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meggiemine's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
3.5
“Release me!”
“Surrender to me…”
The brief glimpses we got of Rydstrom in Cade’s book made me really excited to dive into this. In Dark Desires After Dusk, there’s a brief scene from Rydstrom’s POV where he’s captured by the sorceress Sabine. It’s presumed that Sabine intends to use him to become pregnant with his heir. Then later, Cade arrives at Rydstrom’s doorstep to find his normally calm, collected brother is keeping Sabine captive in his house. This was a very intriguing set-up with a combination of the ‘put a baby in me’ and captor/captive tropes. Unfortunately, the execution was slightly disappointing. There’s a mantra Rydstrom uses throughout the book to keep himself in check:
Do nothing irrevocable…
This might as well have been Cole’s mantra while writing the book. Characters would come close to crossing a line, but then pull back. I found myself wanting them to make the “wrong” choice and frustrated when they made the “right” one. To be clear, Rydstrom and Sabine are cruel to each other a lot. I just think Cole could have taken things a little further than she did and still would have been able to redeem the characters for their actions. I’m guessing this is one of those books where my expectations were too different from what actually happened, and I would probably enjoy this a lot more after rereading.
Overall, I still really enjoyed it! The vast majority of the book takes place in another realm, so it has more of an epic fantasy vibe than the other books in the series. It felt different and refreshing.
This is obviously subject to change as I continue with the series, but so far, the Woede demon brothers are my least favorite immortals. My favorites are the Wroth vampire brothers. And the lykaes are somewhere in the middle.
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Endnotes
Series: Immortals After Dark #6 (12 more to go!)
Genre: Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
Setting: Rothkalina, a demon kingdom on another plane; also briefly New Orleans, LA; present-day
Hero: Rydstrom Woede, rage demon, black hair, green eyes, slight English accent
Heroine: Sabine, sorceress, “Queen of Illusions”, half sister to Omort the Deathless, amber/dark brown eyes, red hair
Tropes: virgin heroine, put a baby in me, captor/captive, surprise virgin
Format: February 2009 paperback edition (own), copyright 2009
Length: 455 pages, 123k words
Read Date: January 9, 2022
Heat Index: 3.6 🌡️🌡️🌡️
4 full, explicit sex scenes and 4 partial scenes. Incl. dubious/non-consent, orgasm denial, spanking, power play, bondage.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Blood, Gore, Sexual harassment, Violence, Confinement, and Sexual content
Moderate: Torture
Minor: Incest and Car accident
Sexual content includes: dubious/non-consent, orgasm denial, and BDSM elements such as power play, bondage, and spanking. I didn’t tag ‘kidnapping’ as a CW but there is abduction and captivity between the adult main characters.
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