even if I made it sound like I didn’t. Mostly because I was intrigued by the character of Lachlain: he’s not perfect—he does stupid shit like drug the woman he loves so he can fuck her—and he’s a little crazy, but I just found him really hot. I wonder if that means I’m nuts. Other than that, I think I just really dig the idea of a group of strong, powerful women going around kicking monster ass. I think it’s the idea of the series that I’m in love with, and not this book. The Valkyries idea is just… I don’t know… inspired, you know? They’re all different and have issues of their own. There’s even one who is literally the Ice Queen, since her skin is cold to touch and she is actually, physically hurt by being touched. I can’t wait to read that one. I also can’t wait to read about the Valkyrie who is trapped underwater and drowns everyday only to come back to life because she is an immortal, and drown again. That’s just… crazy. Kersey Cole… she’s an imaginative chick and I can’t wait to see what else she’s got up her sleeve. Sure, this book was seriously flawed… but y’all… I seriously couldn’t put it down. Tim and I even almost got in a fight because he was ready to go to sleep, but I wasn’t ‘cause I was reading this book and refused to turn off the light. Oh, man, I can’t wait till the next book comes out. Who do I have to kill to get an ARC of it? Seriously!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Paranormal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.