A Kiss of Ashen Twilight ~ Rae Lori review

A Kiss of Ashen Twilight

Lyrical Press

E-Book

February 2, 2009

for Amazon Kindle

So sorry this review is late...I was all set to get it written and posted two weeks ago and then, well I screwed up that day and then we had our Noahesque rain ;-)

In A Kiss of Ashen Twilight, Ariya is a faery, one of the princesses of Aziza the royal family. After an attack on her family drives her out of her realm, seeking safety she looks for protection within the Ashen Twilight House and with Jace Archane.

Jace is the nephew of the vampire leader of the house (the House of Blood, a part of the Ashen Twilght House. A vampire for hundreds of years, Jace has his life-the hunt, the secrecy-figured out...Ariya's the last thing he needs. But when a mysterious attacker, the 'elemental' brings danger to the Lycans, Shifter Elves, and the Nightwalkers, Jace and Ariya just might have to join forces. (Other summary, excerpt and second buy link here.)

I received an arc print book of this and I have to say that I'm really glad I did-it's from a small publisher and published as an e-book so I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise.

I will admit, however, that I did have a little bit of trouble getting into the book and the story. I think at least part of that was due to there being a lot of different characters that would sometimes be gone for a while and then pulled back in and the new mythology. I do think that a lot of that would be helped reading it as an e-book, though, because it would be easier to go back up and find things easier than it is to flip back pages in a print book (and because of how things were going with me, I couldn't read in long stretches so that didn't help).

But once I got into the story, I really idd enjoy it. I liked that there were so many different supernatural characters all involved in the story but none of them suffered for it--it wasn't that there were vampires and then other characters who happened to be lycans but only in name. The whole House aspect was done really well, too, with the different ruling heads for the different creatures; it also made it make sense for them to all be together so often.

With as much story as it sometimes seemed was going on, things were still explained well and the characters' pasts were brought in to explain things (and their actions).

Ashen Twilight is a paranormal romance that does focus a little more, in my opinion, on the paranormal than the romance (or than the sex)--if you're wondering since some paranormal romances are almost UF and some are almost straight romance :)

With two very well developed central characters, secondary characters that are not in the least bit superfluous and a terrific blend of romance and action, Ashen Twilight looks to be a great start to a new series.

A two page prequel to the series can be found here in PDF format. (There's a longer summary, too.)

Book Two in this series comes out August 3, 2009.

7.5/10
(I know I need to stop with the half numbers, but I really think if you don't take so many breaks like I had to due to, well, life then it's 8, otherwise it's 7 because it can be hard to pick right back up sometimes)

A big thank you to Rae Lori for sending me this book :D