Yasmine Galenorn

The one thing that this book did well was the atmosphere.
Unsettling and somewhat creepy vibes thread through the book.
It invokes an almost surreal feeling.

Sadly I couldn't really connect with anything really.
The book starts off with "I have a photographic memory" which, really? That's one of the most overused clichées ever. This is followed soon after with fated mate instalove.
I generally don't mind instalove too much if there is something else interesting but nothing caught my interest show more beyond the initial questions about her family.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the supernatural elements. While it's all extremely vague it didn't really feel like the author made it all up on the spot as a quick plot device. The magic instead only serves the purpose of building an unsettling atmosphere which made it unappealing to me. It feels like the author never intended for the supernatural to make any kind of sense really.
There was a very strong emphasis on Celtic mythology in this book. I never connect as well with mythologies as I do with novel and clearly defined systems of magic.

The only question that held my interest of what happened to her various relatives gets basically resolved quite early on and then the only thing left is for her to Mary Sue her way through the romance and her duty as a shaman.

At 75% there just is nothing left that intrigues me or that I want to know about the world or the characters. I don't care about the evil group of evil people wanting to do evil and murdered her parents and everything else is so obvious I could write it myself. It all just feels so tired. They will figure out who the bad guy is, they will kill or arrest him, the MC will demonstrate incredible power on at least one occasion probably related to the shadow people, there will be some final showdown, probably involving the evil human as well as the shadow people and the person commanding the shadow people from the woods (I already forgot her name). Yadda yadda, it's all just so clichée.
This would fit the pattern for clichée cozy mystery perfectly if it wasn't for the creepy vibes and the close-up description of multiple disturbing events.

I feel somewhat bad about lumping this together with all the other cheap sub-par paranormal romance crap because I feel genuine effort went into at least some aspects of the story. Again, the atmosphere was very well done and the Celtic mythology felt like a decent amount of actual research went into getting that stuff right. But just so much about this book is just a walking clichée. The characters felt very two-dimensional. There was no depth to anything but the mythology itself.
And let's not talk about the smut. Well, actually, parts of it were pretty hot I guess, but there are weird mood killers everywhere. In any case, it felt like way too much. show less

My expectations for this series have never been high. All I really expect is a fun, wacktastic, OTT adventure with the D'Artigo sisters and their menagerie. With this book, though, I realize that the fun is over (for me, anyway). It's not that the sexual parts are more graphically detailed than in other books, that's easy enough to skip over if you want to. And it's not that it's a one-note series, that can actually be a benefit for work-week reading since you know you're not going to be show more tempted to stay up all night finishing it. I think what's really pushed this into do-not-enjoy territory is how often the sisters use self-serving excuses to rationalize away behavior that breaks their own moral codes. (Hello, this is how war criminals are made.) Between that and the going-nowhere plot, I think I'm done with this series. show less

*SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT*

Ha, I knew Lannan couldn't have been that bad and that sadistic!
But I digress.

Although Sisters of The Otherworld is still my favorite series from Yasmine Galenorn, Indigo Court is not far from it. All the trademarks of Yasmine are present - rich fantasy, messy relationships, and dark twisted intrigues.

It took me awhile to get into this book, but once I did I couldn't stop reading.

Cecily is still trying to save Grieve from Indigo Court; her small town loses more and show more more people to Shadow Hunters every day; vampires to whom Cecily is contracted pressure her to do their bidding; relationships at home get more and more tense; and Kaylin who is supposed to play important part in the destruction of Myst is in coma because his demon is trying to hatch...

It's all a hot mess, with some allies turning enemies and some enemies becoming allies, but I loved it! Cicely and Grieve, by the way to me are not as interesting as Lannan - a vampire to whom Cecily is contracted and who plays quite a dark and twisted game with her until someone else hurts the girl and then you see that there is so much more to him than you thought....

If you haven't read anything by Yasmine yet, do give her a try. She is definitely worth it. show less

When I first picked up Witchling (book 1) in 2008 I assumed the book was part of a trilogy and the plot would be neatly resolved by book 3. Priestess Dreaming is book sixteen in the Otherworld/Sisters of the Moon series and it is still going strong, though it has deviated from the original plot by quite a bit as this point.

In Priestess Dreaming a new threat is awakening beneath Seattle - an ancient dragon, known as a Wyrm, and there is only one person from ancient legend that can defeat it; show more the Merlin. Camille is given the quest to track down the Merlin and wake him up from his enchanted sleep.

Things I liked:
- The action is immediate from the first page, and you are drawn right into the story.
- Priestess Dreaming is told from Camille's POV, and although Delilah is my personal favourite narrator, Camille is a close second. (Menolly is way behind in third place, I am not a fan of her stories in general.)
- The new spin on the Arthurian legend - for example Merlin is called 'the Merlin' as it is a title rather than a name, which was interesting, and Galenorn's depiction of the Merlin was fresh and very different from how Merlin is portrayed in other fiction.
- The homely scenes are always nice to read about, whether it is Camille and her husbands’ going shopping, or the family sitting around the kitchen table having a meal. The strong bond between all the characters is obvious.
- Even though there is a large number of characters in the series at this point they are all fairly memorable in their own right and I didn’t have any trouble remembering who did what or who was related to whom.
- Related to the above point; for the main part of the story - the quest - Galenorn really pared the cast down to a handful of characters and I liked that Camille took Morio with her rather than Smoky or Trillian, as I feel that of the three husbands he is the one we know little about and he is always in the shadow of the two stronger husbands.

Things I didn't like:
- Although the plot of this book was good, it is not at all connected with the overarching plot of Shadow Wing and the Spirit Seals. As I mentioned above, I bought the first book when it came out and I assumed it was the first book of a trilogy because really the whole storyline could have fitted into three books. Instead the series has expanded way beyond that initial plot and although I do still love returning to the world Galenorn has created, I feel she does need to actually make some progress on resolving that original plot.
- The final battle between the Merlin and Yvarr (the wyrm) was anti-climatic. It happened in less than a page and the Merlin could have had a bigger role in that final battle considering the whole story line revolved around him being the only one who could defeat him.

Despite the negative points I still really enjoy this series and will continue to buy them for as long as Galenorn writes them. I just hope that in the next couple of books we see a return to the hunt for the remaining Spirit Seals.

Overall rating: 4/5 stars show less