Annette McCleave

The hero, a soul gatherer who must earn his passenge into heaven, sees a dying girl battleing a demon and immediately intervens. Though he's able to slay the beast, the girl dies but he discoveris in her possess one of Judas's coins. Knwoing he must retrieve the rest of the mythical coins before they fall into Satans hands, he and his fellow gatheres break into the place where they've been kept only to discover they've already been stolen. The heroine, an immortal herself, has already stolen the coins for her own gain and hiding them away, she's captured by the hero who demands she give them to him. The heroine strives to be heartless and devoid of compassion to those around her but her true motivations for wanting to give the coins to satan are honorable in a way. Her decendant is being kept prisonor and possessed by a demon. The girl will die if the heroine doesn't get the coins but in doing so, she dooms the world to chaos. I can't really say whether I actually liked the heroine or not. She was constantly swaying towards being a bad person before then being a decent person. She was certainly complex. On one hand she's willing to sacrifice millions of lives so the person she loves can live, but she's also completely devoted to saving the life of that one person. The hero was the opposite. He's single minded in his pursuit to save the world that he sacrificed the life of his sister. And though he's charming and clever and a jokester most of the time, he has a darkness to him. But his feelings for the heroine compromise his unwavering devotion to save the world. He can feel deep down somewhere under all the bad, the heroine has some decency left in her. But it's a struggle when she's knows how to end the wars and madness going on in the world yet she refuses to do so. And she's never honest with him. From the start to the finish she kept secrets, always withholding something from him and in turn it made the hero doubt his growing love for her. I liked this book but I couldn't feel the love and feelings between the main characters. I almost wished the focus would have been on Emily and Carlos as they had much more chemistry, even though they're only teenagers. The relationship between the main characters had a disconnect, mainly due to the heroine and her secrets. I never got the connection and as such it came off as nothing more than great sex. That being said, I absolutely LOVED the hero. He really did have a silver tongue who could talk his way out of anything but he was also a man of action. Overall, I was content with the story. The action was great, the story was interesting and the writing was smooth. But lacking is a true romance sadly.… (mehr)

Review by Jen

I picked this book up at the library. I found it while scanning the shelves looking for something new to read. The fact that it was paranormal and the first book in a series (Soul Gatherers) were pluses. So I picked it up and started to read.

It look a little while for me to really get where the book was going. It starts out introducing the reader to our hero, Lachlan, by dropping us right into the middle of one of his "assignments" as a Soul Gatherer. However, it's not really explained what he's doing at this point and that left me quite confused. And let me tell you, it's not a good thing to have me confused within the first 10 pages of a 300 page novel. But I stuck with it.

Then we meet Rachel, our love interest, and her daughter Emily, an angst ridden teen. Their strained relationship sends Rachel to Lachlan for advice and support. But, of course, Rachel doesn't know about this paranormal world Lachlan lives in, but it drawn into it anyway.

So, this book reminded me a lot of Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters. You have a "god" (Death vs Artemis) who collects souls of people, which lands them working for the god pretty much unwillingly as a way of redeeming themselves. And then there is the hoard of demons (daimons) who are the nemesis of the "good guys".

After the slow start, I really got into this book and ended up reading the second half non-stop. I enjoyed it, but found it to be lacking if you compare it to the Dark-Hunters. However, it is the first in a series, so a lot of setting up of the world and introducing the major players is necessary and therefore all that extra narrative can be forgiven.

All that said, I will likely hunt down a copy of the sequel, Bound by Darkness, to see where Annette McCleave is going to take this series.… (mehr)