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readingunderthewillowtree

Reading Under the Willow Tree

Environmental Science student, book reader, big dreamer, Sailing/Kayak/Surf instructor, Film buff, Adventurer, Girl.

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Lord of the Vampires - Gena Showalter


For this review and more visit my blog


*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*


Lord of the Vampires had a lot of potential and there were some really good aspects of it but generally it just didn’t work for me.

Jane has been having dreams about Nicolai, a vampire, for a long time. In her dreams he is a slave is desperate need of help. Jane dismisses these dreams as pure fantasy but one day finds a mysterious book written by Nicolai on her door step. Intrigued she reads it and finds herself transported to another world to discover that the man from her dreams is real and the only one who can free him is her.

There is a good idea to be found in Lord of the Vampires but it is buried under a lot of stuff I didn’t really like. My first issue with this was the use of information. I hate it when suddenly a character’s past is used to get out of a situation when that past has not already been revealed to the reader. It happened a lot in this book and I didn’t like it. For example, suddenly Jane does not have to learn anything about vampires or worry about vampires because she used to work in a lab that experimented on them. Surely that is information that should have been given earlier on in the novel. Jane worries about Nicolai finding out about this information but towards the end of the book when a character tells him he already knew because they had been having conversations for a while but Jane couldn’t remember. It was a real shame because instead of the author explaining things and weaving the vampire traits into the story Jane just instantly knew it.

There is so much that I felt wasn’t explained properly. I still don’t really know how Jane got to Delfina, how she turned into a vampire, how the bad guy knew about Jane’s past. What didn’t help was that I found it to be completely unbelievable. Jane doesn’t act like a normal human being once in the entire book. She is in this dangerous and bizarre world and all she can do is think about Nicolou. The list of her unbelievable reactions is never ending. For example, a group of ogres attack Nicolai and her, she is grabbed by a couple of them and dragged away from him. She decides not to scream or get his attention because she doesn’t want to distract him from his fight. She decides that she will just fight off these massive ogres who are intent on raping her herself. I simply cannot understand this reaction, did she honestly think she could fight them off?

I quite liked the world Showalter built, it was interesting and magical. Everyone in it was a little sex obsessed for me but I liked it. There is a great storyline here but it is overwhelmed with the romance which was by far the most central aspect of the story. I would have liked to have seen more progression with the actual story line but it left the story in a good place for other books of the series.

I did have issues with the characters as well, you may have already gathered that I was not a fan of Jane. I got the impression that she was supposed to be cool and able to look after herself yet she continually puts herself into situations where she needs rescuing. She acts like she is above those around her, more attractive and smarter. I do appreciate that she has been through a lot but I couldn’t bring myself to like her at all.

I much preferred Nicolai. He was honourable and decent, he acknowledged his mistakes and works on fixing them. I felt like Jane was the more central character and it was much more about her than him so I didn’t get to know him as well as I would have liked.

There were too many issues in this book for me to really like it and I wanted a little more. Each book in this series is being written by different authors so I will definitely check out the next book to see where a new author will take it.

*Upon reflection whilst writing this review I changed my rating from 3 stars to 2 stars. I could not justify a 3 star rating when I had so many issues with this book.*