I have to admit I spent four days straight reading these books. I couldn’t put them down! I have many good things to say, plus a couple of ponderings on sticky spots, but let’s start with what it’s all about, shall we?

This series focuses on an otherworldly battle for dominance that happens to take place in Regency England. There’s crossover between the human realm and the demon realms via hidden portals, and only a select few in the human realm know what’s going on. The demon realms include the dark and soul-less dragon lords as well as the less dark and soul-retaining Fae.

This series does a wonderful job of easing the reader into these realms, starting out in our familiar Regency setting for book one, splitting time between realms in the next two books, and focusing on the demon realms for the last book. So let’s take a brief look at each:

Here we meet a human couple who run into problems because the Fae king has decided the woman is his intended. He wants to take her to his realm, but the process could kill her.

This story felt very ethereal to me. Kind of like watching Pan’s Labyrinth. Dark, a little frightening, but also mesmerizing. The presence of the Fae king is ghostly in this work, he shows up in dreams or imagination, tell-tale touches, etc. We get to sympathize with and worry about our human characters who wonder if they’re going crazy.

Well done and gripping, the minute I finished this one I had to grab the next one.

This book was equally enthralling. The first one made me invested in what would happen to the Fae king, and this one answers that question.

So, the king, realizing he made a mistake in his first choice for a bride still has to figure out who his intended is in order to fulfil a prophecy and avoid the destruction of his realm. He has a run-in with a new gal (the next inhabitant of the house he’d been haunting more or less), and this one sparks genuine emotion.

I loved the interplay between the characters. The king’s lack of understanding of humans makes things humorous and gives him that little boy aspect that melts our nurturing hearts. On the flip side of that, in the scenes when he’s in his element we get the warrior king we’re always swooning for. The heroine also shows strength and bravery, uncovering powers she never knew she had.

There were a couple of things that jolted my reading a little on this one. First, the king’s personality seems to change drastically in a short amount of time in order for us to accept him in the beginning. I’m not sure that there’s much that could have been done to make this any different, he does go from being the villain of the first book to the hero of the second. We do get an explanation in that he didn’t quite realize the damage he was causing because up to that point he couldn’t empathize with the humans he was interacting with. We start out here with the understanding that he’s learned, but is still far from total understanding, which was a little jarring, but I got over it quickly.

My only other complaint had to do with the love scenes. Now, I don’t hide the fact that my taste runs toward the-more-steam-the-better. This book supplies several intimate scenes. The problem is, they don’t vary. Each time there seems to be the same format: kiss, touch here, touch there, couple. If the love scenes are just going to be rinse and repeat, I’d rather there’s only one good one.

From the Fae realm we veer off into that of the dragon lords. We know from the previous books how many there are and which ones are potential main characters. We are actually introduced to the first in book one and meet him again here. We’re back to England and a more traditional setup: girl’s father dies, mystery man takes ownership of her home and becomes her guardian, they fall in love.

Where the other realms come in is that this mystery man is no ordinary Lord, he’s a dragon shifter able to live in the human realm.

This story meshes the realms on more equal terms. Even though most of the action takes place on the human side, there is more portal activity and we see the Fae and dragons entering into our otherwise insignificant backdrop.

The back story of this book also helps set the scene for the next book. Overall, plenty of adventure and increasing tensions abound to set us up for the final battle between good and evil.

The (current) final book is set completely in the demon realms and follows a dragon lord we’ve met before, one who is dark and dangerous but is one of a handful who have managed to maintain a tenuous hold on their souls. This of course makes him redeemable and a perfect candidate for a hero.

Our hero is gifted a human girl, whose life is of course put in danger. This tale follows their mad dash to escape his realm and the true bad guy. Of course the heart-breaker is that if he succeeds in getting her safely back home, he’ll never see her again. He’s already sacrificed everything he held dear, to the point of nearly losing his soul, this possibility just seems too much for us the readers.

At this point, I really applauded the author for her ability to create a series with an ongoing plot that so seamlessly weaves together completely stand-alone elements. I read the books in order, but I found no reason why reading out of order would take anything away from the story. Despite the fact that tensions mount progressively in the overarching plot, it’s kind of akin to the Star Wars series. You can pick it up from any point, read forward or look back and still get the same individual doses of romance, mystery and adventure.

The only slight complaint I had once completing the series was a feeling of minor inconsistency. Now, I know I had two or three points related to this, but as I’m writing this a little removed from finishing the series and didn’t take useful notes, I can only remember one item of irritation. At the end of the final book there’s mention of bringing a human into the demon realms. This was a major part of the fourth book and we see it a bit in books two and three, but books one and two specifically tell us that ordinary humans can’t survive in the other realms. It’s a contradiction I wasn’t able to wrap my head around, honestly.

On a final note, I’m also wondering why the author stopped at four. There was one other dragon lord who played enough of a role that I expected to see his story included in the series. I’m more than a little bummed about that, but will keep the faith that he’s still in the works.

This was an amazing, engaging series that I highly recommend picking up. Whether you’re in to historical or paranormal or both, this series is the best of all worlds and a great addition if you want a little twist to spice things up.

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