A disappointing read for me. I found the take on the magical was an interesting but in most other ways it felt like I was reading a BDSM bodice ripper (nothing against these just not what I was expecting / in the mood for). ( )

I listened to this on audio book as background noise while working. I also almost stopped because some of the the accents were difficult for me to get used to. They seriously grated on my nerves in the very beginning. But of course the more I listened I eventually got used to it and it wasn't so bad.

Adrian is a shadowspawn, hellspawn? demonspawn? The word they used already escapes me hah! But anyways think vampire but he's one that fights his nature - he doesn't want to drink blood and when he has to it gets it from a cold icky donated blood bag from The Red Cross. He figures he donates to the institution and he's a man in need of some volunteer blood from time to time. Someone has a guilty conscience much?

So he and his girlfriend Ellen just split and right about that time Adrian's evil twin sister comes to town and abducts her. Very unfortunate for us audio listeners her name is Adrienne. You know I might even have this backwards since I listened instead of reading it - so my spelling could be wrong here are their names. It doesn't matter really because in the audio it sounds almost freaking exactly the same when pronounced...kind of bugged me to no end. If I would have read it instead of listening I bet it wouldn't have bothered me so much.

As we move along Adrian gets pulled back into an organization he had retired from that are out to kill off the evil menace (they don't really do such a great job of it) - and he's off to rescue his kidnapped lady from said evil twin.

A few mild concerns: There was a touch bit of overload on info for me in this one but I think if I would have read it instead of listened to it I would have enjoyed it more. Some of the scenarios seems a wee bit convenient but what is fantasy if not convenient?

The telepathic talking portion with the long pauses between each word in the narration almost ended things for me entirely and I was a touch close to not continuing with the audio. Can you tell yet that I'm a sensitive freaking listener?

All things considered, it looks like it could be a good series so I'm going to continue. Though I'm going to skip book 2 and go straight to book 3 as part of a personal experiment. As I honestly didn't listen with undivided attention to this audio book and it was only given 1/3 of my attention while I went through my normal workday, my review might not be entirely fair. The third book I'm going to actually read in print so we'll see how it holds up to my - trying books later in a series as a 'standalone' experiment. ( )

If it were not against my personal policy to rate books I didn't finish, I'd give this a 1. Just in the first four chapters, which as far as I got, the damsel in distress is raped, humiliated, and defiled in every conceivable, graphically- described manner possible, in a style that I believe is intended to be titillating. hover for spoiler
Maybe I'm just a prude; certainly I didn't give this book a "fair chance."
But honestly?
I'm just rather horrified that someone is able to think like this.
Please, pass the brain bleach.

So - a variant (I'm not sure anything is really new anymore) on vampire/werewolf types. Clearly a setup for lots more, but a standalone.

Some fairly serious kink but without a huge amount of detail. Would be very triggery for abuse survivors, I think.

Ellen breaks up with her lover Adrian but is kidnapped by his evil sister. They are blooddrinkers, telepathic and shapeshifters. He'd hidden this from her. Sister is using her for bait and as a pawn in a larger game, keeping her as a "lucy," part of a stable of "food."

Stirling misses a few notes in some details. e.g. He's missed the memo that younger women are no longer wearing pantyhose, so having the high end designer provide them as part of fitting out Ellen.

Stirling does a workmanlike job with the "big picture" plot and I ended up liking both the "main" characters and seeing some appeal in the truly awful.

But expect a certain amount of eyerolling on the "oooh, she's a submissive and a bit of a masochist" stuff, even though it is done in a way that didn't have me pitching the book at the wall.

( )

Excellent first book I what I hope will be a long series. The evolutionary origin of Vampires/Shadowspawn is the most logical and consistant I have ever read and leads, again very logically, to why they feel and act the way the do, both the "good" vamps and the evil ones. Adrienne the evil sister is more evil than Hannibal Lector, the victims both Renfields and Lucys are reasonable and pitiful, especially Monica.

I like series so it is a bit irrational of me to abject silghtly to how much Stirling has left for the next books, but I do. ( )