Review: Storm Born

Title: Storm Born (Dark Swan Series #1)
Author: Richelle Mead
Genre: Fiction, Paranormal
Pub Date: August 2008, Kensington Publishing
Mass Market Paperback,
Book Source: purchased online from BN.com

Synopsis

Eugenie Markham is a powerful shaman who does a brisk trade banishing spirits and fey who cross into the mortal world. Mercenary, yes, but a girl's got to eat. Her most recent case, however, is enough to ruin her appetite. Hired to find a teenager who has been taken to the Otherworld, Eugenie comes face to face with a startling prophecy--one that uncovers dark secrets about her past and claims that Eugenie's first-born will threaten the future of the world as she knows it. 

Now Eugenie is a hot target for every ambitious demon and Otherworldy ne'er-do-well, and the ones who don't want to knock her up want her dead. Eugenie handles a Glock as smoothly as she wields a wand, but she needs some formidable allies for a job like this. She finds them in Dorian, a seductive fairy king with a taste for bondage, and Kiyo, a gorgeous shape-shifter who redefines animal attraction. But with enemies growing bolder and time running out, Eugenie realizes that the greatest danger is yet to come, and it lies in the dark powers that are stirring to life within her...

My Thoughts

Because I have enjoyed Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy books so much, I thought I would give the Dark Swan series a try, as well. With Storm Born, I loved some aspects and really didn't care for others.

I should have realized when I bought this book that it would probably be more sexually graphic than I cared to read. Somehow that point went right over my head, though. I opted to skip over those parts and focus on the meat of the story, which is more interesting in its own right, anyway. In reading more and more paranormal books of late, I find it amazing that authors are able to put their own spins on the various creatures, lands, and lore of the paranormal world. Between L. J. Smith and Mead I have read more about kitsune than I ever would have imagined, especially as I was not at all familiar with the legends of fox shapeshifters until reading Smith's newest Vampire Diaries series. Mead's storyline of the Otherworld and the "gentry," as she referred to those who were not from our own world, is suspenseful and dark, with just enough humor tossed in to lighten the mood when needed.

Overall, I enjoyed the fast pace of Storm Born, but I don't know that I'm in any big rush to continue the series--particularly given how many books I have piling up in the house these days. If anyone out there has read Thorn Queen and really recommends it, however, I am all ears!

My rating:

Other reviews of Storm Born:

Best Fantasy Stories ~ Realms of Speculative Fiction

If you have reviewed this book and would like to see a link to your site here, please leave a comment with the link to your review.