Hello everyone!
Like I said in one of my other posts, I will grab books off BookSirens quite often, but sometimes with the longer reading periods, it takes me a little before I manage to power through the lot of them.
Some are faster reads than others.
And some take me some time.
Tonight's choice has definitely been sitting there and tapping its foot impatiently for me to start browsing through the pages, and this week I FINALLY sat down so that I did just that. It only took me two days in the end, and that only because I really needed to take a break in between, or else I would have finished in one go I think.
But I mean, sometimes you need to stop looking at the words on the page, you know?
And so without further ado, let's jump right into my pick of the week, which is a vampire-inspired book, titled The End of Hatred.
Because this book was inspired by others, I'll be linking some down below that have a similar theme and which I've also read and reviewed, though I will point out this is the first in a series and so I don't have any of the others - but I HAVE read others by the same author, so that kinda counts?
Rebecca Hefner landed on my radar with her Prevent the Past series, and I will admit I thoroughly enjoyed that trilogy so I wanted to be able to look at her other works, which was how I ended up grabbing the first in her Etherya's Earth collection.
And yes, The End of Hatred is indeed very much the first book in a series.
The author explains right off the bat that this book (and all others) have been heavily influenced and inspired by J.R. Ward and her Black Dagger Brotherhood storylines, among others, so if you've read any of those (which I have) you'll definitely be able to see parallels and understand what's going on a whole lot faster than if you were someone new without any knowledge of either world coming into this, I think.
See, Etherya is a goddess, and she was given a slice of galaxy to work in, which was where she created the Slayera, a perfect, peaceful species, but the Universe was like, that's too perfect and it needs imbalance, so she ended up creating Vampyres as their counterparts, and their protectors, who could only survive by drinking Slayera blood.
Add Daemons (bottom of the food chain type of race who nobody really cares much about) and humans who don't even know this parallel world exists on their planet (literally no one cares AT ALL, even less than about Daemons), and you have your setting.
Then add in that the Slayera and Vampyres are all immortal, the species can't procreate between each other, and all was well until the moment the Slayera king went and killed the Vampyre ruling couple, igniting a war that's lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years since, and you have a story.
When we clock into it, we're basically EONS removed from the start, but we have Miranda, the Slayer princess (not Slayera anymore, they kinda try and kill vampyres now), and Sathan, the Vampyre king, who end up working together when she gets her hands on the king's sister Arderin. The plan is to go free the Blade of Pestilence from the rock its been frozen in since Miranda's grandfather (murderer of Sathan's parents, btw) put it there along with a prophecy that only one of his blood and one of Vampyre royal blood can free it.
So they - and Sathan's brother, the greatest general that's ever lived - hustle over there, argue all the way, sparks fly because this is a romance novel, and they do in fact end up freeing the sword. Miranda takes a shot at stabbing Sathan, but that doesn't work, and while they're making their way back his sister escapes the Slayers and makes her way home.
Still, the plan is to proceed so that Miranda, as rightful heir of her grandfather, can kill the Daemon king with the sword they just got, which would free the whole community from Daemon attacks, affirm her position on the throne, and also avenge her mother who was kidnapped by the Daemon overlord and tortured over centuries (pieces of her were sent to Miranda every year until they stopped).
Before this can happen, however, Miranda faces opposition from her father, who believes she's only good for procreation to give birth to a son who will kill the Daemon king - not to mention he doesn't really want to end the war with the Vampyres, something Sathan explains when he tells her he'd written to her father, ruling in her stead, to try and find a way for a peaceful co-existence hundreds of years before.
Her father tries to have her committed to an asylum, and Miranda flees to Sathan with her followers, where eventually they're attacked by her father's army. Miranda and Sathan win the day, but her father commits suicide in the end because he can't live in a world where there's no more war, leaving her as Queen.
The plan then proceeds apace so that Miranda will train with her people and the Vampyres that are stationed at their compound, attacking during a full moon, but while this is happening Kenden, her cousin (and the Slayer equivalent of greatest general) snoops around in the human world to find another of the Daemon king's descendants, which he does.
And she isn't happy about it.
She films a meeting between Miranda, Kenden and Darkrip, the Daemon king's son who's been secretly helping Miranda all along (and orchestrated the whole Vampyre princess falling into her hands thing), and edits the footage to give to Sathan, who then believes Miranda a) doesn't love him and b) has betrayed him.
His brother calls him a royal ass and before he has to obey the order to pull their troops, he warns Miranda so she marches on the Daemon king, where Sathan eventually joins her in battle (after his tech-whiz brother confirms the footage has been edited, which, OBVIOUSLY, ya dummy), and they realize that even though she decapitates the Daemon king a couple of times, his body just fuses itself back together, so she definitely ISN'T the descendant to kill him.
Plus it looks like Darkrip's hatred of the guy is only fueling the other's powers (Palpatine, anyone?), so in the end they all retreat, but the Daemon king has the sword now, and Miranda is on the brink of death after putting herself in between a bullet and Sathan to save him.
At that point it's revealed she was also pregnant, but sadly loses the baby because of her injuries, though this defies everything they know about procreation, and it looks as though because Sathan and Miranda's bloodlines are so pure, they're able to have children, which opens up the future for them both, something they address after she wakes up (she takes a bit of a break in the in-between where she speaks with her departed grandfather, who explains that the Daemon king was the one who gave him the Blade of Pestilence in the first place, telling him to go kill the Vampyre royals so he could get his daughter, Miranda's mom back - naturally this didn't happen, and when he died in some purges afterwards the goddess took him to the stone, they worked the prophecy, and Bob's your uncle).
They marry in a double ceremony right after Miranda's coronation, and they then begin planning for the future with the Daemon's daughter still at large, Darkrip now on the compound with them and apparently eyeing the king's sister ... and peace between the two races again, finally, so maybe someday the Vampyres will be able to walk in the sun again, something they lost after the war began.
But, this is where we leave them, because MAN was there a lot of exposition in this one!
Like I said, if you've read the BDB novels, the parallels are almost uncanny (the Scribe Virgin, Wrath the king, the tech-whiz V though his personality was transplanted into another brother in this series, and some other stuff). I was certainly interested in this mythology however, because it was just fascinating enough, with the Slayera and Vampyres and the like.
The story itself is fairly straightforward (if with a lot of little branches sprouting up along the way, because why not?) and I might have even enjoyed it if Miranda didn't get on my nerves so much. Which is a shame because I enjoyed the women in Prevent the Past!
But, basically, this is her: oh I know my daddy will love me just as soon as I get that sword even though he hasn't really shared anything about ruling with me and thinks I'm a nuisance but I still believe he would have told me about the letters and OMG how dare you knock me out after I've tried to kill you with the sword!!!
Listen, lady. Your daddy didn't give squat about you and hadn't done so since the death of your mother, so you should have clocked into the fact he was never going to give you the throne as soon as you came of age and you didn't ascend. The letters were also something you were never going to know about - why would he tell you? You didn't take part in any ruling decisions!
She was just somehow childish through a lot of the plot and I will admit I only really started liking her three quarters of the way through when the action REALLY got going, but I don't think it was enough for me to continue on with book two.
Sathan and Miranda were alright, but just eh as far as I'm concerned. Also, I really did NOT need to know he has an eight-pack. Really. I was good without that info.
I was also often confused with the setting. For some reason, even though they use some sort of eight-barrel gun to shoot Vampyres, the majority of battles are still fought with swords - but they have tanks and Hummers and whatnot, and they go and duke it out with big, naked blades for some reason I didn't quite understand. I would think they're modern, but they live in castles and don't have central heating even though they have big technology leaps with computers and such, and the society as a whole is incredibly misogynistic, though this last is something I can sort of excuse as being part of the world building, not a reflection of the author's intent.
All in all, this was all kinds of confusing, a little jam-packed, there was A LOT of information to get through, there were a couple of side stories thrown in for good measure, and apparently the whole thing happened because of Miranda's mother, since she was the one who was kidnapped, the reason why her father went and killed the other royals so the war started, the reason Miranda's father lost his marbles, and she was the forced mother to two hybrid Daemon/Slayera kids on top of it all before she was taken out of the equation - and we never even meet the lady!
She's basically this world's equivalent of Helen of Troy, and to be honest she didn't sound all that great to me, but what do I know?
This was an okay read, but I don't think I'll be continuing with the series as none of the other characters really grabbed me - maybe Kenden and Evie, but that's a BIG maybe.
Have a read to make up your own mind about it, but be aware of the exposition and info dumps, and if you're good with that, then you're good to go!
xx
*image not mine
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