I neglected to do any mini reviews for the first three books, so I’ll do them all in one post. It helps that they’re all basically carbon copies of one another.

“It’s terribly simple. The good-guys are stalwart and true. The bad-guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats and we always defeat them and save the day. Nobody ever dies… and everybody lives happily ever after.”

• Fantasy Lover – Sherilyn Kenyon

This is my second time reading the novel and I have to say it was much cuter the second time around. I can’t say that I picked up on anything new. Since this book is really a prelude to the entire Dark Hunter series there isn’t a whole lot of mythology that needs remembering. The main character, Julian, shows up here and there in the later books, but overall I feel like this was just a stepping stone to help the reader accept the kind of universe where the Greek gods are alive and well and… sometimes living with us. A light, quick read I’d recommend to anyone who has a fascination with Greek mythology and vampires (I mean, I can’t be the only one.)

• Dead After Dark – Sherilyn Kenyon, JR Ward, et all.

There’s a short story in this anthology (whatever) that fits into the Dark Hunter series and to be honest if it were any other characters I wouldn’t have bothered picking it up. As it was the main character is one of my favorites so it had to be done. The story is short and sweet (almost too sweet) but Kenyon does a good job of introducing more shit into the universe that we get to watch play out in the next dozen or so novels over the next excruciating few years.

Ok, so I read the JR Ward story in this book too and it wasn’t that bad. If you can accept the insanity of the plot its pretty uh… hot. So former opinions of Ward’s writing aside, I thought it was fairly decent. My only qualms were with the vampire mythology in the book. It seemed to lack a solid grounding point and not much was ever really explained. Its hard to buy into a story like this when Ward has an entire series (and guidebook!) out about another mythology of vampires. Its unclear why she didn’t just use her existing myths, but I suppose as a one shot story thats as good as it gets.

There were two other short stories in the book, but they weren’t that memorable. I didn’t finish the third because it was paranormal/fantasy/vampires/ghosts (!)/historical romance and there’s only so much sub-genre a girl can take! And the fourth one seemed to be part of a larger series like Kenyon’s so I didn’t want to get involved mid-way.

• Lover Awakened – JR Ward

Gods, I know… I’ve bitched about JR Ward in the past (a lot) so its a huge shocker that this book made the list. But I will point out that it is book three in her series. It was obvious to me that she developed a lot as a writer between the first book and this one. Or maybe the characters were more well thought out and acceptable to my overly critical mind (everyone loves the flawed under-dog.) Or perhaps it was my love for Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series that helped me understand the one consistent fact about romance novels – nothing makes sense in our universes’ context and everyone ends up happy. The end.