Books 27-28
The Impaler Legacy Omnibus by Ioana Visan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I got this in a giveaway a while ago (and due to a particularly crappy ereader it took me a while to read). I'm a long time fan of vampire stories and to have one from a Romanian author made me happy. The omnibus, as I understand it, is a couple novels and interconnecting short stories, fitting together to tell the story of Liana Cantacuzino's world. Liana is part of the Little Council of Romania, charged with keeping Romania vampire-free. She works with her pandurs (more heavily trained fighters, almost vampire cannon fodder in a way) and her Little Council friends. It's a hard, Buffy the Vampiresque life style.
In comes an ancient vampire, Maximilien Hess needing to meet with the reluctant council and Liana is selected as his contact person. She is not thrilled. Obviously all the LIttle Council members have severe vampire prejudices (and in the most case well earned). She's aware some countries, like America, are trying to give vampires rights but she sees them as killing machines. Hess challenges this and the reason he's there will shake her world to the core.
In the process of dealing with the dangers that brought Hess to seek the alliance introduces Liana to Jesse, a doctor and they hit it off (though romance is a mere subplot to the rest of this). There is something on the rise, a new type of hybrid vampire that differs drastically from Hess's original stock and the older vampires are worried enough they'll side with their traditional enemies to stop this.
Liana, Jesse and Hess, and the rest of the pandurs and council members are willing to go anywhere in the world to stop this new threat and a good bulk of the action transfers from Romania to New Zealand in the process of this.
I enjoyed this omnibus. Liana is a strong female lead and Hess is intriguing, probably my favorite character. Jesse's okay but I didn't get as invested in his storyline.
The one thing I didn't like was how it was formatted but frankly that could have been my craptacular ereader.
I'd definitely read more by Ms. Visan.
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Alchemy Ever After by Raine O'Tierney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
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(I chose not to review this one)