Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - A Touch of Darkness

I decided to trust Booktok on this one and picked a copy of this up. I should have known better but I was enamored with the idea of a Hades and Persephone retelling.

I recognize that this was self-published and thus prone to a lot of errors. However, there were consistent formatting and punctuation issues that pulled me out of the narrative. Additionally, there was a lot of poor dialogue that felt like it was pulled off of a 13 year olds twitter account, especially regarding the

sexual assault

Persephone experienced and the issue she brought up with Hades' contracts that was resolved with the Halcyon Project plot line. It all felt one dimensional and childish in execution. The dialogue itself was fairly poor throughout the book but there were some positive lines I enjoyed.

Another issue I had was with Hades and Persephone themselves. Both of them felt very flat. I did not enjoy the initial punch of lusting and desire when they first looked at each other. It felt uncomfortable through Persephone's perspective for her to be tossing around language of being "filled" by him after just meeting his eyes. Persephone herself reflected this idea of her living in the mortal realm for a few years well, and I would give the author points for it if I believed it to be an intentional narrative choice. However, I believe it was nothing more than poor writing and development. The same thing goes for Hades. I saw no charm to his character except when he was playing fetch with the dogs. Everything else about him was boring and disenchanting for a character that literally has the power to Charm people, if he wishes. Also, the author's application of the concept of "power" on Hades as one of the Divine Three just didn't land well. I never feared him, never felt anything towards his displays of magic, and couldn't care less about his deals. I dont even know why he does them in the first place when he literally has the choice to just...not. His motivations are so unclear, which just makes me dislike him more..

I thought the sex scenes were just as dull and dispassionate and strained myself trying to find something that made feel anything in the entire book. Several plot points were mentioned, then dropped, only to suddenly get picked back up again, which was irritating. I think the only characters that appeared more than once that I liked were Hectate, Hermes, and the dogs. I will not be continuing the series.

Content Warnings

More...