Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Shadows of Fate: Shadow Born Book One by Angela Dennis

3 "Is That Jessica Biel on the Cover?" Stars


Back Cover Blurb -
 
Shadow Born, Book 1

Redemption lies beyond the veil between truth and lies.

After witnessing her husband’s brutal murder, Brenna Baudouin lost control of her Shadow Bearer powers and wreaked havoc on her home world. Her penance: one hundred years policing hordes of supernatural misfits that spilled onto the Earthly plane after a cataclysmic war.

She’s on a routine exorcism run when she learns she’s been assigned a new partner. But there’s something about this Shadow Bearer that sparks her suspicions. Particularly when people closest to her start turning up as piles of ash.

Gray Warlow holds tight to the glamour that allows him to get close to the woman on whom he plans to wreak vengeance for betraying his people. Yet as he skillfully manipulates his way past her distrust, he begins to see her not as the heartless monster he was led to believe, but a strong, vulnerable woman.

As they work to put together the pieces of a killer’s macabre puzzle, an attraction deeper than blood and bone flares between them. And they must reveal their deepest secrets to avoid becoming the final targets,

Product Warnings
A thrill ride of supernatural proportions. Contains violent battle scenes, nail-biting suspense, crazy hot sexual tension, and enough twists and turns to make your head spin.
  
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After the death of her husband and being brand a traitor by her father, Brenna is banished from her world and forced to live out her century long penance in another plane. With the guilt and confusion from that fateful night that changed her life forever, always riding on the coat tails of her conscious, Brenna embraces the role of a Hunter, banishing demons back to hell, as her new way of life. When grizzly murders, seemingly impossible demonic activity and an eerily familiar new partner shake up Brenna’s new life, she learns the hard way that no one is who they seem and century long grudges not easily forgotten. 

Sometimes I think that reading a new paranormal romance/fantasy series is like baking a cake. When making a cake there are key ingredients such as flour, eggs and oil that you will see in every recipe, but it’s what else you decide to add or subtract from the mix that can change it from just a simple treat to either a mouthwatering decadent dessert or an inedible, bubbly pile of goo. I found Shadows of Fate: Shadow Born, to be a far cry from being an inedible pile of goo, but it most definitely was not a decadent dessert for me and my taste buds were left unsatisfied. I found this book really hard to get into and I was very unengaged through a majority of it. It did start to pick up the pace about ¾ of the way in and I found my interest growing, but the interest came a little too late for me, but it did save it from becoming a two star read, turning it into a three.

Now, I’ll never claim to be the sharpest knife in the block, but I’m not a mere butter knife either, so I was really bothered that after reading this book, I found myself a little confused. I never really got a clear understanding of the back story or worlds that Ms. Dennis created and wanted me immersed. A part of this could be my lack of engagement in the book, but I did not understand some of the editing choices. On the flip side of that coin, I can say that Ms. Dennis did a good job with her character development. I walked away from this with a very concise image of most the characters that I was introduced to and their emotions.

Overall, this book did not just jump out and grab me, but the ending did do a lot to save it in my estimation and has me intrigued as to where Ms. Dennis is taking this series. It does suffer a little from the “First Book” Syndrome, as all first in a series do, so keep that in mind if you decide to read this one. I think that some veteran paranormal romance/fantasy genre readers might find this a bit lackluster, but it really all depends on personal tastes as well. Some of my favorites in this genre for comparison purposes are Anita Blake (the first part of the series), Kate Daniels, Dark Hunter, Charley Davidson and the Night Huntress series.

Happy Reading, until next time….

I would like to thank NetGalley and Samhain Publishing for the ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review. 

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