Friday, August 5, 2011

Review: The Heart of War by Lisa Beth Darling

By: Lisa Beth Darling

eBook,  516 pages
Published November 21st 2010 by Moon Mistress Publishing
ASIN: B004DCB3CA
Source: Giveaway from Paranormal Opinion
Series: Of War, book #1
Genre: Dark Paranormal Romance
Stars: 3
Flames: 3

                Ares, God of War was a difficult character to like at the beginning of the book. As a character it took a long time for me to warm up to him. In the end I still can’t say he was a character that I can ever say I liked. He is not a nice man, but being the God of War I guess one cannot consider him a man really. If he were a pleasant, kind, considerate human being he would not have been successful in his warmongering ways. His personality traits really work well with all of the evil that makes up the majority of the content of this book. Magdalena/Maggie/Alena was easily likeable from the beginning of this tale. She is half human, part fey and part something else. She is completely understanding of the misfortune that is her life. She takes all of the blows that life has dealt her with her head held high knowing that she will persevere. She is truly a very strong female. She can take care of herself, she has no problems defending herself, and she is extraordinarily compassionate towards others that are less fortunate than her. I loved Maggie as a character, although I did question some of her decisions.
                When Maggie washes up on the shore of the island that Ares has been exiled to she is exhausted from days adrift at sea and most of all she is very confused as to all of the how’s associated to her predicament. Ares being the very paranoid God that he is, he’s convinced that she is there due to the nefarious plans of one of his numerous enemies (or severely deranged family member.) Thus he is concerned about the reasons to her presence on his island.  This makes for the beginning of a very interesting romance. As for romantic couples and the growth of their romance I think Ares’s character/personality traits made this one lack some of the tender lovingness that you look for in a romance.
                I had quite a few issues with this book. The first one I want to mention is the length. At 50% this book gears up and reads like it is moving swiftly towards its climatic ending. I thought my Kindle had a glitch and was reading wrong. This is not the case. Another major conflict is presented at this point. I think this book had entirely too many conflicts. The conflicts take away from the romance. This book also has entirely too many point of view changes. All the characters seem to get to voice their point of view at some point in this book. At times the POV changes happened too rapidly and were a bit confusing. I notice this sometimes with eBook’s in general. I wonder if it is just the paragraph formatting of the eBook. The book was a bit heavy on typos and grammatical errors. That is another common issue I see, it may just be an eBook trait.
                The aspect that made me rate the book as low as I did was the evilness of all of the characters. Maggie is the only good character in this book. The entire Olympian family is horrid. Characters that are jealous over something that another holds dear are in abundance. Females that consider Ares theirs and theirs alone are plentiful as well. Those females willingness to harm another female in the vilest manner possible, the readers get plenty of that too. I knew this was a dark book before I ever started reading it, I just never expected it to be overflowing with so much hate, ruthlessness and so many callous characters. The mythology is why I wanted to read this book so badly. I love to see how an author weaves such into a fictional story. I have seen so many different takes on Greek mythology. This one definitely has a unique spin on these characters that I have never seen before.
   
Favorite quote. Ares to Alena. "Cute? No. Cute is for puppies and teenage boys. I am devilishly handsome." He really did have his moments.

***graphic sex, violent sex, rape and anal sex.***



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