Dark Descendant

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy

The ancient gods of Greek, Norse, and Hindu mythology are portrayed as capricious, fickle beings of immense power who often inflict extreme acts of cruelty on humanity. So you can imagine what kind of parents they would make. There are hundreds of myths about the Greek gods of Olympus, in particular, absconding with women or seducing virgins. The children resulting from these unions are called demigods (Hercules is arguably the most famous). Millennia later, in DARK DESCENDANT, these descendants of the gods have formed two rival factions with diametrically opposing goals. Neither one can really be described as ‘the good guys’ but ‘the bad guys’ are truly monsters. This is the world P.I. show more Nikki Glass is thrust into.

Talk about a smart, resourceful, and resilient character. Nikki Glass was made for the urban fantasy genre. She doesn’t ever shrink or shy away from reality once it’s shown to her. She has a few momentary mental freak-outs, but she never lets that keep her from doing what needs to be done. Her thought processes are very pragmatic and once she’s made up her mind, she doesn’t dither around indecisively; she acts. She’s the kind of character you want to be friends with, no matter how dangerous her life becomes.

One thing I had to keep reminding myself while reading was that most of these characters are immortals. They can’t kill each other, at least not easily. So they are crazy violent. Nikki herself get savagely beaten on more than one occasion and on only one of those times is it by ‘the bad guys’. Basically, few things—or characters—are black and white. There is a whole lot of gray in DARK DESCENDANT, which is just one of the reasons that I found it so interesting. Somebody can get their eye stabbed out one night and then share a cup of coffee with the perpetrator the next morning. It’s a crazy world and it was immensely fun watching Nikki get thrown into it.

Don’t pick up DARK DESCENDANT expecting a romantic plotline, there isn’t one, at least not for the protagonist. This is one that develops between two of the supporting characters, much like Mallory and Catcher in the Chicagoland Vampire series. There are actually two very strong potential love interests for future books, but given the breakneck speed of the plot in this debut, it wouldn’t have made sense for Nikki to have a romance. She does have a couple very interesting encounters with a descendant of Eros(aka Cupid) that brought to mind a certain death-by-sex Fae…

DARK DESCENDANT reminded me of a mythological a mash up of the Chicagoland Vampires series by Chloe Neill and The Dissillustionists series by Carolyn Crane. A character who refuses to let the new circumstances of her life beat her down, has to embrace a brutal and terrifying future among the descendants of the gods, half of whom want to kill her and the other half want to use her to kill others. The pace is furious, the characters volatile, and mythological meets modern world is one not to be missed. There are no hard details about the next book in the Descendants series except for the happy news that there will be one.

Sexual Content:
References to rape. show less

I would say 3.5 stars. This story seems to be a great build-up for an interesting new series. The first book of a series can be hard. You have to learn about the world (this one especially, since I had no expectations for the rules of this world). The characters have a lot of development, which does not have to be so in-dept in books following in the series.

I was not sure if I would like this world when I first read the synopsis, but it turned out great. It is nice to read something different. As much as I love vampires, wereanimals and demons, it is great to read something different. This books shows a lot of promise to make a excellent series. I cannot wait to read the next book.

There is not any sex in the book anywhere which really show more surprised me, if you have read the Morgan Kingsly series, you understand. There is not even any sex that is mentioned but not shown "on stage" in the book. There is room for sex in future books, as some sexual tension from this book progress through the series. show less

Dark Descendant by Jenna Black!
Ok, I'm a fan! The way she incorporated fantasy and urban was great and and their version of the world actually made sense and didn't leave me with a sense of 'what the heck?!'.

So the book is about a woman named Nikki Glass (LOVE the name btw) and she like 24? I don't remember but she works as a private investigator and can track down ANYONE. So when a guy named Emmitt has her investigate a 'cult' who thinks they're immortal to rescue his girlfriend Maggie, she doesn't think anything of it. Until Emmitt jumps into the path of her car one sleety night in front of the cult's mansion! Now he's dead, and wait... Are her crash wounds HEALING?? Now Nikki has suddenly been thrown into a world of chaos that she show more doesn't quite understand.

She's what they call 'Liberi Deorum' which means children of the gods in Latin. Before the gods left earth, they gave each of their children a seed from the tree of life, making them immortal. What they didn't know, was that anyone with even a drop of divine blood, their descendants, could kill the Liberi and steal their immortality for themselves. The 'cult' at the mansion are these such people, and Nikki just killed Emmitt, their FRIEND. Nikki is a descendant of Artemis and stole Emmitt's immortality when she hit him with her car (he's a descendant of Hades).

There's a rival clan of Liberi called the Olympians, and they seek to destroy all descendants who don't bow down to them. Anderson and his Liberi gang (emmitt's friends) don't believe Nikki's story about how Emmitt committed suicide, and think that Nikki is a spy! Konstantine and his group (the Olympians, of which he's self proclaimed king) have a truce with Anderson so that anyone under Anderson's roof is safe. After having her adoptive older sister's well being threatened by Konstantine's men if Nikki doesn't cooperate and track down some men for them (who most certainly WILL die if found), Nikki goes to Anderson for help. If Nikki helps Anderson find his kidnapped immortal wife, then his people will protect Nikki's sister. There's only 1 problem... some of Anderson's Liberi don't want Nikki around. Make that 2 problems, Anderson's wife was kidnapped by the Olympians and she could be buried alive for all they know.

Jamaal is a descendent of Kali, a death god. And he's the most convinced that Nikki is a spy and he's going to bring her to justice. Blake is a descendant of Eros, he uses sex as a weapon, he's also smitten with Nikki's adoptive sister Steph, who needs protection against Konstantine's people. Maggie is a descendant of Zeus through Hercules, she's got some sweet strength and befriends Nikki even though she loved Emmitt. Jack is a descendent of Loki, a big trickster who's jokes are no laughing matter. Leo is a descendant of Hermes, anti social, sticks to his computer in his room scrutinizing the market and making the money they need to survive (quite well I might add). Logan is a descendent of Tyr, and old Germanic war god, he's pretty easy going though. Anderson on the other hand, had an unrecognizable glyph (that marks people as decenedents) and no one knows who he's a descendent of.

So how will it all play out? Will Artemis' hunting skills come in handy? Will Anderson's identity be revealed? Will Jamaal finally cool down after Emmitt's death? And will someone PLEASE give Alexis a big whopping dose of revenge?!? show less

The Good: Mythology, especially Greek mythology, is a weakness of mine and Jenna Black does it right in Dark Descendant. Descendants of the gods, walking the Earth, fighting amongst themselves has been done, but Black tweaks the formula enough to make it fresh. Plus, she gives us a strong heroine in Nikki who's not too stupid, too naive, too trusting or too man-crazy for her own good.

The Bad: Other than just about perfect aim, Nikki's descendant superpower is that her hunches are pretty accurate. She's like totally good at finding stuff, but it only seems to really work when she's not focusing too hard on it so the whole search that depends on her is just running around in aimless circles until she gets sort of zen about it and learns show more how to trust her instincts. Not the most thrilling of mystery climaxes. show less

I loved this book. What I love about it, is that it has mythology in a darker setting. These days most books that I see that have the genre of mythology is more in the young adult section and pretty light mannered.

I loved the main character, who isn't weak or stupid. She's level headed and makes smart decisions This book is about descendants, children of Gods, and I loved the world the author created. These descendants are dark, powerful, and are what I expect in a non young adult genre. Most of the descendants are not good or fit into a grey area, which I like. I love the characters that were introduced so far, they all have a distinct personality and I can't wait to read more about them in the next book.

Now I"m going to go read the show more 2nd book, hoping to find out what happens next. There was a big reveal at the end of the book. show less

Nikki is a private detective with a difficult past, a loving family and an unusual case – emit believes his sister has been taken by a cult and wants her to investigate. Normally she’d listen to her instincts, but since it’s an ideal excuse to get out of an awkward blind date, it sounds much more appealing.

Until she finds herself driving on an icy road – and running over and killing Emmitt as he smiled and didn’t even try to save himself.

Which rapidly leads her in a room full of people who think she just killed their friend – worse, they think she did it on purpose to steal his power. She’s a descendent of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, and her powers have been activated now she has killed another descendent of a deity show more – something the others – the other Liberi – have a hard time believing she did by accident.

And it doesn’t stop there – as a descendent of Artemis, she is one of the rarest deity bloodlines and her powers are in very high demand by both these Liberi – and the Olympians; an ancient, powerful and completely ruthless group of Liberi who will resort to any tactic to bring her to their side.

I like this world – the idea of the immortal descendants of all the gods who can only die if they are killed by other humans descended from the gods is a fascinating one. The competing organisations of demi-deities promises to be a fun and epic fight.

The story itself is very focused – we don’t have much in the way of side plots or distractions and the action happens appropriately, downtime happening off the page rather than having to laboriously detail the grunt work and the daily grind. This comes together to make it a very well paced book, it’s not a long book and not a word is wasted; it’s on target and at no point is it not telling the story. If anything, I think the book may be sparse in places; Nikki’s interactions with the Liberi she lives with would have been interesting to see and to add more than just names to characters. At the same time, it wasn’t necessary knowledge for the story and we were never left without information we needed to make the plot hold together – so all of this development can pause for a later book. The only issue I can raise on the excellent pacing is that Nikki often doesn’t drive her own plot. This is understandable given that she has been immersed in a completely new, alien world. But at times she does seem to hide from it and just hope it all goes away – again, that’s probably understandable.

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Jenna Black has always been hit or miss for me. I didn’t really enjoy Watchers in the Night, the first book in her paranormal series, but I really liked the first couple books in the Morgan Kingsley series. Thus, it was some hesitation that I picked up Dark Descendant. I’d planned to wait for it to come out at the public library but my local branch isn’t planning on purchasing it, so I figured I’d commit my hard-earned dollars to the book since the premise sounded like a lot of fun.

On some levels, I found Dark Descendant satisfying. The world building is great and you get a real sense of what the lives of the descendants must be like. The idea of choosing sides in a longstanding battle is nothing new; this time, Nikki must show more choose between Anderson’s people, who meet her first, and the Olympians, who are eventually established as not nice. I say eventually because there’s initially a lot of confusion about which side Nikki should be on, at least in her mind, particularly since the descendants in Anderson’s group aren’t all that kind either. Brett, for example, is descended from Eros and he uses his sexual appeal in all sorts of nefarious ways, and then there’s Jamaal, who spends most of the novel trying to terrorize Nikki with his death god powers, convinced she’s up to no good.

This whole two teams idea reminded me a lot of Vicki Pettersson‘s Signs of the Zodiac series. So did the fact that descendants can only be killed by other descendants, who then acquire the dead one’s immortality, which is awfully similar to what happens in the mythology of the Signs of the Zodiac series, since characters can kill someone in the other troop and then be undetectable by either side for a short period of time. I wish I could remember the name of it but my books are upstairs and the dog has pinned my legs to the sofa so I can’t double check it presently. Getting back to Dark Descendant, though, I actually had a lot of questions about this whole kill-then-inherit-immortality thing since, by definition, immortality means you can’t be killed. But if I start writing it all down, it’ll likely spiral into a mishmash of musing that no one would want to read so I’ll save it for now. Perhaps I missed something while I was reading?

Another aspect of the story that I enjoyed was the idea of that the gods of various pantheons were here but then left, abandoning their children to this strange kill-to-live world that exists without regular humans being aware of what’s going on. Nikki’s adjustment from being a regular person to realizing that she’s one of these descendants was well written and all of the information needed to understand her situation was delivered in an organic way, which I appreciate as someone who hates large chunks of exposition thrown into the middle of a scene willy-nilly.

On the down side, a lot of Anderson’s merry gang are one-dimensional and consequently uninteresting. Over the course of the novel, we do see that there is more to Anderson and Brett but I found the others to be background noise. Even Jamaal, who has a back story that begs for the reader to sympathize, seemed like a cliche more than anything else. However, I found Nikki engaging enough, which made the pages turn. My favourite character has to be Nikki’s sister, though. She’s tougher than she looks, she doesn’t take too much hassle, and she was the most vivid character for me.

I think that this series is going to have to be library only from now on, since I don’t see myself reading it again any time soon.

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