The Eternals: Beneath The Fading Sun

The world the author created was interesting (vampires in a post collapse world where humans no longer exist) and if only we had gotten to explore it with a character even marginally less unpleasant than Jean it might have been a great book. That world is the only reason I gave this book 2 stars instead of 1.
Jean is the epitome of mediocre, his attraction to Linka is ridiculously pedophilic in nature (though the character is later said to not be a child he describes her as one and calls her “my child” way too often for comfort, I could go on and on about all the ways this relationship was all sorts of not okay), he is fatphobic to a level where it's just goofy and it never adds anything to the story. People act as if he is something special but throughout the book he accomplishes nothing through his own merit and is barely a nuisance to everyone and nothing happens to warrant his fabled reputation or the sacrifices people make for him.
The dialogues were unnatural and rather than have speech patterns of their own to make them easy to follow the characters used an overabundance of pet names which ranged from silly/nonsensical/unearned to gross.
I honestly thought about not finishing this book when I read Jean and Linka's first encounter, but I had hoped maybe it was a case of unlikable narrator or giving him ample room to grow later in the story, I'm still not sure we were expected to root for Jean but at the end I was almost disappointed by his survival and there really was no growth on his part. Long story short I should have DNFed it.

This cover is pretty awesome. Great representation of the story. Great composition. The typography is very cool and eye-catching.

This book caught my eye on NetGalley and since I love vampires, especially hot rich vampires, I thought I would give it a go. And I am certainly glad that I did.



I pretty much loved every minute of this one. It was well written. It was nicely paced. It had a great cast of characters (both secondary and primary.) It had some good sex scenes (not of the overly steamy variety). A touch of humor. All in all, this was a great start to this series, and I am looking forward to Nico's book. Two thumbs up from yours truly.