Hello everyone!
Now that we've mostly gotten over our OHSH*T moments during the Game of Thrones premiere, it's time to do a little bit of a book review yet again. After all, that's what Thursday's are for!
And I'm back with yet another vampire book.
Because, vampires.
I have this binge I occasionally go on where I will read through every book I can reach within a certain genre or maybe even just series, and right now I'm working through J. R. Ward's books yet again, but I found time to catch up on the short story she published right before The Savior hit the shelves.
If it's vampire, it has Black Dagger Brotherhood over the cover, and it features some new characters of this world? Count me in!
Besides, there's never enough of the Warden to go around.
So Prisoner of Night, please be seated, and let's start your interview, shall we?
Now, alright.
This book is slated to fall under the Brotherhood, but the truth is, they only really get name-dropped and make a mini guest appearance off the page right at the end, so it isn't, not really.
Mostly it's just happening WITHIN the world of the Brotherhood, right under the nose of one Wrath, son of Wrath, father of Wrath (it's hilarious to type that, humour me), and I'm sitting here thinking: dude, you need to get off your butt and go see what's going on.
But I digress.
Prisoner of Night is Ahmare and Duran's story.
The basis of the story is this: Duran is deposited with his father's former business partner-now sworn enemy, and stuck into his dungeons for over twenty years. Ahmare's brother deals drugs for this same bad guy extraordinare, and he gets caught stealing from said bad guy, which is how Ahmare ends up trying to rescue him.
Chalen the Conqueror - really now, what name IS that - tells her to go get his beloved, he'll give her the weapon she needs and directions, and then when he has his beloved, she'll get her brother back.
Who, it should be noted, has been beaten by this point. A number of times.
Ahmare's like, FINE, I already decapitated the human dealer who stole along with my brother, let's get this show on the road so I'm not too queasy about it.
She's also on a timetable since her brother's injuries look pretty severe, so she does as she's told and ends up locked down in the dungeons to find her weapon - which turns out to not be a WHAT but a WHO.
Emerging out of the darkness and behind prison bars is a massive male vampire who looks like he might have come straight out of prehistoric times, but Ahmare has no time to wonder, because she needs him, which is how she and Duran end up on the same side.
Well, mostly, seeing as he has a shock collar on him that she has the button to.
But you get what I mean.
Putting him into her car, she drives off into the night and he directs her into thick, dense woods north of Caldwell, New York, where they make their pit stop with a Shadow named Nexi, who seems to be a blast from the past for Duran, but he has his own issues to deal with (like how being in captivity for so long has made him unused to hot water), and Ahmare and Nexi sort of bond through preparing provisions for the other two to go get the beloved.
The beloved being held by Duran's father, mind.
Ahmare figures out this is going to be a little bit of a challenge for him, but they hike on up towards a big ass mountain where Duran finds his old bunker and the two of them will be able to pass the time through the daylight hours in there.
They also talk a little bit, and she explains that her parents were killed by lessers during the raids on the vampire society (in that horrific scene where the aristocrats had locked themselves into their safe room but left the servants all out there at the mercy of the enemy) and how she works at a gym, teaching self-defense classes; he explains he was born and raised in a cult, with the Dhavos, his father, craving and raping his mother repeatedly. Duran wanted to get her out, and actually that's how he met Nexi since she was also in the same cult, and he rescued her as a test, but before he could get his mother out the female passed away, probably from heart failure, and after that Duran was knocked out and delivered to Chalen.
His only mission in life now: to kill his father, which he should have done years ago.
Ahmare feels for him, she really does, but since the moment the two first laid eyes on each other there's also been that bonding attraction in place, and now they're alone with time to kill.
What do you think happens?
Well, mostly it happens alright, until the end when Duran can't climax without the spasming shock of pain from the collar he's wearing.
There's more problems than solutions with this guy, sadly.
But time's a wasting, and the next evening, the pair reemerge, only to confront Chalen's guards who've been tailing them, and Duran ends up brutally killing the lot.
Except for one, whom Ahmare spares and sends on his way since he never did anything to hurt Duran to begin with.
It's finally time to go into the cult compound after destroying the shock collar button, and Duran explains how things are hopefully going to go, but there's really no need for any of it since upon their arrival they find ... bones.
Lots and lots of bones.
It turns out the Dhavos had the entire cult take hemlock which causes vampires to bleed from pretty much everywhere, so they're all dead. Now it's time to move fast get to the Dhavos' chambers, and grab the beloved - who, just as I suspected at the beginning of the story, isn't a person but a thing, as it's a pearl - but of course the story isn't over yet.
The Dhavos grabs Ahmare and stabs her then tries to feed from her, but she fights like a hellcat and Duran bursts into the locked room through the ceiling, then ignores the call to hunt his father down so he can help her find the missing pearl which she dropped in the fight.
THEN it's time to hustle because the Dhavos activated the compound's self-destruct motion, and Duran goes off to grab his mother's bones which he'd found in an off-chamber, telling Ahmare to never forget him. She runs off for the exit in tears, where she might not have made it if not for Nexi who blowtorches the bars over the entrance and helps her escape.
The two women then head over to Chalen; the vampire conqueror is pretty much at death's door at this point but STILL wants to be an asshole and dictate everything, but Ahmare's had it, and she and Nexi rush down further into the lair, with the help of that one guard who Ahmare saved from Duran (side note, all Chalen's guards have their larynxes torn out so they can't speak), and everything comes to a head when DURAN rams a truck into the side of the keep and bursts in on the action.
Alive and well after having decided to fight for his future not his past, he grabs Ahmare's brother and the rest of them, and Ahmare turns the guards against Chalen before the group takes off into the night towards one of Nexi's safe houses.
There, even though Ahmare and Duran pretty much confirm they'd want to be mated, Duran has his own issues to work through and apparently leaves ... but in reality, once the Dhavos pops up because he's a sicko and eyes Ahmare through the glass, Duran gets his revenge AND his happily ever after.
The group forms a family of sorts, with Ahmare's brother and Nexi bonding and the voiceless guard coming along with them, and the two women buy a gym in Caldwell to offer self-defense classes and the likes to the females and others of the race who might want them, under the seal of approval from Wrath, son of Wrath, father of Wrath (LOL) and the Brotherhood (whom Ahmare also told everything about Chalen, natch), and then ...
they can finally have their happily ever after, seeing as Duran also wants to be known as Theo, for his mother's father from now on.
This short story sort of combined from what we already knew about different males (Zsadist and Ruhn) but I still enjoyed it since it was a quick read, over a short period of time, and the one thing I regret is that the Brotherhood couldn't get a crack at Chalen. Wouldn't it be just DELICIOUS for the self-entitled conqueror to be deposited before Wrath and then delivered to Tohr and Xcor?
CHOW TIME!
But all in all, a good, easy read for a rainy afternoon!
xx
*image not mine
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