Book Review

I haven’t done one of these in a while so i figured i would do two lesbian vampire books while there is kind of a loll in any real developments going on. I will also put all of these up on my review page later. So here is book one.

Darkness  Embraced

This book is a little bit of a hard one. I tend to stay away from vampire books as a rule. Not because I dont like vampires because i do. But i only like them when they are done a certain way. And when it is not done that way i tend to hate it.

Yes i despise the Twilight sage with a fiery passion but lets be fair that is the lowest form of low hanging fruit.

So lets take a look at exactly what kind of vampires we are dealing with here. Firstly these are your fairly basic types. Drink blood, sunlight kills, the usual. These vampires differ by the fact that they actually exist separate from the rest of humanity. aside from the few that hunt humans to eat vampires all live under ground and the entire book takes place without a single human getting involved. Not saying that is good or bad but it is at least different.

the story is simple enough our main character is a vampire who is old enough that she can enter the ranks of Elders but must complete a series of trials in order to test her ability. however there seems to be no formal training for this test and the pass state is beating an Elder. seems a little stacked to me but whatever. The more elders there are the more power has to be shared so naturally not all Elders want her to succeed along with other various reasons. there is also a plot about a cue and some other stuff that really felt more than a little rushed at best and forced at worst.

Sadly though most of the actual story hooks that drew me in during the sample text did not carry over into the rest of the book.

First off i hate out of place expansion conversations. In here it is when one character doesnt know something that they by all rights should have known. The book gives a very clear picture that the test to become an elder is a very big deal and yet the test starts with one vampire walking in and was like what you forgot this was happening? and then the main character gave some arbitrary reason why they didnt know.

Second, one of the biggest points of conflict is how the queen vampire lady turned the main character made her the queens play thing and then aptly discarded her. now i really thought this would be a fun thing to go into as it would show how heartless vampires can actually be and how it was really an abusive relationship, the possibilities are endless. Sadly the author took the i did this for your own good only it really didnt make much since. Okay you think that it is to dangerous to be with her until she becomes and elder. So why did you not tell her that. instead you just kicked her out and then ignored her for the better part of 800 years. and even then the reasoning was kind of shaky and i really did not buy it.

The last real sticking point was all the sex. Goodness there is a lot of it in this book. i would say at least half the book is just sex scenes. well done and well written mind you but for a book that doesnt tout itself as an erotica it sure felt like it was written that way.

Overall i would probably be more likely to recommend it if it was cheaper. as it stands it is a $10 book and knowing what i know now i would say it is not worth that much if it was an actual paperback. if the author ever drops the price to 2.99 and you are in the mood for a full length erotic lesbian vampire novel then i would say go for it.

Jaden’s Heart

Now this really is a strange beast for me. First i will point out that this would have gotten the same recommendation as Darkness Embraced but at the time of writing this review the author dropped the price to 2.99

The story revolves around our two lovers. One a Vampire who was been abandoned by the person she loved and the other is a homeless teen who ran away from a sexually abusive father. The Teen gets smitten with the Vampire when she saves her and from there a relationship blooms.

On the surface this book does everything that i talked about in the last book right. you have well made vampires, though they prefer Immortal(whatever), with all the standard rules. Vampires are more or less apathetic to humans seeing them as lesser being to be used and feed upon and our main character is no exception. Here you have the Vampire Queen abandoning the main character for no real reason and said vampire  queen is basically like deal with it. I made you i use you when and how i want. that was nice the part that doesnt work is the presentation. it kind of builds at the beginning that this vampire has been missing for however many centuries and then is just kind of there mucking things up. i never felt like the character was fleshed out enough to truly hate her or feel sorry for her. as a kind of protagonist/foil she really doesnt work.

And that is probably the biggest problem with this story. there is no clear bad guy. there is some implied threats in the power structure of things but as our main character has done her best to distance herself from the inner workings of vampire politics you the reader dont feel much investment in those things either.

Now the book sets up a lot of potential threats as well as interesting things that will likely happen… in the next book and that is where my issues really stem from. I think that if this book had been cut out and the series started with the second book it would be far more interesting. that way we learn about these events along with the character in the next book. avoiding spoilers with my wording here.

In the end i think this series has potential and is at the very least interesting. but until the next book comes out i would probably hold off on recommending this one. it really doesnt do a good job of standing on its own and will hit or miss more on the story of the second book.