Author: Nancy Kilpatrick
Release date: 2018
Contains spoilers
The Blurb: A conference between two species ends in disaster when Sapiens Queen Blanka and the Vampir King Thanatos are treacherously seized and imprisoned in a dungeon. War erupts as their jailers—an ancient vampir and a traitorous Sapiens usurper—each plot to reign over all of their own species. Desperate to end the conflict, the two prisoners escape. En route to his stronghold, Thanatos disappears. His vampir allies want to find him, but attack is imminent, making defense the priority. Blanka knows the odds are against her surviving an all-powerful, ancient being whose goal is destruction yet she is determined to rescue Thanatos. The question that tortures her is: does he still exist?
The review: The third in the Thrones of Blood series, I had previously reviewed volumes One and Two for Vamped (and due to publication delays with this review, you can find reviews of volumes Four and Five also) and I have a confession that, as I went into this book, I was of the misconception that it was a trilogy and as I came towards the end of the volume I became worried as threads seemed to be left open and the big reveal I had hoped for hadn’t occurred. The series is not a trilogy and those threads and secrets will wait for another volume.
Unlike the previous volume, Sacrifice of the Hybrid Princess, which jumped forward in time considerably from the timeframe of book 1, this takes place immediately after volume 2 but whilst the characters we have grown to know over the two volumes are still in this volume the focus shifts to two characters briefly met at the end of book 2 – namely a vampir King named Thanatos and a sapiens queen called Blanka, who are imprisoned together during a coup of their respective kingdoms. Like the other volumes, the plot revolves around the relationship of the primary protagonists – though this relationship is born of an immediate mutual attraction rather than a gradual dawning of attraction and thus has none of the dominance and submission erotic aspects of the first two volumes (in the main) and, indeed, the sexual element is dialled down considerably, though it hasn’t been expunged.
The author lends the characters unique voices that separates them from previous protagonists, though through all the volumes she instils the primary female protagonists (bar Belladonna, a vampir matriarch) with a level of naivety – in this case, with Blanka having been a queen, this sat a tad uneasily but not so much that the story is harmed. I have mused about the timeframe and this volume gives us hints that this is some form of distant future. I have also been desperate to discover the truth behind the ghosts that reside in the mountain cave systems – invisible to sapiens, the vampir can hear their overwhelming voices and cannot enter the tunnels for long without the worry of being driven insane. We do get a little more of the mystery presented to us but not the answer yet – they are one of the most intriguing things about the series.
The prose is sprightly and I devoured the volume in short order and, I would say, this is the strongest of the three volumes thus far. 8.5 out of 10.
This review was written for Vamped and has been posted here with permission.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
The Blurb: A conference between two species ends in disaster when Sapiens Queen Blanka and the Vampir King Thanatos are treacherously seized and imprisoned in a dungeon. War erupts as their jailers—an ancient vampir and a traitorous Sapiens usurper—each plot to reign over all of their own species. Desperate to end the conflict, the two prisoners escape. En route to his stronghold, Thanatos disappears. His vampir allies want to find him, but attack is imminent, making defense the priority. Blanka knows the odds are against her surviving an all-powerful, ancient being whose goal is destruction yet she is determined to rescue Thanatos. The question that tortures her is: does he still exist?
The review: The third in the Thrones of Blood series, I had previously reviewed volumes One and Two for Vamped (and due to publication delays with this review, you can find reviews of volumes Four and Five also) and I have a confession that, as I went into this book, I was of the misconception that it was a trilogy and as I came towards the end of the volume I became worried as threads seemed to be left open and the big reveal I had hoped for hadn’t occurred. The series is not a trilogy and those threads and secrets will wait for another volume.
Unlike the previous volume, Sacrifice of the Hybrid Princess, which jumped forward in time considerably from the timeframe of book 1, this takes place immediately after volume 2 but whilst the characters we have grown to know over the two volumes are still in this volume the focus shifts to two characters briefly met at the end of book 2 – namely a vampir King named Thanatos and a sapiens queen called Blanka, who are imprisoned together during a coup of their respective kingdoms. Like the other volumes, the plot revolves around the relationship of the primary protagonists – though this relationship is born of an immediate mutual attraction rather than a gradual dawning of attraction and thus has none of the dominance and submission erotic aspects of the first two volumes (in the main) and, indeed, the sexual element is dialled down considerably, though it hasn’t been expunged.
The author lends the characters unique voices that separates them from previous protagonists, though through all the volumes she instils the primary female protagonists (bar Belladonna, a vampir matriarch) with a level of naivety – in this case, with Blanka having been a queen, this sat a tad uneasily but not so much that the story is harmed. I have mused about the timeframe and this volume gives us hints that this is some form of distant future. I have also been desperate to discover the truth behind the ghosts that reside in the mountain cave systems – invisible to sapiens, the vampir can hear their overwhelming voices and cannot enter the tunnels for long without the worry of being driven insane. We do get a little more of the mystery presented to us but not the answer yet – they are one of the most intriguing things about the series.
The prose is sprightly and I devoured the volume in short order and, I would say, this is the strongest of the three volumes thus far. 8.5 out of 10.
This review was written for Vamped and has been posted here with permission.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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