Upon a Midnight Clear, Sherrilyn Kenyon

Yay for Christmas!

Really this is a 2-in-1.

Our first story is very Scroogesque.

Aidan is a human actor who has been royally screwed over by everyone he trusted, even his family. Especially his family.

Now said family is out to kill him. To do so, Aiden's brother has called on the god of pain to kill him.

Leta, a dream god, has set out to save him.

The long and short of it is that Leta dies and then comes back as human and they live HEA. We do see Zeus for the first time and my previous assessment is accurate: ass hat.

Our second story is more interesting as far as the series goes. We get to see where all the characters are over the holidays.

There are 2 groups of weres. The Sanctuary gang and the non-sanctuary gang. After Unleash the Night, Wren and his friend weren't exactly welcome at Sanctuary, nor did they really want to be. Except Fang. He and Aimee are still star crossed. Though Aimee's father does indicate that if she chooses Fang, he'll still love and support her.

All the ex-hunters are together, too. Kyrian, Julian, Valerius, Zarek and families. Nick is there, too, looking in the window, but doesn't go in. Stryker can see what he sees and Nick won't do that to his friends.

I feel so bad from him.

The last is Ash's Christmas. He's with Alexion, Danger, and the demons at home. Styxx is there, too. Briefly. If you remember from Night Embrace, Styxx is Ash's human brother. He hated Ash and wants to kill him, but at the end of the book Artemis imprisons him and sentences him to live Ash's life as Ash lived it. To see it from his point of view. To see the things as they were, not clouded by Styxx's hatred. Now Styxx is trying to make amends. And failing. But he is genuinely trying.

Ash then goes to Olympus to be with Kat and Sin. Artemis is there obviously, but that not who he goes to see, of course. (As a side note, I read this one before Devil May Cry and it seriously threw me off. But that's neither here nor there.) Kat is very pregnant and Sin teases Artemis about being a grandmother. She freaks and stomps off.

Worth it!

Upon a Midnight Clear, Sherrilyn Kenyon

Seize the Night, Sherrilyn Kenyon

Yay!! Valerius is back!

OK, you have no idea who that is.

So remember Zarek from Dance with the Devil? This is the brother that I mentioned. I wanted he and Zarek to reconcile.

And Kyrian from Night Pleasures? Well, this is the grandson of the guy who crucified him (No, I don't mean that as a figurative crucifixion. I mean literally.) and who also looks exactly like his grandfather.

Oh, and don't forget Kyrian is married to Amanda now, and her twin is Tabitha, our heroine.

One big happy family, right?!

Maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh!

OK, I'm done.

So, Val's story is one of the easiest to read. He certainly hasn't had an easy time of it, and you feel bad for him, but for some reason it just didn't hit me like the others have.

And he does act like a dick. A big one. It's intentional, a defense mechanism to keep people away, just like Zarek acts crazy, but Val does a seriously good job of being a dick.

He and Kyrian come to a truce, if not a friendship, and Zarek moves to accept his brother - even making him a god like he is. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but we find out in Kiss of the Night that Zarek takes great pleasure in messing with Val using his new god powers. Well, now the sibling rivalry is on equal footing.

So, what happens? Well, everyone dies.

No really.

Dark Gold, Christine Feehan

Book 3 of the Dark series and still interesting for the most part.

Though, I'm starting to worry it might get more repetitive as time goes on. More on that later.

The timeline is getting wonky again, too. Ok, so Mikhal bragged to Raven he had a computer that took up his whole desk in Dark Prince. So....what, 1960s? Then book 2 is 20/25 years later, so late 1980s-ish? Only now, Raven's daughter is all grown up, so it's like another 20 years later! So now we could be getting into the future, especially if we keep jumping forward. I hope we don't. If we stop, we should be ok.

Anyway, we meet Aidan and Alexandra here. Aidan lives in San Francisco and acts as the vampire hunter for the West coast on Mikhal's behalf. (I should clarify here, when I've talked about the hunters in the past, like the ones who hurt Jacques in Dark Desire, I'm talking about psycho humans).

He finds a vampire and kills him. Unfortunately, the vampire has turned a woman and now she's a deranged vampiress (yup, they use the feminine of the word) and she has a kid captive.

But wait!! She hasn't turned yet. The vampire only exchanged blood twice. And the kid? Her brother. The vamp was using him as leverage to make her comply.

Aidan only realizes this when he's about to kill her. He also realizes she's his lifemate. Of course, he's already taken too much of her blood, so he has to change her, hoping she doesn't have too much of the vamp in her.

And this is where I worry about repetition.