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gasoline_allie's review against another edition
3.0
It's a vast improvement over the last "Angels of the Dark" installment, but it's still just a so-so addition to a mediocre series. It's choked with one liners and light on plot. My biggest complaint: it feels like there's only one female character in this book. Why? Because while they may have different names and hair colors, they can all be summed up in 3 words: feisty, loud, and shallow. When the 5 members of Elin's "dodge boulder" team are chatting, it sounds more like one character talking to herself.
geo_ix's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars.
I enjoyed this much more than the last one. It felt a little too long in places, but was definitely a much more enjoyable read. Honestly would have preferred if I’d read these in between the LotU series where they go because it just would have flowed better, but definitely still glad I read them either way.
I enjoyed this much more than the last one. It felt a little too long in places, but was definitely a much more enjoyable read. Honestly would have preferred if I’d read these in between the LotU series where they go because it just would have flowed better, but definitely still glad I read them either way.
bookwife's review against another edition
5.0
This is my favorite Gena Showalter book I have ever read. It is one of the best books I have read this year. I loved everything about it. But the greatest thing about this book is Elin. She was absolutely fabulous. One of my all time favorite heroines. She was sarcastic and funny and just a good freaking chick. Thane was actually kind of awesome too. He turned sweet. Which I know doesn't always work for most people but I think it worked really well for this story. We got to see a whole new side to him. He was sweet and funny with his friends.. I mean still in a "I will kill you" kind of way but yeah. I love him.
What I can't figure out is if there is another book in this series? or is there a spin off that I am missing? I haven't read all of the Lords of the Underworld series. But I want to see Thane's friends find happiness! Someone please let me know if they have books out and Im just missing it.
What I can't figure out is if there is another book in this series? or is there a spin off that I am missing? I haven't read all of the Lords of the Underworld series. But I want to see Thane's friends find happiness! Someone please let me know if they have books out and Im just missing it.
dragon_lion64's review against another edition
5.0
Burning Dawn by Gena Showalter
And she’s back! From the saucy leading lady to the steamy sex, Gena Showalter has returned. The last few books that I have read were lacking the sizzle factor that fans have learned to love about Gena’s writing. The leading females were prosaic and virginal while the sex scenes were lax which might have had a lot to do with Gena’s newfound Christianity. She may have been struggling with her beliefs and what she was writing. Maybe writing a detailed hot sex scene of two unmarried characters went against her beliefs but for some reason in Burning Dawn she has returned to her previous way of writing with her humpalicious sex scenes and her hilarious female characters.
Thane is a Sent One who was tortured along with Bjorn and Xerxes by demons. Since then, the three are inseparable. Because of his past, Thane has an insatiable need for violence during sex yet has no problem finding women who want to fulfill his needs which is good since he tires of them easily. He owns an immortal bar called the Downfall where he also lives and finds a lot of his bed mates. One such sex partner, Kendra, seeks revenge on Thane after he kicks her out of his bed and returns her to her Phoenix camp. She has the power to addict anyone to her by using the poison she has in her body and she can also change her appearance so she tricks Thane into sleeping with her by pretending to be different women. She enslaves him and takes him back to her camp where all he can think about is being with Kendra because he is so caught up in the fog of his addiction.
Elin Vale is half human and half Phoenix which is an abomination to the Phoenix race. After the Phoenix killed her father and husband of three months, they took Elin and her mother prisoner where they used her mother for breeding and Elin as a slave. Then her mother died, leaving Elin alone to be abused by the Phoenix.
Elin takes pity on Thane and decides to save him from Kendra’s poison and in return thinks Thane will help her escape the camp. She helps him and Thane does help her escape but because Thane has such a hate for all things Phoenix, she decides not to tell him that she is half Phoenix. He believes she is only human. He helps her out and gives her a job as a barmaid at his bar. He is attracted to her but because of his special brand of sexual appetites, he nixes the thought of having any kind of relationship with her but he can’t stop thinking about her.
Thane and Elin’s relationship heats up. Thane finds that when he is with Elin that he has no need for the violence that has plagued him for so long. Elin loves Thane’s attention but fears what will happen if or when he ever finds out that she is part Phoenix.
Meanwhile, the Sent Ones have been trying to find the demons responsible for killing Germanus, the Sent One’s boss. For some reason hordes of demons seem to be after Thane and now Elin. They are under the command of a demon prince, a powerful evil being intent on taking over the earth and humans who live on it. This prince is gunning for Thane. Now, Thane will have to protect what is his from the prince and the demons.
Side Stories
Bjorn keeps disappearing….literally. He’s there one moment and gone the next. Thane and Xerxes hire Lucien, one of the Lords of the Underworld, to follow his spiritual trail. Lucien discovers that Bjorn is being summoned by the queen of the shadow demons who believes she is married to him. She feeds off of his soul when she takes him. To save him from eventual death, Thane decides to buy the Water of Life from anyone who is willing to sell the almost impossible to get liquid. Since Clerici took over for Germanus, he changed the council’s rule of having to be whipped and give up something you love to get a vial of the Water of Life. There is now a line to get to the River of Life and it would take three years to get to the front of the line so waiting in line is not an option. Anyone who uses force to get to the River or cut in front of the line, loses all rights to the River of Life forever. Somehow, Thane and Xerxes will have to find a better way of saving Bjorn from the Shadow Queen.
Cario is still after Xerxes for some reason. He seems to want to kill her. Thane and Bjorn like to joke around about it.
I am anxiously awaiting the stories of Bjorn and Xerxes but I am also interested in Axel, Jamilla, Malcom, Magnus and now I want to know more about the beserker, Adrian. Maybe he’ll fall in love with one of the female Sent Ones. Yeah?
www.paranormalromanceslut.com
And she’s back! From the saucy leading lady to the steamy sex, Gena Showalter has returned. The last few books that I have read were lacking the sizzle factor that fans have learned to love about Gena’s writing. The leading females were prosaic and virginal while the sex scenes were lax which might have had a lot to do with Gena’s newfound Christianity. She may have been struggling with her beliefs and what she was writing. Maybe writing a detailed hot sex scene of two unmarried characters went against her beliefs but for some reason in Burning Dawn she has returned to her previous way of writing with her humpalicious sex scenes and her hilarious female characters.
Thane is a Sent One who was tortured along with Bjorn and Xerxes by demons. Since then, the three are inseparable. Because of his past, Thane has an insatiable need for violence during sex yet has no problem finding women who want to fulfill his needs which is good since he tires of them easily. He owns an immortal bar called the Downfall where he also lives and finds a lot of his bed mates. One such sex partner, Kendra, seeks revenge on Thane after he kicks her out of his bed and returns her to her Phoenix camp. She has the power to addict anyone to her by using the poison she has in her body and she can also change her appearance so she tricks Thane into sleeping with her by pretending to be different women. She enslaves him and takes him back to her camp where all he can think about is being with Kendra because he is so caught up in the fog of his addiction.
Elin Vale is half human and half Phoenix which is an abomination to the Phoenix race. After the Phoenix killed her father and husband of three months, they took Elin and her mother prisoner where they used her mother for breeding and Elin as a slave. Then her mother died, leaving Elin alone to be abused by the Phoenix.
Elin takes pity on Thane and decides to save him from Kendra’s poison and in return thinks Thane will help her escape the camp. She helps him and Thane does help her escape but because Thane has such a hate for all things Phoenix, she decides not to tell him that she is half Phoenix. He believes she is only human. He helps her out and gives her a job as a barmaid at his bar. He is attracted to her but because of his special brand of sexual appetites, he nixes the thought of having any kind of relationship with her but he can’t stop thinking about her.
Thane and Elin’s relationship heats up. Thane finds that when he is with Elin that he has no need for the violence that has plagued him for so long. Elin loves Thane’s attention but fears what will happen if or when he ever finds out that she is part Phoenix.
Meanwhile, the Sent Ones have been trying to find the demons responsible for killing Germanus, the Sent One’s boss. For some reason hordes of demons seem to be after Thane and now Elin. They are under the command of a demon prince, a powerful evil being intent on taking over the earth and humans who live on it. This prince is gunning for Thane. Now, Thane will have to protect what is his from the prince and the demons.
Side Stories
Bjorn keeps disappearing….literally. He’s there one moment and gone the next. Thane and Xerxes hire Lucien, one of the Lords of the Underworld, to follow his spiritual trail. Lucien discovers that Bjorn is being summoned by the queen of the shadow demons who believes she is married to him. She feeds off of his soul when she takes him. To save him from eventual death, Thane decides to buy the Water of Life from anyone who is willing to sell the almost impossible to get liquid. Since Clerici took over for Germanus, he changed the council’s rule of having to be whipped and give up something you love to get a vial of the Water of Life. There is now a line to get to the River of Life and it would take three years to get to the front of the line so waiting in line is not an option. Anyone who uses force to get to the River or cut in front of the line, loses all rights to the River of Life forever. Somehow, Thane and Xerxes will have to find a better way of saving Bjorn from the Shadow Queen.
Cario is still after Xerxes for some reason. He seems to want to kill her. Thane and Bjorn like to joke around about it.
I am anxiously awaiting the stories of Bjorn and Xerxes but I am also interested in Axel, Jamilla, Malcom, Magnus and now I want to know more about the beserker, Adrian. Maybe he’ll fall in love with one of the female Sent Ones. Yeah?
www.paranormalromanceslut.com
lucy_qhuay's review against another edition
4.0
Another great story from one of my favourite paranormal romance writers, Gena freaking Showalter!
I swear this woman is awesome. Can't wait for her next works, especially Torin's and William's books in the Lords of the Underworld series and Bjorn's and Xerxes's in this one!
That being said, I must admit this book wasn't between my favourites.
In order for me to have a blast while reading a book, I need awesome characters and world-shattering angst. I didn't get that.
The angst wasn't that...angsty, if that makes sense. At least, not to me. Plus, I admit Thane and Elin weren't able to capture my heart and hold it with their story.
Thane is a sexy bastard and Elin is a nice girl, but they just can't reach the pure awesomeness that are Xerxes, Bjorn, Aeron, William, Maleah, Olivia and Gilly, my favourite Showalter characters so far.
Don't get me wrong, Thane is an interesting guy. Like I said, he's very attractive and hot and I would totally do him if I was enthralled by him as Elin was, but he's just not important to me when compared to the guys I mentioned above.
And Elin, she's a sweet woman, really. Too sweet. There were times I thought she felt too much like a little girl, due to the things she said and how she acted.
I mean, Gilly herself is supposed to be only 17, but she feels much older. The things she went through shaped her into the mature young woman she is.
But Elin? She went through awful things as well, but when we're inside her mind, it feels like we're looking into the mind of a 12-year-old or something.
She was frequently thinking things in the line of 'Yes. No. I don't know. Bad, bad, Elin.'
See? It looks exactly like a little girl. Or a dog, which is kind of funny now that I'm thinking about it.
Anyway, it was a great story just the same, the characters just didn't catch my attention as others did.
I'm dying to read Bjorn's book, which I'm guessing it's going to be the next in the series, since he can't go on much longer going through that situation with the demon queen bitch. And Xerxes's. What the heck means he has to remember? Oh boy, and Maleah totally has to be Bjorn's woman, then, since I think that Cario is going to be Xerxes's.
O.M.G! So many possibilities!
----------
Before
THANE's story?
I so want to read about the trio Thane/Bjorn/Xerxes!
What about the heroine? Is she Maleah, the fallen angel?
raven168's review
4.0
I can't even say how happy I was that this book was not like [b:Beauty Awakened|15727731|Beauty Awakened (Angels of the Dark, #2)|Gena Showalter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1350307293s/15727731.jpg|21405631]. If it had been even a fraction as preachy as that one was, I would have probably abandoned this series. Thank you so much for not being so.
Thane has fallen far from who he was as a warrior sent one, but he doesn't remember. He doesn't even know his own name. The only thing he does know is that he exists for nothing but to have sex with Kendra. Thanks to a special poison of a sort that she uses to addict males to her. So he has been bound in the phoenix camp and used at her leisure since he was taken. The problem with not getting into the last book seemed to be the fact that I could not remember for life of me how Thane ended up in Kendra's possession. It wasn't until we got the little summary of it, that it all came back in an 'oh yeah!' moment.
Watching as Thane became a mindless, memoryless, sex slave to Kendra is Elin. When her mother left the clan after falling in love with a human, it was one of the biggest taboos the phoenix have. And about twenty years later, she was found. The phoenix killed not only Elin's father, but also her husband of only three months. Taking her mother to use as a breeder and Elin as a half-breed to torment and use as any saw fit. And after watching her mother die, she truly becomes alone. But she's a dreamer and has big plans for her future. And when she sees an opportunity to escape via Thane, she takes it.
Thanks to Elin, Thane has remembered everything and found his freedom. But he's also consumed with revenge against the phoenix and makes his feelings about them abundantly clear to all. He finds himself inexplicitly drawn to Elin and swears to take care of her. But as much as she is attracted to him as well, he terrifies her. Even more so if he were to find out her half phoenix heritage. But that fear is not the only thing driving her to push him away. She blames herself for her husband's death and refuses to allow herself to have anything that was taken away from him. Including happiness. Thane has no idea what he's doing when he's around her, so his courtship is actually quite sweet. They slowly become closer and he even tries to convince her that her husband would want her to be happy, which she starts to consider. But then her secret comes out and Thane blows up. When he comes to his senses, it's too late and he has to try to win Elin back again. Really, for a guy who is clueless about having a relationship with a woman, I found his actions quite endearing. Yeah, okay, he can be pretty overbearing sometimes too...but that kinda just makes him hotter. Things are starting to look up for them when things come to a head.
The whole time after Thane's escape, he's a busy man. Aside from trying to woo Elin, he's hunting the demons that killed one of the big guys, dealing with the phoenix king after what Thane did to his people, and trying to figure out what the heck is going on with Bjorn. I gotta say, this book was quite a bit more violent than I expected, but it was pretty great. What kind of warrior doesn't hack bad guys apart? The demons thing turned out to be a big deal because as they find out, it was six demon princes responsible for the murder. And the one that has it out for Thane has more power than they expected. And he uses that to change Elin forever in an attempt to bring Thane down.
I obviously liked Thane's character. Mostly so when he changed to be better for Elin. And while I also liked Elin, sometimes her personality or decisions/feelings seemed to change directions with little reason or for odd ones. She easily befriends people though, especially the girls she worked with at Thane's bar. Which reminds me. Why do girls who are centuries old always talk like teenagers?
We got to see Lucien a bunch of times, and even his Anya once in this book. ((Would it be too much to ask to get a little of Ashlyn and Maddox too?)) Lucien helped shed light onto what's been going on with Bjorn, and I almost wonder if his book will be next because he totally needs to figure out a way to divorce the shadow queen that has claimed him...
Thane has fallen far from who he was as a warrior sent one, but he doesn't remember. He doesn't even know his own name. The only thing he does know is that he exists for nothing but to have sex with Kendra. Thanks to a special poison of a sort that she uses to addict males to her. So he has been bound in the phoenix camp and used at her leisure since he was taken. The problem with not getting into the last book seemed to be the fact that I could not remember for life of me how Thane ended up in Kendra's possession. It wasn't until we got the little summary of it, that it all came back in an 'oh yeah!' moment.
Watching as Thane became a mindless, memoryless, sex slave to Kendra is Elin. When her mother left the clan after falling in love with a human, it was one of the biggest taboos the phoenix have. And about twenty years later, she was found. The phoenix killed not only Elin's father, but also her husband of only three months. Taking her mother to use as a breeder and Elin as a half-breed to torment and use as any saw fit. And after watching her mother die, she truly becomes alone. But she's a dreamer and has big plans for her future. And when she sees an opportunity to escape via Thane, she takes it.
Thanks to Elin, Thane has remembered everything and found his freedom. But he's also consumed with revenge against the phoenix and makes his feelings about them abundantly clear to all. He finds himself inexplicitly drawn to Elin and swears to take care of her. But as much as she is attracted to him as well, he terrifies her. Even more so if he were to find out her half phoenix heritage. But that fear is not the only thing driving her to push him away. She blames herself for her husband's death and refuses to allow herself to have anything that was taken away from him. Including happiness. Thane has no idea what he's doing when he's around her, so his courtship is actually quite sweet. They slowly become closer and he even tries to convince her that her husband would want her to be happy, which she starts to consider. But then her secret comes out and Thane blows up. When he comes to his senses, it's too late and he has to try to win Elin back again. Really, for a guy who is clueless about having a relationship with a woman, I found his actions quite endearing. Yeah, okay, he can be pretty overbearing sometimes too...but that kinda just makes him hotter. Things are starting to look up for them when things come to a head.
The whole time after Thane's escape, he's a busy man. Aside from trying to woo Elin, he's hunting the demons that killed one of the big guys, dealing with the phoenix king after what Thane did to his people, and trying to figure out what the heck is going on with Bjorn. I gotta say, this book was quite a bit more violent than I expected, but it was pretty great. What kind of warrior doesn't hack bad guys apart? The demons thing turned out to be a big deal because as they find out, it was six demon princes responsible for the murder. And the one that has it out for Thane has more power than they expected. And he uses that to change Elin forever in an attempt to bring Thane down.
I obviously liked Thane's character. Mostly so when he changed to be better for Elin. And while I also liked Elin, sometimes her personality or decisions/feelings seemed to change directions with little reason or for odd ones. She easily befriends people though, especially the girls she worked with at Thane's bar. Which reminds me. Why do girls who are centuries old always talk like teenagers?
We got to see Lucien a bunch of times, and even his Anya once in this book. ((Would it be too much to ask to get a little of Ashlyn and Maddox too?)) Lucien helped shed light onto what's been going on with Bjorn, and I almost wonder if his book will be next because he totally needs to figure out a way to divorce the shadow queen that has claimed him...
greylandreviews's review against another edition
4.0
Her books are like the song "Black Widow" by Miss.Azalea. But finally, as the lyrics would sayThat will bring you to your knees. Praise Jesus, hallelujah we got a good one folks!!! It took 3 years but, we got a good one! You can see my full review here->Greyland Reviews
jstapleton's review against another edition
4.0
What do you NOT love about Gena Showalter and her freakin ah-maz-zing books?!?!? I love her sense of humor and the characters are great. She is totally my Bonka Donk!!
jbquinn's review against another edition
5.0
This book is my absolute favorite in this series. In fact I loved Thane so much, this may be my favorite book Gena Showalter has written. Burning Dawn is wicked hot & sexy, but at the same time has a fast moving plot that's exciting to read. Thane is such a hot, dominating alpha male & the way he talks to Elin will make you fan yourself. I love that Elin isn't meek & that she doesn't take any crap from anyone, while still having some humor. From the beginning to the end of the book she progresses from this woman who was held captive and lost everything, to someone who's strong, confident, & learns to accept & to love. It was just really beautifully written. As well as the dynamic between Thane & Elin.
We do get some glimpses with some of the Lords of The Underworld characters in here. I liked that we got some Anya. I always found her fun & love her in the LoTU series.
We do get some glimpses with some of the Lords of The Underworld characters in here. I liked that we got some Anya. I always found her fun & love her in the LoTU series.