Kim P.
It’s light breezy adequately written distraction from the school of romance bodice ripper authors utilizing the modern fantasy genre as a means to escape being pigeonholed in the romance genre and garner some legitimacy as a fantasy author. Unfortunately, this has had the effect of either turning away or making it more difficult to find good fantasy in the midst of all of the cheesy dross; LOTR, The Amber Chronicles, and even the works of Barbera Hambly are classic fantasy, the is difficult to find today. What I appreciate about Hmably is her deft ability to interweave an element of romance into fantasy, while maintaining real character and plot development. This makes her romance elements more truly romantic than merely devolving into soft porn because they arise from genuine connection between the characters. Modernly there are writers like Jim Butcher who maintain some of the dignity of the genre, but I find myself turning more to science fiction for entertaining reading, which transcends what really should be put in the soft porn genre. As for the narrators; the woman is from the standard model nasally, snarky mezzo school of “strong female voice” the guy appears to not know how he found himself here and is making the best of the situation. He isn’t really delivering a “weak” voice, so much as attempting to do a decent job with material that he doesn’t feel any connection to. I listened to it, it was distracting. I believe that the author has the potential to actually write decent fantasy and I wish that she would do so. And Vampires DO NOT SPARKLE.