Retribution

I'd been sitting on this book for a while now. I picked it up shortly after it was released, but just never got to reading it. But a couple months ago, I re-read the entire series and once again stopped when I got to this book.

I think the issue for me is that Ms Kenyon has started to move away from her original Greek / Atlantean mythology and start introducing new ones. In Devil May Cry, it was bringing in the Sumerian gods and demons. And now with Retribution it is Native American (Cherokee in particular) lore.

Maybe I would've liked this story better if I'd understood the new lore better. More often than not, I was scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The lore was explained in bits and pieces in between plagues and running from enemies and was just more confusing that I would have liked.

And then the romance between Jess and Abigail. This books takes place over the course of about 3 or so days. And while Jess knew Abigail as a baby/toddler, she's grown up believing he killed her family. So, I find it near impossible that by the end of day 3 of their reunion, they're in love. Especially with all that's going on around them.

The highlight of this book? The epilogue. Earlier in the book, it was explained that Ash couldn't come help Jess because his wife is in labor with their first child. So, Ms Kenyon uses the epilogue to give her readers the story of that birth. I felt more in those 10 pages or so than the rest of the story. Sad but true.

I generally love the Dark-Hunter books, but this one left me cold. Will I continue reading them? Most likely. But I wouldn't recommend this title to anyone other than long standing fans of the series.