Read September 24
Paranormal
Romance: Plant experimenter Cinnamon (Cinn, obviously) has developed
plants that feed on human pheromones, cast "love spells," recognize and
attack intruders, and in the case of Vince the periwinkle, developed
sentience. That's enough to get her hired by the Castle of Dark Dreams
(obviously the through-line for this series) to add to the atmosphere
for their kinky patrons looking for fantasy. Also new to the Castle is
Dacian the "night-feeder" vampire, who was rescued from a couple of
centuries of self-imposed exile and off-and-on murderous rages at the
request of his brother, another Castle employee, and also a vampire.
The supernaturals (nonhumans, according to the book)
are many: the aforementioned vampires (of which there are strong
indications of other types, but they don't come into this story),
wizards, a trio of chaos spirits, goddesses, emissaries of goddesses,
and various flavors of demons. Oddly enough, nothing too weird really
comes of all these nonhuman protagonists, other than the ability to take
and dish out wild amounts of violence to each other.
The only true weirdness here is Cinn's plants. Good
thing too, because they form the lynchpin of her side of the plot (the
more interesting one, to my mind) - her goddess-ancestor is pissed that
she's overstepping her authority to create plants that are more like
animals, and wants her to stop it, and to kill off her already-created
plants.
On Dacian's side, there's a veneer-thin conflict
between his sociopath creator and Dacian's unwillingness to play beta to
someone weaker than him (of course his creator is weaker than him).
The characters are amusing, their dialogue flows
well, and the interactions are fun to read through. I especially
enjoyed the doomed love triangle between Asima, Vince, and Tommy, and
the bemused attentions of Wade the outdoorsman.
The plotline is serviceable. I thought the ending
was overdrawn, and Cinnamon's plot antagonist was co-opted into solving
Dacian's on a totally predictable level, but the inclusion of a clueless
peanut gallery actually worked fairly well. "Run, kitty, run!" was
funny as hell, and nameless "professor guy" gets a good bad-ass line:
"Hey! Leave the plant alone!"
The love story suffers from the same flaw that most
romance novels have - the characters meet in dangerous and uncertain
circumstances, fall madly in love, and within pages/hours are defending
each other against opponents that any sane person would flee. At this
point it's so entrenched that I can't get too worked up over it.
However, when the worst affront to suspension of disbelief in THIS
particular novel is the love story? That's saying something.
Cute, but I'm mostly fond of the plant angle, so I think I'll be giving the other "Castle" books a miss.
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