Review - - Wicked All Night

Wicked All Night

by Jeaniene Frost

A Night Rebel Novel - Book 3

Publisher: Avon Books

Release Date: February 23, 2021

Reviewed by Nancy

 

Wicked All Night wraps up, at least for now, the story of vampire Ian and vampire hybrid Veritas. It ties up all the plot threads nicely, has plenty of action, and threads a passionate, dangerous romance through it all. This book could be read as a standalone, but the conflict and the character development are best understood by starting with Book 1, Shades of Wicked. 

When last we left Ian and Veritas, Ian was deathly ill after escaping from a magical trap. The current story opens with Veritas’s efforts to save him. He’s wasting away before her eyes. She has help from her demon half-brother, Ashael, but their combined efforts aren’t enough. When the golden deity Phanes turns up, he brings an unexpected offer of help, but for a price. Veritas was betrothed to him without her knowledge. He says he’s willing to end the betrothal but wants her to pretend they’re betrothed for a short time to help him save face. Veritas reluctantly agrees and travels to Phanes’s realm with him. 

Nothing there is what she expected, and there are complications she isn’t aware of. In order to free her, Ian takes drastic steps that increase his magical abilities—again at a steep price. Those abilities, however, allow him to enter Phanes’s realm and force a reckoning. 

Phanes has other tricks to play, though. He cons Ian and Veritas into helping him rescue two other deities, Morana and Ruaumoko, from the Netherworld. Ruaumoko has devastating seismic abilities while the Morana can freeze everything in a wide area. They plan to seize what they believe is rightfully theirs, dominion over the planet. 

The quest to stop them takes Ian and Veritas through emotional twists and turns involving the vampire council, the ghouls, other allies, and their own hearts. Old legal issues with the vampire council come to crisis points and resolution. So does Veritas’s understanding of her powers. I’m being vague to avoid spoilers, but it was a pleasure to see Cat, Bones, Mencheres, Spade, Denise, and Vlad join in the struggle. 

Overall, the story moves at a great pace. Both the emotional conflict and the magical plot twist and turn, with the romance sometimes heart-wrenching as these two beings struggle to be together. This is a satisfying resolution to Veritas and Ian’s story. 

Highly recommended. 

~ Nancy

Review - - Wicked Bite

Wicked Bite 

by Jeaniene Frost

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: January 28, 2020

Reviewed by Nancy

    

Warning: This is a sequel to Shades of Wicked and picks up where that book left off. There are spoilers for Shades of Wicked in this review.

Everyone’s favorite vampire rogue, Ian from Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress series, finally took center stage last year. In Shades of Wicked, the first book of the Night Rebel trilogy, he teamed up with a vampire Law Guardian named Veritas to hunt down a demon. Veritas wants the demon, Dagon, dead because he tortured her, repeatedly killing her and watching her resurrect, to gain worshippers and power thousands of years ago. Ian wants him dead because, in a moment of horrible but mistaken grief, he sold Dagon his soul. Veritas and Ian formed a somewhat grudging alliance. As they worked together, however, she realized there was much more to Ian than the horny reprobate he showed to the world. He realized she was vulnerable and insecure under her tough facade. They grew to trust each other and even married.

Unfortunately, their confrontation with Dagon was disastrous. He killed Ian and took his soul. Veritas killed Dagon, then bargained with her father, a demigod, to revive Ian. Her father obliged, but he warned her Ian wouldn’t remember anything. To keep Ian safe, she left him with Cat and Bones from the Night Huntress series and went after Dagon on her own.

That brings us to the beginning of Wicked Bite. When the story opens, Ian has remembered far more than anyone anticipated and is gradually regaining other memories. He knows Veritas is his wife, and he wants her back. She’s avoiding him, however, because she’s still going after Dagon and doesn’t want to risk Ian being killed again.

Ian eventually tires of leaving messages Veritas ignores and sues her employer, the vampire council, for keeping her from him. Forced to appear before the council, she tries to convince them she and Ian are not married. She’s still determined to keep him safe by staying away from him while she hunts Dagon. She also doesn’t think he remembers the closeness they’d built and can’t bear to be with him when their relationship is a shadow of what it was. She repeatedly tries to ditch Ian, only to have him pursue her.

As he tries to win her over and she tries to escape to keep him safe, neither manages to gain the upper hand for long. The twists through this part of the book, with each of them foiling the other’s strategies were a delight to read.

Ian eventually forces Veritas to believe his feelings for her, despite his memory gaps, are as strong as they ever were. The two of them then join forces to hunt Dagon.

Veritas’s insecurities are believably and sympathetically drawn. So is the secret part of her nature she fears to unleash lest it turn her into a monster. It’s doubly dangerous because her other nature is magical, but magic is forbidden to vampires, on pain of death. Throughout the story, Ian works to convince her she can accept and control this part of her. His efforts at that and at building their marriage are loyal and stubborn and loving.

As their emotional bond deepens, they’re also resolutely pursuing Dagon. Veritas learns more about the side of herself she stifles, and Ian develops additional, unusual abilities. Their quest leads to an encounter with an enemy from Veritas’s past. This meeting, while it’s nearly disastrous, forces Veritas to confront her past with new eyes. As Ian points out, it’s hard to cast aside beliefs about yourself that were instilled by someone you loved and trusted. That’s exactly what Veritas had to do, and her emotional struggle is skillfully drawn.

The worldbuilding is, as always beautifully done, with the introduction of new races and an exploration of demon culture. The action scenes include choice details without slowing the pace, and the suspense builds to the end of the book. The fights involve a fair amount of blood, and some of them have gory moments. Readers bothered by that may want to skim those scenes.

The one hitch in the book is the arrival of a ghost who supposedly has been helping Veritas but isn’t mentioned until she appears on page eighty-two. She and Veritas then talk as though they’ve been in touch before. I found this confusing.

Veritas and Ian’s confrontation with Dagon at the end of the book forces her to make a choice that could lead to her execution. It also introduces a new demigod, Phanes. If she survives, he’ll complicate her life immensely.

Wicked Bite is a terrific installment in Ian and Veritas’s story. It’s emotionally gripping and full of dynamic action, with great twists and turns in the relationship.

Highly recommended, 4.5 stars.

~ Nancy

Review - - Shades of Wicked

Shades of Wicked

By Jeaniene Frost

A Night Rebel novel

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: October 30, 2018

Reviewed by Nancy

Shades of Wicked features a character who has been a reader favorite for years in a supporting role. As friend to Cat and Bones, and loyal offspring of Mencheres, Ian has been a charming rogue, sometimes generous, sometimes selfish, but always there when it counts.  Now he steps to the fore in the first book of the new Night Rebel series.

When we last saw Ian, he had pledged his soul to the demon Dagon to save the life of a friend.  The demon knew his friend was in no danger, but Ian didn’t.  The deed was done, and Ian has been trying to escape Dagon’s hold ever since.

Vampire Law Guardian Veritas, an enforcer for the vampire council, has her own reasons for wanting Dagon dead. Figuring Ian would be the perfect bait, luring the demon but wanting him dead to save his own soul, she seeks him out for an alliance.

Although Veritas locates Ian in a brothel, interrupting his orgy, she soon learns his hedonistic rogue persona masks his dangerous nature and clever mind. Unfortunately, Ian remembers her as assisting in the execution of his friends’ daughter. He wants no part of helping her, and Veritas can’t tell him the execution wasn’t real. They quarrel, then fight until she uses an ability she isn’t supposed to have to force him to listen to her. Only Dagon’s death will free Ian and save his soul, so he agrees to work with Veritas. Both of them have abilities they shouldn’t, abilities that tend to become apparent when they fight common enemies or quarrel with each other.

Once Ian and Veritas forge an alliance, they agree to go to clubs frequented by mages, witches, and demon kin in hope someone will tell Dagon Ian is there, drawing the demon into a fight. As Ian and Veritas work together, each begins to see, and empathize with, the other’s emotional vulnerabilities.  The impressions they had of each other were superficial and wrong. A bond begins to form between them, one of loyalty and sympathy at first, and then something deeper.

The verbal sparring between them is beautifully done and woven into their growing mutual attractions. Early in the story, Veritas learns Ian’s sire, Mencheres, is coming for her if Ian dies on this quest.  Reluctant to fight an old friend to the death, she resolves to be sure Ian survives. As they spend time together, however, she grows to want his survival for his own sake.

Both Ian and Veritas carry deep wounds from their earlier lives. Frost depicts these in ways that are wrenching. So is their gradual, initially reluctant progress toward each other. Neither of them wants the intimacy growing between them, especially when an encounter with one of Veritas’s friends forces their relationship to a new level. Various other friends complicate their situation, each time forcing them to face their growing feelings for each other.

The characters are beautifully drawn, the story moves at a good pace, and the characters are impossible not to root for.  Longtime readers of Frost’s series will enjoy seeing the hidden depths, previously only hinted at, of these characters while new readers will find themselves drawn to these complex characters and their layered, multifaceted magical world.

Highly recommended.

Review - - Into the Fire

Into the Fire

By Jeaniene Frost

Publisher: Avon Books

Release Date: February 28, 2017

Reviewed by Nancy Northcott

Into The Fire is the fourth and final novel in Jeaniene Frost’s Night Prince series.  While the book can be read standing alone, the emotional conflicts will have more resonance after reading the earlier books.  This review is written with deliberate avoidance of spoilers for the earlier books.

The series hero is Vlad Tepesch, the vampire who inspired the Dracula legend and really, really hates to have that mentioned.  He has similar abilities to the vampires in Frost’s Night Huntress series, with a bonus.  Vlad can wield fire as a weapon. 

Leila, the series heroine, has paranormal abilities.  She can channel electricity, which isn’t always a plus because she has electrical current building in her system all the time and must release it periodically.  In addition, she can read anyone’s deepest secret at a touch and can pull psychic impressions from objects. 

Leila and Vlad meet in the first book, Once Burned, after vampires kidnap her and force her to use her psychic abilities to locate Vlad by touching objects.  Leila succeeds, but an unexpected mental connection forms between her and Vlad.  He then comes to rescue her.

At the beginning of Into the Fire, enemies of Vlad have realized that Leila is psychically linked to his stepson, Mircea.  Anything that happens to him happens to her, and vice-versa.  When his captors carve a blackmail demand into Mircea’s flesh, identical wounds appear on Leila, a demand for Vlad to do their bidding.

The rest of the book revolves around the hunt for Mircea and his captors.  Mircea is a necromancer.  Finding him requires moving among the magically gifted, people against whom Leila’s and Vlad’s abilities are of little use.  Their guide in this world is Ian, a flirty vampire with magical gifts he keeps secret because magic is forbidden to vampires.

The quest to find Mircea involves a lot of action and firepower, but its emotional heart is Leila and Vlad’s shared fear of losing each other.  Leila also fears what Vlad may have to do to save her, especially when she learns that Mircea’s captors are demanding that Vlad kill someone very close to them both and to Ian.

Horrified by the way Vlad responds to this demand, Ian makes a terrible bargain with a demon named Dagon, who has sought Ian’s soul for a very long time. This costly bargain, however, does nothing to locate Mircea.

The key to finding him and his captors lies in learning the truth about Leila’s heritage, which has been a bit of a mystery through the series.  Why did coming in contact with a power line give her these abilities? What other abilities does she have?  The answers aren’t always pretty.

Nothing comes easily in the Night Prince world, and everything has a cost.  That’s one reason the books are so gripping.  If no one were ever in true danger, the suspense for the reader would be minimal at best.

The book ends by wrapping up some other issues that have persisted through the series.  It closes with Vlad and Leila in a scene that provides a very satisfying farewell to this fictional world.