Trinity is a dhampire and an Aegis agent and she has a
mission – to infiltrate the vampire city of Erebus and contact the Underground
there. They’ve had communication that the vampires are building up to another war
against the human Enclave and she has to find out more – and stop it if she
can.
But the only way humans get into Erebus is as serfs –
blood slaves owned by the vampire Bloodlords and Bloodmasters. But that could
work in her favour – considering the addictive blood of the dhampire.
Ares is one of the oldest and most powerful Bloodmaster’s
in the city, but also one of the least active. What he wants most out of life
is to be left alone; but when he finds himself in a dual over Trinity, a new serf,
he finds himself dragged into vampire politics far more than he would wish to –
but it is past time for the city to change.
When this book started I cringed. Trinity is undercover
and being literally sold as a slave to Ares, they see each other and… we get
pages and pages and pages of overwhelming description of how hot they each find
the other – before they know each other’s names, barely recognising their
difference in status or their mission – it was hawt hawt hawt, breaking the
habit of millennia because ZOMG SO HAWT.
I admit I checked how long the book was and seriously
considered putting it down right there.
But I hung in there, waded through some more HAWT HAWT
HAWT, and more dubious romance elements like him manhandling her – then expressing
his regret for manhandling her but, of course, keeping on the table that she
lives or dies at his whim so his regret means not a thing. And we have his
current Favourite sex slave who
This book also tries really hard to make it all
consensual but it doesn’t – cannot – really work. Ares is determined that he
won’t have sex with Trinity until she wants him to (and even then he keeps
saying no for Reasons, but largely because the plot wants to draw out this
conflict extra extra long), even ignoring her when she begs him to have sex
with her and drink her blood. But she’s a slave – she is property and at any
moment he can either abuse her or pass her on to someone who will. We know she
consents because we can read her mind – but he cannot. He cannot ever know if
her enthusiastic consent is real or just feigned in an attempt to secure her
own safety. You cannot have informed consent in these circumstances.
So, I wasn’t enthused. But as I read on things got
rapidly better. Trinity didn’t instantly jump on Ares’s team and abandon her
old loyalties because of her lust – because it was lust. She continued to push
her plan to gain control over Ares by any means necessary, to work with the
resistance and, ultimately, to continue to serve her people. Yes she lusts
after Ares, yes she even comes to care for Ares (and, yes, it is fast but at
least it does develop and there is a sense of time about it unlike in the
previous book) but that doesn’t radically alter her priorities
Same with Ares, he doesn’t radically change his viewpoint because of Trinity. He slowly evolves – and he evolves from a position that wasn’t too far from it. He wants Trinity, he grows to love Trinity, but love for Trinity alone isn’t enough for him to turn his house upside down, burn all the things and utterly change his life.
Both of them do. Both of them radically change their
lives, their opinions and their positions. They both betray the people they
once were, Ares being forced well out of his preferred isolation and Trinity
rethinking her mission and taking very drastic steps that will irrevocably change
her life. They just don’t do it just for the love of a person they haven’t
known that long. Sure love is a part, but Ares is faced with enemies who are
actively plotting to bring him down, has things happening in his household, in
his own family he never even imagined and one of his oldest friends is actively
involved and up to their neck. He can’t not act – he has to do something and I
even get the distinct impression that if the only thing pulling him into acting
were Trinity’s love then he’d turn around and wave goodbye.
The same applies to Trinity – she doesn’t radically
change her plan because of love, though love certainly has a part, she
radically changes her plan because the situation changes. Her plan has terrible side
effects she never imagined and has to adapt. Yes, love lets
her go all in – but politics, necessity and the lives of the innocent are also
major pressures.
I think I’ve skirted around the Spoilers here but they
had to be mentioned because it changes the entire tone of the book. This isn’t
like book 1 where we had a Romance that hijacked the plot and, to be honest,
didn’t make the greatest amount of sense either. This is a book where the
romance is part of the plot, but doesn’t drag it off to weird parts unknown,
this is a book where the plot doesn’t rely on love to make the characters lose
their ever loving mind, nor does it make them look shallow by deciding that
love is more important than, well, everything but especially the continued
existence of their societies. This is a story where love is but one of their
motivations – a passionate, powerful and very involved motivation, certainly,
but it’s not the sole driver and they don’t lose who they are as people, what
they value and what’s important to them simply because they have fallen in
love.
The world also continues its development excellently,
including a growing sense that the treaty cannot continue – and that just
trying to keep it alive is already forcing the humans to embrace ever more
draconian and appalling actions to placate the vampires. It also opened up a
lot more of vampire society, how it works (or doesn’t as the case may be), the
flaws and especially the exploitable loopholes. There’s a lot of detail
happening here and it all fit with the story which has radically changed and moved
the world forwards. I’m actually looking forward to the next book not for the
characters (I suspect they will change) but to see where the world goes from
here, how the politics have altered things, how everything will have shifted.
On female characters we have Trinity – who is pretty much
everything you could want her to be – especially since she doesn’t throw out
her skills and mission because she’s looking for love. She’s in a helpless
position but she uses it and she entered it deliberately as a spy.
Unfortunately, while Trinity is pretty awesome barring some inability to hold
her tongue, she does have a rival for Ares’s affections who is pretty clichéd –
though not as Mean Girl as I’d expect. I’ve certainly seen worse. There are
other capable women around – including Ares’s excellent, outspoken and crafty
friend who is about as developed as anyone who isn’t these two main characters.
And while this is an abuse situation that also includes a lot of vampires using
their slaves for sex, women have not been presented as especially abused or
singled out for victimhood.
In terms of POC, we have a few of the serfs mentioned in
passing, but I don’t even think they have speaking lines. There are no GBLT
people.
Like in the first book, Trinity being a dhampire is
supposed to make her an outsider – and presumably be a stand in for minorities –
but it’s still not developed. Worse, Ares has unusual coloured hair for a
vampire which marks him as different and he’s mocked for it – it feels forced,
like there had to be a reason to make him an outsider no matter how convoluted
it was.
The first book left me vaguely intrigued but also very frustrated.
I loved the world but the romance was a
nuisance. This book has me all in – it’s not flawless by any means, it has far
too much erasure and there is, especially at the beginning a book, a ridiculous
amount of drooling over each other’s sexiness. But once past that it’s an
excellent, multileveled story in a complex world and with a whole lot of
possibilities and a plot that has hooked me. I’m actually looking forward to
the 3rd book.
