eBook The Darkest Kiss (Lords of the Underworld) ePub

Marg

Reading Angels of the Dark series and seeing GS new writing style I feared for Kane's story and rest of the LOTU stories yet to be told. I hoped maybe she would keep her new style with that series and the Lords as they were, hot, steamy and just plain yummy to read. I was wrong. Her new PG-13 writing has continued. This book is not anything close to what we are use to reading the LOTU. The players all make an appearance and Kane gets his HEA however it is told different than the past reads. The story is good and GS can still write a good book but it is not the same. If you like her style before you will be disappointed with this book. The sex scenes are glossed over and few between. I just wanted to get it over with. I'm not sure how I feel about Cameo, Torin or poor William. He was the the one I really looked forward to but now I just feel like why bother. It's not the same anymore. Just sad....

Weetont

Never have I ever regretted buying a Gena Showalter book, but the time has finally come to admit that the LOTU series are no longer the same. This book was so hard to get through, to the point that I'm having book withdrawal from this.

The last we heard, Kane was being tortured in the Underworld. The book begins with Josephina and Kane in a hotel room after Josephina had saved him. We only hear a recital of how Josephina saved him, when it would've been much more exciting to actually witness the event, but Josephina can suck out other people's powers into herself for a temporary period of time, so she stole the power of a Phoenix that was with her in hell and rescued Kane.

I really liked Kane in the previous book. He was somewhat of a comic relief with his demon of Disaster causing small havocs everywhere he went. He was a really easygoing guy before, and those mishaps were funny and cute, but he changed in this book after his torture. I'm sure Gena meant him to be dark and brooding and intense, and yes, tortured, but instead of feeling bad for him, I was pretty ambivalent about it. What happened to him in hell was awful, but I couldn't really relate to this new Kane. I didn't care about how he ended up one way or another. The little accidents Disaster caused became an annoyance as well. The floor cracking and lamps falling became so repetitive and really made me lose respect for the demon. He's the demon of Disaster, damn it! He can do more than just cracking the freaking floor beneath Kane's feet!

Josephina, our heroine, was a contradictory character. Gena probably meant for her to be strong and badass like most of her heroines, but Josephina didn't get to that point until really late in the story. She's the bastard daughter of the Fae king, so she's not really Fae royalty. Instead, she's a blood slave, someone who takes punishment for the wrongdoings of Fae royalty. She has pretty great powers, like taking someone else's ability through touch. Instead of using those powers to free herself, at first she wants Kane to kill her. Her way to fight back is to kill herself!! What?? I lost respect for her immediately. Then later Kane mentions how she's strong because she hadn't broken under the punishments she received and admires her. I don't get it! This girl should've stood up to her family a long time ago or at least run away earlier!

Kane and Josephina's romance was one of those insta-lust or insta-connection ones seen often in PNR. Mostly I have no problems with that, but in this case I felt no connection between the two! There was no chemistry between the two. I wasn't invested in their relationship. There were several "obstacles" in Kane and Josephina's relationship, but I didn't care. I knew they were going to have a HEA, so I could care less about how they got there. Usually, the romance is the best part, but here, it was just really vapid and slow. It didn't make my heart pound, didn't make me sigh dreamily. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Part of the boringness also comes from the setting. I just didn't understand why they had to stay in the Fae realm. Why Kane didn't just kidnap Josephina and screw the Fae! Oh, he was worried about a war between the Lords and the Fae! How's that believable when we know the Lords are the strongests warriors? Now that they've also got harpies and angels on their side, you want me to believe Kane's worried about a little war? That's so not realistic! The Lords before Kane would've happily kidnapped their woman first and dealt with the consequences later! Wouldn't that also have made the story more exciting and the stakes higher, if Kane was wooing Josephina while fighting in a war?

Now let's talk about the Fae race and the Fae realm. I don't understand why Gena feels the need to introduce a new race if she wasn't going to go through the trouble of developing the race into a three dimensional believable culture. I think the Fae is suppose to be an entire country, but we see nothing but the royal court that is royally screwed up! So the royalty, whenever they do something wrong, don't get punished. Instead, they all have a blood slave that receives the punishment in their stead, and Josephina is such a blood slave. And you want me to believe that out of all the Fae, no one felt for Josephina? And Josephina is the only blood slave? Shouldn't there have been more? Apparently Fae are really strong too, that's why Kane was worried about a war, but I didn't see any strength. Only the men can fight and the women are just decorations. It's like Gena took a medieval court out of Europe and just called them Fae without really thinking through anything.

Then there's just something with the writing that rubbed me the wrong way. For example, the sentence below:
Impact should have stung, but she felt no pain.
I'm in no way a grammar expert, but where is the "The" in that sentence! Shouldn't it be "The impact"?. Or it would be something like "Body hit the floor" instead of "HER body hit the floor". She'll drop little things like that in a sentence and that drove me nuts and it happened all over the book!

Also, is it me, or did the book have really sexist moments? Maybe I was just stupid and didn't notice it before, but did the men always address the women as "females?" I noticed it in Zacharel's book, but I feel like the Lords didn't really do that before, but in this book, it's always "Don't you dare leave, female", or "Answer me, female" or "What's your name, female?". To me that word just sound extremely sexist. And it's not only the use of the word too. It's also in the way the Lords treated their women. I understand their overprotective nature, but in one instance the Lords discussed strategy and made several big decisions without the women present. It's like they no longer value their women's opinion or ability to protect themselves, which is weird considering some of them married women who are equally as strong as them.

The few redeeming qualities of this book include William (as always), and Cameo and Torin's appearances. I'm not sure whose book is next though, but I think we got a glimpse of both Cameo and Torin's significant other in this one. Sadly, the LOTU books are no longer on my auto-buy list. I will be borrowing the next one from the library. I still recommend this series, at least until now. Even Paris's book was so much better. It all sort of went downhill when she started the Angels of the Dark series. It's like the Black Dagger Brotherhood where the Zsadist's book is still one of my favorite PNR book ever! Just go in knowing that the series will eventually disappoint.

Umge

...Finished this book because I didn't want to miss any major events. I say I finished it, but I really just skimmed it. I enjoy this series, but this is my least favorite installment. I was looking forward to Kane's story. Man, what a let down. All previous Lord books had me laughing out loud. This one bored me to tears. The inconsistencies, such as whether Wlliam is Lucifer's half brother (as revealed in previous novels) or his adopted brother (as stated in this novel), bug me. It also bugged me that she just tossed in a whole new story line referring to the Sent Ones. I finally figured out that it refers to a new series about Zacheral and the partially fallen angels. Unless Torin's story is a big improvement over Kane's story, I won't be reading the other series. I hope Ms. Skowalter finds the rhythm she set out in Strider's story. I'm about to start Torin's novel, but if it limps along as the same place as Kane's story, I'm afraid I won't be reading the rest.