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
A Touch of Crimson
by
Sylvia Day
in a Kindle edition on October 4, 2011 and has 260 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Men Out of Uniform, A Hunger So Wild, Entwined with You, afterburn | aftershock
First in the Renegade Angels paranormal romance series set in Southern California. The couple focus is on Adrian Mitchell and Lindsay Gibson.
In 2012, A Touch of Crimson won the Winter Rose for Overall Winner (Published Division) & Paranormal Category Winner, the Judge a Book by its Cover for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Paranormal cover, and was nominated for the OKRWA National Readers Choice Award for Paranormal Romance.
My Take
A good story with lots of complex plots within it. And it’s that which makes me want to read the next installment, A Hunger So Wild. Day’s writing lacks maturity with some of her sentences making me cringe.
I do love the sacrificing she has created between the primary characters, Lindsay and Adrian. A nice, complex twist for which I would have preferred a more drawn-out end. It was too easy at the very last.
The situation Day has created with the lycans…whoa… She’s blown me away with those twists and turns and used very few words doing it! This is what I want to know. Elijah is so torn up and I have to know what happened? Where did he go? Who is pulling the strings? Who took Lindsay? I definitely have my suspicions of Jason and his crowd!
The whole lycan indenture seems pretty unfair. They don’t live forever and here their children’s children’s children are being punished for what their ancestors did.
The battle over Shadoe’s soul confused me. Syre and Adrian seem to have Shadoe’s best interests at heart, but they don’t trust the other…which is reasonable, all things considered.
In some ways, I don’t blame Syre. it doesn’t seem evil to fall in love and one shouldn’t be punished for it. Adrian is certainly caring and supportive even if he is also dictatorial.
No, Day doesn’t handle Lindsay’s outing herself to Adrian’s crew well at all. I suspect Day gave up on trying to segue into it.
Adrian will throw it all away for her, but Lindsay refuses him. Yes, she’s falling in love, but she also understands the greater issue and all the angels and lycans are curious about this woman who so obsesses their captain.
Nope, I am not buying Lindsay choosing with so little information on what is entailed in becoming a vampire. It’s what? An hour into waking up and meeting Syre and Torque. When she knows of the rivalry between Syre and Adrian? Nope, just put me off.
Whose decision was it really to force all the packs to Navajo Lake? And Jason is just using Eli, taunting him. The Jason who hates lycans.
The Story
Adrian has loved and lost and lost his beloved Shadoe lifetime after lifetime. Always she is taken from him, but now… It has been two hundred years and she’s back.
It’s a delightful agony to have her back, yet, he must win her all over again. The injunction against their love? Adrian doesn’t care, she completes him.
His life, though, will be complicated. Unknown forces are plotting. Turning each side against the other. It doesn’t help Adrian or his Sentinels that Lindsay is so fiercely intent on killing her mother’s murderer that her attacks could start a war the world has not seen for eons.
The Characters
Adrian Mitchell, the captain of the Sentinels, is in love with Shadoe, a love that is forbidden. It’s the same crime for which he punished her father. The world, however, sees him as the owner of Mitchell Aeronautics — think Howard Hughes. With Phineas‘ death, Jason moves up as Adrian’s second-in-command. He has NO empathy for lycans. Other Sentinels include Damien, Aaron, Reese, Siobhán, Oliver, Malachai, and Geoffrey.
Helena Bardon is another angel and in love with one of her lycans, Mark. It’s Mark’s point that lycans, vampires, and demons are not mortals which is the only love that is forbidden. So why is it wrong for her. I get Adrian’s argument that he can’t encourage her even as he is falling, although if the rule is only about mortals??
Lindsay Gibson is the reincarnation of Shadoe and, jesus, is she ever trigger-happy. I think she’s related to Princess Adele in Greyfriar. She has accepted a job working for Raguel as the Belladonna’s assistant manager.
Elijah is a lycan suspected of Alpha traits. It’s an unspoken rule that lycans look to the Sentinels for leadership, but the lycans are raging for freedom and Elijah is torn. Assigned to guard Lindsay, they become friends. Other lycans include Micah, Jonas, Rachel, and Rage.
Raguel Gadara heads up Gadara Enterprises and is an earthbound archangel. It seems that being an angel does not preclude wanting to one up another.
Syre is the first Watcher punished for taking a mortal to mate. He became leader of the Vampires. Shadoe is his daughter and Torque is the son remaining to him, one he protects. Torque does run Syre’s spy networks. Nikki is Torque’s wife; she’s also the rabid vampire who tried to kill Adrian. Vashti is second-in-command of the vampires and the woman whom Lindsay believes killed her mother. Viktor is another vampire.
Sentinels are an elite group of the Seraphim and are charged with policing the Watchers. Watchers are angels charged with observing humans. They were forbidden from taking mortals as mates. Should they fall from grace, their wings and souls are stripped from them and they will have to drink blood to survive nor can they have children. They become Vampires, the Fallen. Lycans are a subgroup of the Fallen. If they agreed to serve the Sentinels, they are not turned into vampires and they can shapeshift into wolves. But they are not werewolves. Nephalim are children born of a mortal and a Watcher. They require blood to survive. The archangels police demons.
The Cover and Title
The cover is primarily the blues of a night sky and and the buildings of a city with a kneeling angel in a tan T-shirt and light brown pants, his crimson-tipped wings flaring behind him as they frame the title, one knee to the roof of the building, the other a rest for his forearm.
The title refers to A Touch of Crimson on Adrian’s wings. A reminder of the first blood he spilled. The blood of a fellow angel.
