Storm Born

Amazon preorder

I thought it was about time I read this book.

I don't know what I was thinking.

Review to come, possibly. If I can sort through my rant and bring out something sensible.

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This was my first "fantasy" book. I'll probably try another one, just not very soon. The story was weak and predictable. I didn't find any of the characters very interesting. And the sex was far too gratuitous.

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I could not get into this at all. I'm a big Richelle Mead fan since reading her Succubus series but I feel she majorly let herself down with this one. I didn't care for Eugenie Markham once during this novel, I felt no real connection with her and she didn't even have the witty sarcasm that I so loved about Georgina Kincaid. The plot was weak and just generally messy, that's not even mentioning the weird mythology overkill that interested me about as much as watching paint dry... I couldn't tell you what the basic folklore/mythology behind it was because my head got so screwed up in an array of odd creatures and poor characters.

Also, if Richelle Mead had instead released several short stories of this kind entitle 'BDSM Erotica', I would have probably been more impressed. Because that's essentially what it was. And, hey, I'm not against a bit of S&M with my smut, but at least get your story right first before you break out the whips and chains. I kind of felt that this book was just some sort of unleashing of Mead's weird fantasies - couldn't she have just started a blog and spared me the anticipation of thinking "oh great, another Richelle Mead novel" only to then be faced with the disappointment that inevitably followed.

Mead shouldn't have promised the reader a urban fantasy when all we got was smut. And about that... it never really does it for me when the heroine meets a gorgeous (and sexy and hot and buff) guy in the first few chapters and gets it on right away. I'm a fan of suspense, I want to feel that inner "yay!" when the heroine you're rooting for finally sleeps with that guy you just wish was real. But here I had no time to give a damn about Kiyo (or Eugenie) before they got naked. So even the smut (that the book was pretty much centred around) didn't really give me what I wanted anyway. In future I'll just stick to the Succubus series. ( )

This is the first book in the Dark Swan series by Richelle Mead. There are four book in this series: Thorn Queen, Iron Crowned and Shadow Heir. It was an okay read but neither the characters nor the world really grabbed my attention much.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook quality was very good. The narrator wass pleasant to listen to and distinguished between different character voices well.

Eugenie Markham is a powerful Shaman who makes a living banishing spirits and fey. When she takes a case to recover a girl that has been stolen by the Fey she is forced to journey into the Other World. There she discovers startling things about her past and a prophecy that says that her first born will rule the Fey. Suddenly every Fey is interested in being the one to sire a child on her.

I usually love books about the Fey, I love the mythology behind it and the interesting world built around it. Unfortunately this book wasn’t as much about Fey as it was about sex. Every Fey thing is trying to rape and/or have sex with Eugenie for a good portion of the book. Seriously there is a lot of sex in this book...so yeah...I guess just be aware of that.

Eugenie is a pretty one dimensional character. In the beginning she dislikes Fey and can’t remember her past. We never really learn why she can’t remember her past just that eventually she starts to. It would have been nice to have this better explained. The other things we learn about Eugenie are that she likes rough sex and bondage sex. Believe me the sex thing is a major part of her character.

There are two males that feature in this story. The first is Kiyo a gorgeous shapeshifter that Eugenie is very attracted to. He falls in love with Eugenie very quickly and for reasons that aren’t really ever explained. The second is Dorian, a fairy king with a taste for bondage. Eugenie is willing to have sex with Dorian in exchange for favors that will help her case to rescue a human girl from Fey hands.

I didn’t really like any of the characters all that much. They were just so 2D and so very driven by sex. I don’t mind sex in my books, but none of these sex scenes were even all that good. The whole thing was just kind of ho-hum.

There are some positives to this book as well, the book does have some awesome action scenes. I also really enjoyed watching Eugenie learn to use her storm magic. The world is an interesting one and I wish we had got to spend more time learning about that than reading about Eugenies luke-warm sex life. I also wish we had gotten to see more different types of Fey, there are some interesting races introduced in this book...but they are talked about so briefly.

This is by far the worst of Mead’s books. The book is easy to read, but the characters were hard to engage with and the story was predictable and lacked something to really drive the story forward.

Overall a very mediocre urban fantasy. I love fey urban fantasies, but can’t really recommend this one. If you want to read an excellent fey urban fantasy series check out Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series...it is an absolutely stunning series featuring Fey. I won’t be reading any more books in this series. ( )