The theme: Serious ketchup Series catch up.
Why this one: It’s a hole in the series I’ve wanted to fill.
Usually I don’t write about the books I DNF’d for the TBR challenge and it is just possible I might yet finish this, if only to earn my “Reading Flagellation” square in Shallowreader Bingo. But more likely I’ll skim the print copy, since I’m only halfway through. In any event, I didn’t want to put off my challenge post.
This was my second try of this one, and really, I should just trust my Cole DNF’s. I usually enjoy this series, but the last time I read one that I’d DNF’d the first time (No Rest for the Wicked) I found it equally tedious on the second try.
The first part of the book includes a ton of discussion of events happening in A Hunger Like No Other. Since the entire series happens during the same general timeframe, this isn’t unusual, but it seems very clumsily narrated and dull here. And then the book passes over a year’s worth of dogged pursuit (heh) by the wolf shifter hero and moves to a whole bunch of new characters futzing around mysteriously on a boat in the Amazon and I just want to chew my own hands off from boredom.
The sex scenes are pretty good, if you like Cole’s obsessively crazed and possessive heroes (and really, I can’t imagine why you’d read her books if you don’t.) As often happens in the series, there’s an excellent reason Lucia and Garreth can’t have intercourse and just have to really hotly do everything else but. So that’s something.
But whatever drives the plot just isn’t working for me and there’s nothing particularly distinctive about the characters or their relationship to make me want to keep reading for them.
A Willful Woman... 
If you haven’t yet earned your “Reading Flagellation” square yet, I highly advise you not. It is the sort of thing that will suck you into a vortex of darkness and despair 😉
Heh. Well, I have official instructions from the keep of the (no) rules to go ahead and tick it now!
Seriously, I have this self flagellation thing down with Christine Feehan’s books now. I have her latest sitting there, staring balefully at me, while I ponder my options facing both dread and self loathing.
Oh my good lord, I did that with the Carpathians for the looooooongest time. It was horrible, and it was so hard to free myself from the compulsion to keep buying the next and the next and the next…
LOL! I misread that as you imagining *her* staring balefully at you and was thinking, “she’s been reading too many of those ‘don’t crush the author’s spirit’ pieces…”
Nope, this is all of my own making. because I kept reading after I was unhappy, and now I can’t stop. It is a sickness.
I’ve only read one Kresley Cole’s book –A Hunger Like No Other and although I could appreciate the great worldbuilding, I didn’t like the romantic part. It sounded very old skoolish for me, when rape was part of the courtship. And I see that there are more issues in following books. Therefore, this is a book I wouldn’t even try. Thank you for your review. Sometimes, we also have to talk about the DNF books.
If you wanted to try another, I’d recommend Dark Desires After Dark for a sweeter romance. But since all the books in the series are closely linked, it might not be worth your time. I do often enjoy a touch of old skool, myself.
Haha! Tick the Reading Flagellation square 😀
If you make a bingo it will all be worth it! 🙂 Great discussion.
I have enjoyed mot of the books in the series, and there are a few characters I particularly like (Malkom, from Demon from the Dark, for example), but I grew tired with the ambiguous morality issue. I’m all about redemption, but not so sure how we are supposed to pretend it’s fine that Lothaire has been directly responsible for the death of thousand upon thousands of sentient beings (humans, vampires, demons, Valkyries, you name it, Lothaire’s killed it), because how he’s found love. Oh, and it was not so much, not really, his fault that he was a murderous bastard, because the blood lust (or whatever), made him do it.
Wha..?
So, yeah, I wouldn’t recommend getting sucked into the vortex of this series.
I stopped reading this series after Sabine’s book (or maybe it was the monster hero — that was a dnf). I know some readers might have found the sexually aggressive alpha heroine transgressive but it was way too much sexual coercion (couched in Oh, he’s turned on so he must be enjoying it!) and I could never enjoy the series again after that.
I seem to be failing at reader flagellation because I’m weeding out unenjoyable books before I begin. But I consider that a different kind of win. 😀
Definitely! The books I almost invariably cull on the way to a winner are a big benefit of the tbr challenge for me. 🙂
[…] Flagellation”: A DNF — but I did struggle through […]