The Darkest Night

I have a long love affair with ancient Greek myth. When I first read about the ancient Greeks and the twelve Olympians as a child, I never quite looked back. That love of ancient Greek myth naturally followed me into adulthood and my more mature reading, which was why I practically inhaled Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter books when I first discovered them. But recently I was looking for something different, and Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series seemed as good a place as any to start.

And really, what could be more interesting? Several Lords (who are all drop-dead gorgeous), were cursed forever to be bonded to the demons that emerged from Pandora's Box because they murdered Pandora and opened the Box she was supposed to protect. Those Lords have wandered the Earth ever since, atoning from their sins by trying their best to help the world - while at the same time trying to avoid, gods and mortals alike, who seek to wipe them out.

In The Darkest Night, the reader is introduced to some of the Lords, though the primary focus is on Maddox, who is bonded to the demon Rage. His life thus far has not been the best, even in comparison to some of the other Lords, but it's bearable. And then his path crosses with that of Ashlyn Darrow, a woman who wanders into the vicinity of the Lords' isolated castle outside Budapest, and the repercussions of this meeting promise to reverberate down the rest of the series.

Truth be told, my feelings for this book are rather neutral. I didn't think Ashlyn was a particularly engaging character; while she's not entirely abhorrent, she did not encourage any great attachment from me. As for Maddox, his predicament regarding his demon was rather intriguing, but I didn't find him any better than Ashlyn. Matter of fact, I found some of the other Lords more interesting, despite them not being the primary focus in this book - Lucien and Torin are my personal favorites. And while the world is intriguing enough to encourage me to come back for seconds, maybe thirds, it did not inspire any rabid fangirling in me the same way the first book in Kenyon's Dark Hunter series did.

There is great potential in this series, and I am quite willing to give the second book a try - it's about Lucien, and I did rather like Lucien in this book, so the chance to learn more about him is enough to get me to read the next book in this series. But I shall have to see about the rest.