Lothaire, by Kresley Cole

Holy smokes. This is going to be a disgustingly fangirlish and adoring review, so gird your loins.

The thing about series books is you sort of have to figure out if you’re loving a book because it’s part of an ongoing story that you love, or if it’s actually a great book. This is both. Let me just lay it out for you: Lothaire is one of the best paranormal romances I can remember reading.

To be fair, that’s in part because Kresley Cole’s spent ten or so books building such a fascinating and charismatic character. I know some of you have said that KC’s heroes don’t do it for you (… this is not a problem I experience personally), but come on. This is LOTHAIRE. He’s the famously nasty and arrogant vampire with all the good one-liners. He’s mysterious, fun, and dude. DUDE. Lothaire is unbelievably sexy.

The biggest question about this book was not whether or not Lothaire was going to be great, but whether or not Kresley Cole could find a heroine who could match him. She did it. And Kresley Cole managed this with a character who was a young mortal girl who’d grown up in backwoods Appalachia. Okay, to be fair, she’s been hosting a seriously evil bitch goddess for a year when we meet her, but STILL. Ellie herself is so smart, observant, and witty (without being Mary Sue Mountain) that she is more than capable of going toe to toe with the vamp legend himself.

In every other paranormal romance I’ve read in which a younger girl is paired with an ancient-as-dirt dude (including the first IAD book, A Hunger Like No Other), it’s ended up being weird, a little creepy, and totally unbalanced, no matter how many compulsory scenes in which Little Red Riding Hood stands up to the Big Bad Wolf.

It’s not often that I’m sorry to finish a book, but you guys, I don’t know what to do with myself. I did my best to slow down and read this book over a few days instead of over a few hours, and even though it’s long as fuck, I loved every single minute of it. The last two IAD books were way too angsty and filled with BRVTAL TORTVRE, and this was an amazing change of pace. Even though Lothaire and Elizabeth were facing some pretty serious obstacles, every page was fun.

By the end, the relationship between the two of them was so sweet and believable that I was holding back sniffles on the train (shut up, I’m over emotional this week).

I DO think that you’d appreciate this book best if you’ve read all the preceding books in the series, but this is absolutely my favorite one.

And yes, it has all your old favorites. Hag (last seen in Omort’s basement), Regin, Emma, Mariketa, and, of course. NIX.

Faefever by Karen Marie Moning

Okay I am really over paranormal romance series whose titles are all completely indistinguishable. Seriously. I’m going to give you a few examples.

Kresley Cole (we’ve covered this, I know)

No Rest for the Wicked
Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night
Dark Needs at Night’s Edge
Dark Desires After Dusk
although her later books are more distinguishable, like LOTHAIRE.

Ilona Andrews

Magic Bites
Magic Burns
Magic Strikes
Magic Bleeds
Magic Slays

Jeaniene Frost

Halfway to the Grave
One Foot in the Grave
Destined for an Early Grave
At Grave’s End
This Side of the Grave

Nicole Peeler

Tempest Rising
Tracking the Tempest
Tempest’s Legacy
Eye of the Tempest
Tempest’s Fury

Larissa Ione

Pleasure Unbound
Desire Unchained
Passion Unleashed
Ecstasy Unveiled
Sin Undone (Okay, this was helpful because the main character’s name was Sin)

I CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALL OF THESE BOOKS WON’T YOU PLEASE PLEASE GIVE ME SOME CLUES. Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series has titles that manage to be both repetitive AND give clues as to the plot (Soulless, Changeless, Blameless, etc. Heartless was getting a bit into the mysterious territory, but we have a good track record). Zoe Archer’s titles are descriptive of the main dudes (i.e. Scoundrel and Warrior). And here is where I have gone completely off the rails because I meant to talk about this book. Ahem.

Faefever, by Karen Marie Moning, the Part Where I Review It

Series is still going strong, although the ENDLESS! VIOLENCE! is sort of wearying and repetitive, to the point where I don’t even want to jump into the next book even though it was a major cliffhanger. Can I just have something CHEERFUL? God. It’s all rain and blood and The Dark Side of Mac and there was NO BARRONSEX and I’m disappointed but not surprised thanks to some helpful spoilers. I like that Mac is resourceful enough not to trust anybody completely, and I still think she’s a great character and enough fun that I don’t mind the first-person perspective.

Uh, that’s really all I have to say.

Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, by Kresley Cole

Well HellOOOOOOOO Nathan Kamp.

So y’all remember when I asked you guys for spooky books for Halloween and basically you all let me down? What the hell was that? Thanks for the ONE recommendation, sourdoughislife. The rest of you are on notice. Anyways, I decided to reread one of my old favorites, and review it for you. Not that you deserve it. Sniff.

This is one of Kresley Cole’s poorly-named books. There is darkness, and needs, in the way that all paranormal romances have needs, but there is nothing in the title that even gives a hint of the insane plot. Let me give it a shot:

Neomi Laress was a ballerina in New Orleans during the Jazz age (how fucking cool is that?) and she bought a spooky old estate called Elancourt with her own damn money and meticulously restored it (so fucking cool!) and the she threw an awesome welcome-home party and her asshole ex-fiance totally murdered her (SO NOT COOL AT ALL). When we meet her, she’s stuck haunting Elancourt.

Conrad Wroth is an insane vampire assassin. His brothers are also vampires (of the not-insane variety) and they turn Elancourt into a part jail, part rehab: Betty Ford Center for the Criminally Insane, if you will.

Neomi and Conrad spot each other from across the hall (as he’s destroying it in a rage) and her sad ghostly eyes are captured by his completely fucking insane ones, and it’s love. And sex, because this is Kresley Cole, and y’all know she does. not. skimp on the hardcore sex scenes.

So it’s a bit more complicated than that, obviously, since no author is capable of creating a paranormal universe without making it insanely complicated, and a bunch of characters from other books bounce in and out. We’re not talking Pulitzer Prize material here, and it is best enjoyed if you read at least the preceeding book in the series (Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night, which is all about winter except it takes place in the fucking Amazon jungle, what the FUCK was the publisher thinking here).

But this is Halloween! Halloween is all about cheap thrills. The story takes place in an old Gothic house and there are storms and mysteries and this is the book equivalent of a sack full of candy with none of the horrible orange and black taffies. You’ll go through it way faster than you think you will and it might make you a little sick (KC doesn’t skimp on the violence, either), but you’ll get the most delicious sugar high.

Dreams of a Dark Warrior, by Kresley Cole

Warning: This book is part of a series, and if you haven’t read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series, you should drop everything and read it from start to finish. But this probably won’t be your thing. I’ll try to keep it short.

This pairing was a tough one from the get-go: Regin the Radiant is a Valkyrie who has been in every one of the previous books, and Declan Chase has been pretty much the series’ biggest asshole so far. He has done some wicked evil shit, and I don’t mean the Lambada. We’re talking some gruesome, heinous deeds. Also, he happens to be the reincarnated version of Regin’s bezerker boyfriend, Aidan. Also also, if all of this is gibberish to you, I PROMISE it comes off better in the books.

As I mentioned earlier, because Declan is sort of Aidan and Regin has done the whole “fuck my reincarnated dude” deal four times before, there are some really fun flashback scenes where Regin does it with the other reincarnated dudes, and the original Aidan himself is pretty sexy. At one point, Declan dreams about another reincarnated version of Aidan who is remembering the experiences of Aidan himself, and I had to hit this button because that is some Inception shit right there.

Declan himself took a while to grow on me. He is a very, very fucked-up up dude who’s had a horrible life, and at the end of each day he listens to his Dashboard records and cries shoots himself up with some pretty serious drugs to dull his emo pain. And did I mention? HE DOES A LOT OF REALLY REPREHENSIBLE THINGS TO REGIN AND HER FRIENDS AND IT IS AWFUL. That is a lot to get over. I am generally pretty forgiving of romance heroes (as long as they aren’t rapey), but I wasn’t ready to get over that until the last quarter of the book.

Regin is … well, if you’ve read any of the other IAD books (GO READ THEM NOW. RIGHT NOW. THIS INSTANT), you know exactly what she’s like.

The first and last thirds of the book were great for me, and the middle third dragged a bit. Big words, coming from someone who finished it in less than 12 hours, but still. In the middle, I was about ready to give Kresley Cole my lowest IAD rating ever (seven thumbs up), but it picked up again at the end.

Lothaire, a completely awesomely evil vampire king, plays a large part in this book, and he will star in the next IAD installment. If his presence in this book is any indication, it will be epic.

This review is probably a bit lazy. Seriously, it just boils down to this: if you like the IAD books, you will like this one. It may not be your favorite, and neither Declan nor Regin was my favorite lead (he wasn’t as great as Caedon, she wasn’t as great as Sabine), but all in all it was a fun story and it gave me a good enough fix that it will be at least a few days before I get pissed about having to wait AN ENTIRE YEAR for Lothaire’s book. FUCK.

TL;DR: Still a fangirl. Your mileage may vary.