Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The Darkening

Author: Robin T. Popp
Published: June 2007 (Love Spell)
Category: Paranormal Romance
Series: Immortals #2
Rating: 6/10

I was kind of disappointed with this book. The Calling did a pretty good job setting up the rest of the series, and this one felt like it was slapped together with some glue and scotch tape, with no particular outline to follow when writing. The heroine, Lexi Corvin, is a fire-element witch who happens to be a werewolf. The events occur the week preceding the full moon, which makes werewolves really horny and she has to have sex or else her magic can hurt her. How unfortunate then, that the hero, Darius, has a curse on him that gives him amnesia if he has an orgasm during sex. At least that's how I interpreted it. Not sure if it would affect him in some self-relief action.

The Calling performed by the Coven of Light at the end of The Calling brought Darius, another of Adrian's Immortal brothers, to Manhattan in the midst of Lexi taking down one of her targets. She's a bounty hunter, but you have to suspend a lot of disbelief. You'd think that she'd be smart about dangerous situations, but she's surprisingly stupid. Maybe she depends on her werewolf strength and healing powers instead of common sense. For a rough and tough "I wear black leather" bounty hunter, she automatically assumes that Darius is screwing all these random women and gets all bent out of shape. I guess Popp wanted to show us that our tough heroine is really a soft and emotional woman beneath the leather?

Darius started out so promising. He listened to Lexi's story about Tain going insane and wanting to drain the life magic out of the world, and how Adrian and Amber are putting together an army in Seattle to fight the death magic, and didn't fight her. They got him a plane ticket out there, but he decides to chase down a lead on Tain, who happens to be in Manhattan with the big bad boss demon. They purchase a few more tickets for him, but he ditches the flight every time to keep going back to the vampire club the demon and Tain are based out of.

And I'm seeing a pattern here. In The Calling, Amber dies, but gets her life back through divine intervention, and Adrian makes a deal with his mother. Amber gets her life back if he sits back and lets his brothers continue the search for Tain. In The Darkening, Lexi is severely wounded for the second time in the book, in the process of saving Darius' life, and can't make the change to her other form to heal because she's too weak. He gives her his immortal essence, which is his sacrifice for his beloved.

It was okay and maybe I am right about there always being a weak book in every series. Hopefully this is it for The Immortals. Now I'm moving right on to the next book, The Awakening.

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