Lord of the Vampires (Royal House of Shadows) (Mills & Boon Nocturne) [Kindle Edition]

I don't seem to be having a good week for reading Gena Showalter this week. I read The Darkest Prison Novella and was...unimpressed, shall we say? Now this effort...

This is book one in a multi-author series called the Royal House of Shadows. With this only being book one, I don't, as yet, know how each book is connected with the others, or whether or not I actually needed to read this one to get background information for the rest of the books in the series. Out of the four authors currently in this series (not all of them released yet) I have previously only read books from Nalini Singh and Gena showalter, but I am looking forward to trying the other two: Jill Monroe and Jessica Andersen.

I actually felt quite confident starting with Gena, who I'd read before. But unfortunately, unlike her Lords of the Underworld series which I really enjoy, and which has been known to make me laugh, cry (Book one! *sob*) and often blush, this one brought out some very, very different emotions in me.

Mostly annoyance.

Okay, so lets just get the things that annoyed me off my chest first, then we can move onto the positives.

1. It was incredibly cheesy. I feel like sometimes Paranormal Romance writers treat their readers like they are as stupid, vapid and insipid as their own heroines. Like I'm being guided around by the elbow and told in a very patronising voice "Okay, here in this room we have the hero of the story. Now I know he is very good looking and has slabs of muscle and smells all nice and manly, etc., but he is very bad and you mustn't like him. No matter how much you already know from a) the fact that you are reading a paranormal romance, and, b) it usually tells you in the blurb on the back cover exactly who the hero and heroine are going to be, I'm still going to be telling you for roughly three quarters of the book that he is out of bounds and you mustn't look at him, or think about him or have any kind of lustful thoughts about him at all, until I say so. Okay?"

How many times must we have this same plot? It's the basis of nearly every paranormal romance out there, and, okay, sometimes, if it's done well and you actually believe the reason they can't be together, and you believe the attraction they have for each other, and can understand why they are struggling to fight it, that's one thing. But so often, as in this case, it's not believable, it doesn't feel genuine, it's just a BLATANTLY OBVIOUS PLOY TO CREATE CONFLICT that you just want to say, "Do you think I'm stupid? Oh, you do? Oh....O-kay then."

This leads me to the next issue.

2. The speed at which they fell in love. So, without spoiling it too much (and it does tell you this in the blurb too) the hero of the book has been sold as a sex slave. Now, maybe being sold as a slave and sexually violated on a regular basis whilst chained, starved and tortured affects different people in different ways. Who am I to judge? But I'm just thinking that maybe, just maybe, that might have some kind of emotional, or maybe even psychological, impact on a person. If only just a little bit. And say, for example, were that person to escape such a...predicament, they might feel inclined to seek out some kind of help, maybe spend some time alone to try and come to terms with it, attend a class.....What I'm pretty sure they would NOT do, is seduce their rescuer and declare undying love for her after about 20 minutes, and then bind themselves to her for the rest of eternity...I'm just sayin'

Issue three.

3. Heroes that can't string a single sentence together, other than maybe "Og smash", and who say "Mine" more times than the seagulls from Finding Nemo, are not sexy. They just aren't.

The delightful chap also likes to reminisce about the threesomes and foursomes he used to enjoy (prior to being a sex slave, naturally). Not that he has any interest in such things now that he's met the love of his life (about 5 minutes ago) of course. He's just remembering them because...um...because...

"Og smash!"

And finally.

4. The female character. She was just an empty vacuum of space from what I could ascertain. She served absolutely no purpose other than to provide the eyes through which we could ogle Nicolai's physique.

So onto what I did like... Um, the title font's quite pretty don't you think?

When I first heard about this series I got very excited, 3 of my favourite authors and one new to me author each writing one book in a quadrilogy.

Royal House of Shadows series begins with Nicolai, the eldest son of the King & Queen of Elden who, as they lay dying from an attack by the Blood Sorcerer, used their magic to get their kids to safety and fill them with vengeance.

Due to a series of circumstances Nicolai has spent 20 yrs captive in Delfina as a sex slave with no memory of who he is or where he came from. Slowly his magical abilities return allowing him to connect with Jane, a human from a different realm. Using a book, Nicolai is able to summon Jane to him and disguise her as the missing Princess. Together they escape and we follow their journey to retrieve Nicolai's memories and maintain their freedom.

I did enjoy this story, Nicolai was likeable on the whole. I loved the sexy growling although at times words would have been preferable. I did get a little confused as to his intentions at times especially with all the memory stealing. Jane needed a little more backbone, I like strong females especially when paired with an Alpha male vampire. The sex scenes were hot, Gena does write them well. A little repetition with Jane and her past, I felt it had been dealt with then it was brought up again. It was a good start to the series though and although quite abrupt the ending has set the story up for the next book perfectly. Looking forward to Nalini's end to the series, I think that may be the strongest book of the 4!

This is the first book in a new series called Royal House of Shadows with each book being written by a different author. The series is based in another world where the Kingdom of Elden has been destroyed by the Blood Sorcerer, the Queen and King of Elden scattered their four children (Nicolai, Breena, Dayn and Micah)to safety and filled them with vengeance to avenge their deaths.

This first book Lord of the Vampires by Gena Showalter features Nicolai who as the title suggests is a vampire. Nicolai has become a sex slave in the Kingdom of Delfina first to the Princess Odette and then to her sister the Princess Laila who both are ugly horrible sorceresses both inside and out. Nicolai uses what magic he can access to summon a women from our world to help free him - Jane Parker and uses his magic to disguise her as the Princess Odette to anyone who looks at her apart from him. Jane who has been summoned to his world must try to act like Odette to help free Nicolai and him in turn to then return her to her world however they end up falling for each other and Jane finds she doesn't want to leave him but a curse follows her and threatens to tear them apart.

A brilliantly hot hot hot story and a fantastic start to this new series - I can't wait to read the next three books!

The second book is called Lord of Rage by Jill Monroe (Breena's story), the third book is called Lord of the Wolfyn by Jessica Anderson (Dayn's story) and the fourth book is called Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh (Micah's story).

2. Lord of Rage (Mills & Boon Nocturne)
3. Lord of the Wolfyn (Harlequin Nocturne)
4. Lord of the Abyss (Nocturne)