Title: Dark Lover
Author: Brenda Joyce
Publishing Date: October 2009
Genre: Time Travel
Rating: D
Sensuality: Warm
Book Disclosure: Rented from Paperspine
Dark Lover is the fifth book in Brenda Joyce's Masters of Time series. Ian Maclean spent 66 years imprisoned by a powerful demon suffering from unspeakable torture as a nine year old boy. His father eventually freed him from this demon, but Ian carries horrible emotional scars. He has spent the last twenty five years building up his wealth and power in the hopes that nothing like that will ever happen to him again. Samantha Rose works for a secret government agency which keeps track of demonic activity. They hear that Ian Maclean has acquired a page from an ancient text, one that has a very powerful spell attached to it. Sam is assigned to get the page back from Ian before it falls into enemy hands.
Dark Lover is one of those books that I should have just given up on and stopped reading after I realized it wasn't for me. Instead, I managed to keep reading (after all I am a fan of Brenda Joyce's work) but it just never got any better. It seemed like there were many things about this book that hit my hot buttons. I am going to focus on the two main issues.
First, I didn't like the characters. Ian had two personalities, neither of which were appealing a.) he would act like an arrogant jerk or b.) a scared little boy. I understand that he was tortured, but Ian's behavior just didn't sit right with me. Sam's personality wasn't all that great either. She keeps herself at an emotional distance from everyone. She likes meaningless sex and will have it with anyone. She starts to feel, *gasp* compassion for Ian when she learns what he went through. But there is a lot of mental head hopping which explains the emotions of these characters, but not enough action with them working through these issues and they are very heavy issues. They are not something that can be glossed over, which is what I felt happened.
The second major complaint I had with the story was the plot/world building. First of all, the evil bad guy from a previous book comes back to play in this story. I'm sorry, but if the characters already took the time to battle with him in the last book you can't just resurrect him and have him show up again. I mean, who's to say the guy doesn't just keep showing up again and again. Enough is enough. The author does take the time to explain it, but seriously it all just seemed way to flimsy to me. There are still a few characters who could get their stories, but at this point I have no desire to read them. This series is on the outs with me.
This book can be purchased in print or kindle format from Amazon
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9 comments:
Sounds like a bummer. Well next time, you'll know better! :D
Aww, that's terrible it was such an awful read. I've had moments like that too, when I've finished reading the book and wondered why I continued reading it when I knew halfway that the book was not meant for me. Hopefully you have a better read next time!
I bought this book not realizing it was the 5th in a series. I don't like reading them out of order. My TBR is so big maybe I'll just trade this one in rather than trying to hunt them all down.
Oh man that sucks. Sorry girly but here's to hoping you read a much better book now.
I have the first two in this series, but never started in them because a friend of mine reviewed them and thought the plot was very confusing with all going back and forwards in time... Hope your next read will be better!
I think I'll give this one a miss! It sounds dreadful.
Thanks Anna! I sure hope so.
Patti - I highly advise you to not read this book, LOL! Trade it! Trade it!
Rowena - Thanks! I hope so too!
Marissa - Yes, in this book the whole traveling in time thing is very confusing. It's not explained well at all. Just another aspect of the world building that was weak.
Sarah - Good idea. I wouldn't bother. Let me take one for the team, LOL!
That's too bad this one didn't work for you. I have iffy feelings about this series overall. I've only read the first two, and while I found them entertaining and kind of sweet, there was something missing from making them winning reads. I can't quite pinpoint exactly what, but it's there.
I'm curious. If you were to give the series as a whole a grade, what do you think you'd give it?
Christine - If I had to give the whole series a grade I think I would give it a B-. Really, I am finding the characters annoying. The writing is good, but when I don't like the characters, it's really hard to enjoy the book. Pearl also reviewed this book and she thought it was the best one of the series. So go figure. Each his own, I guess. If you want the link I'll try and find it for you. Actually, I need to update my post anyway.
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