Demon Forged by Meljean Brook - review

Demon Forged
Meljean Brook
Guardian Series #5 (full-length)
2009

***** (5 out of 6)

cover- The cover is pretty cool.  Tough looking lady with a skimpy outfit, leathers, at a forge.  The hair color is right.  And Irena really does dress like that, and she is plenty tough.

The Guardian Series are about a group of immortal guardians who protect humans from demons, nephilum, nosferatu, and other supernaturals who have tried to prevent free will or harm them.  They cannot save humans from other humans, and if a human has sacrificed his/her life in order to save another, then sometimes that human is given the choice to become a guardian.  Each guardian ends up with a power, all of them are strong and require no food or sleep.  Each book in the series features a guardian, or two and is romance weaved within a story of danger, horror and heroism.  I enjoy them because the romance/erotic to action and story is rational.  Meaning, there's a whole lot of story and action and enough romance to make romance lovers happy, with just enough sex to steam a few pages up, but not enough to overwhelm and take over the novel.  I feel like I'm reading a good action/fantasy novel that just happens to have a little sex in it, not a book about sex with some action (vertical action, not horizontal) thrown in.

Demon Forged is the story of Irena and Alejandro.  Irena is 15 centuries old at least - was taken as a child by the Romans and enslaved.  She is an abrupt, extremely tough and rough woman who would rather spend time in her forge in the tundra than hang out with lots of people.  She works with metals, and can form weapons with the forge or simply with her gift in seconds.  Alejandro used to be a noble during the Inquisition, and is quite the sword fighter.  He has fire powers.  

At one time, Alejandro had Irena as a mentor and they almost hooked up.  Almost.  In the other books, these two would pop up, and they were always rude to each other, or very distant.  Something in the past happened that caused this huge separation and bad, bad feelings.  In this novel, they end up working together and have to learn to deal with each other.  This, of course brings up the past, and they have to decide whether they want to be together and if they can work through...whatever they have to.

A woman has been murdered,  there's a demon elected as a senator, behaving as if he's reformed - but Irena doesn't buy it.  At the same time, a police officer and her partner have been exposed to the truth of vampires and etc, and the  police officer - Taylor - is on the murder case, working with Irena.  The other problems are the take over of vampire Deacon's community of vamps, and he's been taken to San Francisco for protection.  There's also another guardian that's been discovered impaled to a wall, feeding for nosferatu....There's a hell of a lot going on in this novel.  

It's a good story, and all these separate issues and pieces of the plot come together.  I enjoyed it, because like all her other novels, Meljean Brook can really write a complicated plot, with many subplots that all lead to an explosive end.  Good dialogue, the appearances of other couples that have been featured in previous books - they all have enough screen time that they aren't just mentions, they are definitely part of the novel.  The action is good, lots of heart-thumping moments, and the inevitable sexing up between characters along with some relationship stuff.  It all worked for me...the only thing that didn't quite work was the long long long long....centuries long of unrequited love between Irena and Alejandro.  

I can suspend belief along with the best of belief suspending readers, but thinking about these two being separated for 200 years, and then spending another 200 years angry with each other or being enemy/wannabe lovers was almost too much for me - maybe fine for others, and that's okay-with them.  That's the only thing that I didn't really like about the story - but that's okay, because the rest of it was pretty damned good.  How can I or anyone else expect to absolutely LOVE every single book of each series out there?  I can like a lot every book, but of course, there's going to be one or two around that I didn't like as much as the others.  Or to put it in a more positive way, there are bound to be books that I love way more than others in any given series.  

Loved the story on this one, the dialogue, the twists and turns, etc. The romance was okay, with some extra steamy pages - it all added up to a very enjoyable novel.  I liked it enough to want to finish the series.  There's a few books I need to catch up on buying and the final novel of the series comes out in 2013. May 7th, 2013.  I, myself have at least two novels and three short stories to catch up on before Guardian Demon, and I'm looking forward to what's next. 

:)

Micro-Review Blind Spot

Blind Spot is Meljean Brook's contribution to the Must Love HellHounds Anthology. I read this short story a while ago, and forgot to post a review on it.

Meljean Brook writes these wonderful books from a series called the Guardians. They are a cross between urban fantasy and romance. The books are all intense, my favorite of them being the first full-length novel Demon Angel - featuring Lilith and Hugh. Interestingly, the beginnings of this series shows up as a short story in another anthology Hot Spell, with Colin one of the characters. Colin the Vampire, who is one of my favorite characters simply because of his extreme vanity. Ms Brook's latest novel, Demon Blood released this week.

Blind Spot is the story of Maggie Wren, Geoffrey Blake and Lilith's hellhound. Geoffrey Blake has been kidnapped - and apparently he's one of Colin's relatives. Maggie is an ex-operative who has recently started working for Colin's enterprises. She has a dark secret - something that could get her in a lot of trouble. Geoffrey has a secret also. Not only has Geoffrey been kidnapped -yet left for Maggie to find, but his sister has been kidnapped. Both of them have special talents that make them attractive to certain organizations.

You can't say much about a short story without giving out spoilers. Blind Spot is good addition to the stories of the Guardians. It's well written, with good dialogue and fun characters - especially the hellhound - Sir Pup.

Each of the books and short stories in Meljean Brook's Guardian Series feature different pairs of main characters. Each one has a continuing story arc, (overall story arc) as well as the immediate plot and romance. I've enjoyed each of the books that I've read so far.

Belated Review of Demon Bound

Demon Bound

*****

Meljean Brook

Demon Bound is the fourth full length novel in the Doyen Scrolls by Meljean Brook. Meljean Brook consistently writes very good novels. They are all in the third person (not my favorite, I prefer first person), but I like them anyway. :) There is a short story that she wrote before the first novel, but the first novel is Demon Angel, which is one of my favorite books from this writer.

This is one of the books that I read at the beginning of the year, but for some reason I neglected to write about it, even though that was the whole purpose of my starting a blog. In this series there are Guardians, former humans that have been given super strengths, gifts, the ability to change their appearance, wings and immortality. The Guardians are humans that have sacrificed their lives protecting, or trying to protect other people from supernatural threats (like demons, etc). There are vampires as well as angels and demons in this series. The vampires have a few levels of vampireness- nosferatu, who are truly evil, and vampires who seem to behave well enough. The guardians tend to leave them alone unless they are interfering with the free will of humans. Some of this is explained in the beginning of Demon Bound, before the actual story begins, so if you have never read any of the books, you'll know a little about what is going on. Each of the books focus on a different pair of characters, and each book contains a romance within it.

This book's main characters are Alice Gray, known as the Black Widow and Jake Hawkins, a novice Guardian. Alice is shy of relationships and people in general so she tends to remain in the upper realm (Caelum-where the Guardians have a place to live if they choose). Alice encourages being called the Black Widow by creating illusions of spiders around her, dressing in black clothes and tending spiders. Alice also has been trapped in a bargain with a demon, to bring the heart of the main Guardian or lose her soul to the demon. This story is about how she tries to stay away from fulfilling the bargain while trying to stay away from everyone, including the demon.

Jake has newly discovered his gift of teleportation, though he makes mistakes (doesn't always land exactly where he plans), and becomes an ally with Alice, though she doesn't really want him around; he feels a little creeped out by Alice and his attraction to her. The story takes them to a few places around the world, and to hell. It is a love story as well as a horrific angel/demon fantasy. Nobody has it easy in Meljean Brooks novels. Jake and Alice both do some amazing things in order to keep both Alice from losing her soul and the head guardian safe, and they also learn some things no-one really wants to know; find out that nothing is as straightforward as it seems.

Meljean writes well, the dialogue between characters is great, and there is lots and lots of danger, scarey and sad situations, and the building of the relationship between Alice and Jake is sweet/bitter. Jake teases her unmercilessly and Alice tries to chase him away with bad temper, but in the end....

If you like romance mixed in with your urban fantasy this will be a wonderful book, as well as a wonderful series to read. The romance is not too heavy, most of the books have a little bit of sex - but not an overwhelming amount. All the books are well-written with very interesting characters and side characters (or is it secondary characters? am I making them sound like a side order?) that make appearances in all the books.

I'm looking forward to the next book in this series, which features a woman blacksmith from a very, very long time ago, centuries in fact. She makes an apperance in Demon Bound. The new book is called Demon Forged and an excerpt is posted here. Demon Forged comes out in October of 2009. Demon Bound came was released in November of 2008.