The Darkest Passion by Gena Showalter

The Darkest Passion continues Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series about a group of immortal warriors, each of whom holds a demon inside of him or her. If the lord is killed his or her demon would be released into the world. And so, the lords must protect themselves not only because they want to live but to prevent their demons from wreaking havoc in the world. The hunters don't see it that way. They blame the lords for everything bad that is happened and believe killing the lords will fix all the problems of the world.

Every book in this series has at least two main plot lines: (1) the particular lonely lord at the center of the book who will soon be lonely no more and (2) and the ongoing battle between the loads and the hunters. In The Darkest Passion Aeron, the keeper of wrath, is the lucky lord who finds love.

Early in the book Aeron and fellow lord Paris (keeper of promiscuity) are debating the merits of relationships. Paris whose demon forces him to bed a different woman (and the occasional man) every night or lose his strength, longs for a relationship. One woman in particular has caught his eye but that's a story for a different book. Aeron doesn't see the point of relationships. They are immortal after all, and a relationship with a human woman means watching her get older and eventually die as he continues to exist. It also means worrying about someone and given the lifestyle of the lords, namely that they continually find themselves in bloody battles with the hunters, having someone else to worry about holds no appeal for him. No Aeron, is content with his brothers and Legion, the little demon he loves like a daughter. Enter Olivia, the fallen Angel.

Olivia's first job as an angel was to bring joy to people who needed it. Then she got promoted to warrior status and was given the task of killing Aeron. She follows him, or rather stalks him, and simply cannot bring herself to kill the heavily tattooed warrior. So she gives up her wings for the chance to be with Aeron. Unfortunately, Aeron is not at all interested in her and Legion can't stand her. Guess how long that lasts.

These books are always fun. The men are always resistant, the women very insistent and at the end there's a love match. Olivia is naive and pure love. She's eager to dive into Aeron's arms and his bed. Everything is new to her. As an angel her life was perfection. She knew neither the joy nor the agony of longing for something or someone for she had all she needed to be content. Something about Aeron changed that. Aeron doesn't quite know what to make of her. He literally has a demon inside him and has done terrible things, that an angel would want him so ardently makes no sense to him. Complicating everything is Legion. Aeron always thought of her as a little girl but she doesn't think of herself that way. The guy who wanted no attachments suddenly has two women to deal with.

I liked this but admit I didn't fully buy in to Olivia and Aeron's relationship. He's wrath - a demon who revels in punishing people for their sins. She is an angel. I get how all the lords are secretly super lovable despite their demons but I wish there was little more about what attracted Olivia to Aeron in the first place. That would have made the love story come alive for me.

The side characters helped redeem the not entirely satisfying romance plot. William always makes me laugh. I'm not sure if there will be a book about him since technically he is not one of the lords but I would love to get his story. Gideon, keeper of lies, and the wife he can't remember - can't wait to read that story.

Otherworld Secrets by Kelley Armstrong

  Otherworld Secrets is an anthology containing five stories related to the Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series.

Life After Theft stars Hope and Karl. Hope is a tabloid journalist, a half-demon that feeds off of chaos, and the daughter of Lucifer. Karl is a werewolf and a master jewel thief. (I can't help but think of the 1955 film To Catch a Thief when I think of Karl.) A thief in a building full of valuable artifacts; a chaos craving half-demon surrounded by objects with dark pasts - what could go wrong?

Forbidden focuses on the werewolves, specifically on how Morgan came to join the pack. It was also published as a stand alone novella, which I reviewed previously.

Eve and Kristof are two minor characters who have since died and moved on to the afterlife. In almost no one's idea of heaven, people still have to work. Kristof  does legal work as he did in life. Eve works part-time as an avenging angel for the Fates, or something like that. I've forgotten the precise details of her arrangement with the Fates. Angelic revolves around one of Eve's missions. Eve is a fun character. She has always been the bad good girl. In life she was a witch who embraced dark magic and sorcery. (In the Otherworld series, witches who are always women and sorcerers who are always men have been engaged in a long standing feud over whose magic is better.) In the afterlife Eve is the angel who doesn't always play by the rules.

I actually read The Ungrateful Dead, which focuses on Jaime, a while ago and don't remember all the details. (I'm reading the Otherworld series in chronological order which means skipping around in the anthologies.) In any case, I love any story involving Jaime and Jeremy. I wish there were more of them.

Zen and the Art of Vampirism focuses on Zoe, a minor character in the series. It was a quick, funny read about a couple of vampires who make the mistake of trying to take over Zoe's territory.

Counterfeit Magic stars Paige and Lucas, along with Page's ward Savannah (although she is an adult now so I'm not sure if she would still be considered ward), and friend Adam. Of all the Otherworld couples Paige and Lucas are the most ordinary. He's a lawyer and she, if memory serves, did something like build websites and otherwise help people with computing issues. Paige is also a witch, as is Savannah, and Lucas is a sorcerer. Adam is a half-demon. Several books, novellas, and short stories in to the series, and Paige and Lucas have now been married for eight years and they're struggling a bit under the strain of all their ventures and commitments: their investigative business, their work with the Cortez family cabal, and their work interracial council (for dealing with issues among the various supernatural races), plus the added work of being married and staying married. I liked this story. It started out about one thing and ended up somewhere else.

I love this series and am almost done with it. It will be sad when I reach the end. Luckily, Kelley Armstrong has several other series waiting for me to read.

Forbidden by Kelley Armstrong

  Forbidden is a novella in Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld Series. Chronologically the story takes place sometime after Elena and Clay's trip to Alaska as told in Frostbitten.

During their time in Alaska Elena and Clay met a werewolf named Morgan who was experimenting with living full time as wolf and running with a real pack of wolves. Now that I think about it, he sort of reminds me of Elena in the first book of the series when she was trying to live her life exclusively as a human. She wasn't ready to accept her new life as a werewolf or give up her "normal" human life and resisted the change into her werewolf form as much as she could. Morgan does the exact opposite but both were trying to suppress a part of their identity.

Morgan's family seems to have felt the way Elena used to feel about being a werewolf - that it was a curse. Morgan went along with that for a time but then rejected it and decided to embrace his wolf side wholeheartedly. He liked being a wolf but found he missed intelligent communication involving words. Morgan had heard of the North American pack, currently headed by Jeremy Danvers, but worried about joining it. There are benefits and drawbacks of being part of a pack and having to follow a leader. (Interestingly, this is a subject currently being addressed in season two of Bitten, the television adaption of Armstrong's series.)

After meeting Elena and Clay, Morgan begins to flirt with the idea of joining the North American werewolf pack. Morgan is on his way to visit Stonehaven, the Danvers compound, when Forbidden begins. Morgan stops at a diner in a small town for some meatloaf and pie and later wakes up naked in the snow. He swears he wasn't drinking. One of the primary objectives of Elena as Jeremy's second-in-command, and really all werewolves, is to keep the fact that they exist a secret from humans. A werewolf in jail for too long would ruin that since a werewolf must change periodically. Elena and Clay travel to the small town to get Morgan out of jail and remind him of the danger of exposing his wolf to humans. It was supposed to be a quick trip: bail Morgan out of jail, enjoy some adult time alone away from their five-year-old twins, and then return home. But after bailing Morgan out of jail Elena, Clay, and Morgan find that their tires have been slashed. Later they're stumbling through the woods and come across a dead body, tribal looking marks on a tree, and a cave with old bones, some animal and some human. Is there a man-eating werewolf on the loose or is a human behind it all? Elena can't leave without making sure a werewolf isn't responsible, and of course Clay won't leave Elena.

This was a quick, fun read. There was a little bit of a mystery. Mostly it serves to further introduce Morgan to the pack and to show how Elena is preparing for her eventual and inevitable ascent to pack leader. There are three more books in the original series (not including the anthologies, novellas or comic book) and I suspect Elena will become pack leader in the next book. If your a fan of the Women of the Otherworld series definitely read this. If you're new to the series, start at the beginning. It helps to already be familiar with the characters before encountering this one.