I wanted to like this, I really did. I bought it because the other two works in the series, Fenton: The Loneliest Vampire and Fire & Ice, had aspects in their descriptions/tagging that appealed to me, and I hate reading series out of order. Taking a chance, I bought all three. Now I wish I hadn't. I can only hope that Aaron's writing improves as the series progresses.

It's hard to know where to start, but I guess I'll start with the characters. I couldn't connect with them at all. They didn't feel like people to me, and they didn't always react in ways that made sense. The only character I could work up any kind of emotion for was Ash, and that emotion was annoyance and dislike. He'd spent his whole life coddled and sheltered, never allowed to leave the palace. He acted spoiled and childish, and yet I was supposed to believe that his people loved him. I couldn't understand why Azrael fell instantly in love with him, and I laughed when Azrael later told him “You're not a child” (p. 33 on my Nook), because I couldn't recall Ash ever demonstrating much maturity. Ash, supposedly 17 years old, tended to come across to me as being maybe 15, which made his attempts to throw himself at Azrael and Azrael's half-hearted attempts to resist a little discomfiting to read.

There was almost zero sense of place. Events happened in various locations, but those locations were rarely, if ever, described. The world-building had similar issues. I got a few details here and there, but none of it came together to form a cohesive picture. The world of the story included humans (who were only spoken of as fearing that which was not human), weres (only briefly mentioned), shifters (only briefly mentioned), druids (only briefly mentioned), vampires, and witches. Vampires needed blood and sometimes their victims' death. They could drink from each other to gain extra strength. They were unconscious during the day, and silver burned them. Witches could do magic. The rules of this magic, if there were any, were never explained. The fae were long-lived, and some of them could do magic. For some reason, fae women always died after giving birth. The only recent exception was Ash's mother, who gave birth to his older brother Skye and then died after giving birth to him.

Most of this was basic, cliched stuff, meaning that the world of Blood & Ash was no more interesting to me than its characters. The one thing that made me go “WTF??” was the bit about fae women. From the sounds of things, the fae had way more to worry about than a bunch of witches who wanted to drive them out of their Realm. Wouldn't their entire female population die out in only a handful of generations?

As far as the writing goes, one of the first things I noticed was that Aaron didn't always communicate the passage of time well. When a bored, antsy Ash rang for a servant, he was able to hear the bell ring in the servants' quarters, but the sound was faint. It should have taken a servant some time, at least a few seconds, to arrive at Ash's room. Instead, there seemed to be no passage of time at all – a servant was just suddenly there, bowing in front of Ash. This wasn't the only time that happened.

The flashbacks to Azrael's past with Tariq were equally jarring and took up more of the page count than I think they should have. I would have preferred it if those flashbacks had been left out, or at least shortened considerably, and Azrael and Ash's present fleshed out more. I was left with the impression that the Tariq flashbacks were a related short story that had been shoehorned into Blood & Ash.

One last thing that really bugged me: the paragraph formatting. There were a few typos, but those were fairly easy to ignore in comparison. Sometimes one paragraph was broken in two, in the middle of a sentence, when it shouldn't have been. More often, however, paragraphs that should have been separate were smooshed together. I'd be reading one character's dialogue, and then, within the same paragraph, another character would start speaking. This happened a lot.

All in all, I was really disappointed in this novella. I'm currently debating whether I should read the rest of the series now, to get it over with as quickly as possible, or read something else. I've been reading a lot of less-than-stellar stuff lately, and I'm a little worried that my desire to read is being killed off, so a reread of an old favorite might be in order.

[EDIT, 12/9/12 - The author contacted me about the paragraph breaking and smooshing issues I mentioned in my review. I sent her some examples and she confirmed that they were indeed formatting issues. I let her know that I purchased my EPUB file from All Romance Ebooks, and she said she'd she'd make sure to get it fixed. She also said she'd do the same for the other works in the series, just in case, since they were all uploaded at the same time. Very nice, and I'll be sure to redownload Fire & Ice once I'm ready to read it.]

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

No doubt there is potential in the story, I will soon explain why, but I cannot not notice that Ash, the main character, is really, really feminine, even being a man. Some of his attitude reminds me a lot those heroine of the 1970s savage romance, medieval ladies who wanted to rebel to their loving, but oppressive, family.

The potential is in Azrael. Ash is the younger son of the King of the Fairies (no pun intended) and where Skye, his older brother and heir, is at the head of the realm army, Ash is relegated inside the castle’s walls. He is the apple of his father’s eyes, and if something will happen to Ash, the king will fade (i.e. die). Skye wants to protect Ash in every way, and so he assigns Azrael, a vampire, as his personal guard. Vampires are dangerous breed, way more dangerous than the fairies or the witches, their enemy. Skye is sure Ash will be safe under Azrael’s surveillance, what he doesn’t is that Azrael is gay, and Ash is a good morsel for the vampire. Truth to Azrael, he does everything in his power to not fallen into temptation, but the fight is very hard (pun intended).

What I liked of Azrael is that, everyone is telling to Skye the vampire is dangerous, that you cannot trust his animal instinct, his blood thirst, and indeed, they are right. More than once Azrael was not able to control himself, arriving not only to kill innocent bystanders, but even beloved ones. Azrael is like a clock-bomb, and sooner or later he will explode.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00589WJFW/?tag=elimyrevandra-20