I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the library
No Rest for the Wicked
by
Kresley Cole
paranormal romance in Paperback edition that was published by Pocket Star on October 31, 2006 and has 356 pages.
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Other books by this author which I have reviewed include If You Dare, The Captain of All Pleasures, A Hunger Like No Other, Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night, Dark Needs at Night's Edge, The Professional
Second in the Immortals After Dark paranormal-romance series (if one is keeping to the method of counting short stories as x.5; if not, it’s third!) based on a group of Valkyries living just outside New Orleans. The couple focus is on Sebastian Wroth, a vampire, and Kaderin the Coldhearted, a Valkyrie obsessed with killing vampires.
My Take
Okay, it’s still pretty fantastical…even for a paranormal story, and it’s still full of adventure, action, and romance. Albeit the hero is a bit shaky on the whole sex thing. Seems he was always too awkward around women when he was alive. Undead, he simply never felt. So this story has a hot and sexy vampire who hasn’t done a whole lot of the bedroom activities most take for granted and it’s rather fun to read his reactions.
What a lousy time for Kaderin to get her emotions back. Fellow competitors in the Hie have reasons as strong as Kaderin’s to win the grand prize and she needs to be strong to achieve her goal. The whole romance-flight thing is pretty sweet really. And what a stupid time for Sebastian to be grabbing at Kaderin when she’s on a tight cable stretched across the fires where she’s fated to die. WTF is he thinking? He keeps poking at her and taking her attention off what she’s doing. How does Sebastian know he’s not the reason she’s fated to die??
The Story
Kaderin the Coldhearted was blessed hundreds of years ago to feel no emotions whatsoever after she lost both her sisters in battle. It was so much easier to cope, y’see. Then she arrives at Castle Gornyi [present day] in Russia to take out yet another vampire. One who presents his neck and practically begs her to kill him. Taken off guard, Kaderin steps back, confused. And she never stops stepping back in confusion as Sebastian Wroth, a vampire dead to all emotion since he was turned, begins to return to life, realizing that she is his mate.
A vampire whom Kaderin can never accept. She has fought the leeches her entire life, triply so after a vampire she spared on a battlefield turned around and killed her sisters all the while laughing at her gullibility. Unfortunately, for Kaderin, Fate has also stepped in against her for she too begins to feel again. After centuries of nothingness, all this emotion is bewildering and she retreats, quickly.
To no avail, as the formidable Sebastian was not just a great general and strategist, he was also an intellectual. One who now bends his mind to achieving what others have also considered impossible. A talent he uses to trace to Kaderin even as she seeks to elude him with her participation in the Talisman Hie, a scavenger race that members of the Lore participate in every 250 years. A race that Kaderin has won the last five times gaining great prizes for her people. This race’s prize is too valuable to trifle with. She must win it to save her sisters.
The Characters
Besides Kaderin the Coldhearted and Sebastian Wroth, there are Nikolas Wroth (the eldest brother and the one who turned the others) and his new Bride, Myst, another Valkyrie (Playing Easy to Get: “Warlord Wants Forever”, 0.5);
Fellow Valkyries include Regin the Radiant; Emmeline who married Lachlain in A Hunger Like No Other; and Nix, who predicts Kaderin’s death.
The Goddess Riora creates the Talisman Hie—its goals, its prizes, its punishments. Scribe helps her in her endeavors. Kaderin’s fellow competitors include Lucindeya “Cindey”, the siren who was her closest competitor the last time; Bowen MacRieve, best friend and cousin to Lachlain, Emmaline’s Lykae husband; and, Mariketa the Awaited, a witch.
The Cover and Title
The cover is obviously not of Sebastian and Kaderin. The author did make a point of how big Sebastian is at 6-and-a-half feet tall and how tiny Kaderin was at about 5-foot-three. The way the woman is dressed sounds like Kaderin in her very cropped top and black mini with the over-the-knee boots and the guy looks as muscled as Sebastian, but the proportions for the tiny Kaderin are just all wrong. The background for the cover is a drippy looking orangey-red with a huge moon highlighting the couple, whoever they are.
As for the title, well, there certainly is No Rest for the Wicked as they race all out for the Hie.
