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 - - 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.