The Darkest Kiss, by Gena Showalter
She has tempted many men… but never found her equal.
Until now.
Though she has lived for centuries, Anya, goddess of anarchy, has never known pleasure. Until Lucien, the incarnation of death—a warrior eternally doomed to take souls to the hereafter. He draws her like no other. And Anya will risk anything to have him.
But when the merciless Lord of the Underworld is ordered by the gods to claim Anya herself, their uncontrollable attraction becomes an anguished pursuit. Now they must defeat the unconquerable forces that control them, before their thirst for one another demands a sacrifice of love beyond imagining...
Preamble and Dedications
Cathed has been re-reading Cupid's Melody this morning, apparently.
The Anthropologist: "You have to remind yourself how bad these things are. Or else it'll be like grade inflation, but not. We'll forget how bad and wrong the old ones are and the judgment would be skewed... it's like Connie Mason's lactation fetish. It's weeks before I think of that these days."
This week (at the Anthropologist's urging) we are reading is Gena Showalter's The Darkest Kiss.
(The Anthropologist has recently found F.A.T.A.L. and if that becomes the theme of this week's meeting... well, the point is, there were many digressions about it and anything she says is merely a rehash of the horrors of the actual review. If you, dear reader, feel like poking your eyes out with a spork, this is a valid alternative.)
The Balance decides to start by reading the (unusually long) dedication...
To Kresley Cole. You would let me wear your skin if at all possible—and I won't mention what you’d let me do to your eyeballs...
Pillywiggin: "What?! Eyeballs?"
To Marjorie Liu. Because you spank on and there's nothing cooler!
The Anthropologist: "Mental image I didn't need!"
(The Chronicler notes that Majorie Liu is also a paranormal romance novel writer.)
To Jill Monroe. You are a sister of my heart— hearter? sisart?—and even though you stole my gnome, I can't imagine a life without you. For realsies.
The Anthropologist: "WHAT?!"
Pillywiggin: "I don't think book dedications is a good idea."
The Chronicler: "I don't think book dedications this length is a good idea."
Art director Kathleen Oudit and designer Juliana Kolesova—I owe you big-time! The lips on this cover…Shiver! And you didn't blink twice when I mentioned one brown eye and one blue eye.
The Anthropologist: "Because they don't expect that, romance novel cover artists, mismatched eyes."
(Also, the cover is really freaky. The more you stare at it, the more weird it seems. For a start, that man's arm is now forever fixed in that position as any movement will distort his butterfly tattoo. Secondly, his head is far, far too small for his torso and his pecks glow... the Anthropologist thinks he has a birth defect which means he looks as though his head is photo-shopped on.)
HE WAS KNOWN AS THE Dark One.
Cathed: "As they are."
Malach ha-Maet. Yama. Azreal....
Cathed (pointing): "He's Azrael! But he's Azrael!"
The Balance: "Different spelling. It's spelt Az-real."
Azrael: "That's okay, then."
Long ago he had opened dimOuniak, a powerful box made from the bones of a goddess...
Cathed: "As you do."
... unleashing a horde of demons upon the earth.
Pillywiggin: "You make it sound so casual."
Cathed: "Like trying to open a restaurant."
The Anthropologist: "And what, he couldn't hire any good waitresses because of they just kept falling in love with him?"
Pillywiggin: "He could always hire lesbians and old people."
The Anthropologist: "Around this man, lesbians aren't lesbians for long..."
As punishment, he and the warriors who aided him were forced to house those demons inside themselves, melding light and darkness, order and chaos...
Pillywiggin: "So, a mobile, sentient prison is better than a non-mobile, non-sentient one."
(The Balance: "Yes, the best way of preventing these demons from escaping is by putting them inside sentient prisons who don't want them to have them inside them.")
Because he was the one to open the box, he had been given the demon of Death. A fair exchange, he supposed, for his action had nearly caused the demise of the world...
Cathed: "God! If I'd known that I wouldn't have done it!"
Now he was charged with the responsibility of collecting human souls and escorting them to their final resting place. Even if he opposed the idea.
Azrael: "He opposes the idea of death in general?"
He did not like taking innocents from their families, found no joy in delivering the wicked to their damnation...
The Anthropologist: "Taking innocents from families... remember what that means normally in these books..."
Pillywiggin: "Death... Death of rats... Death of hymens..."
Azrael: "Skeleton with artfully lodged scythe."
Resistance, he’d soon learned, brought something far worse than death to his door. Resistance brought an agony so complete, so inexorable, even the gods trembled at the thought.
Cathed: "Oh dear."
The Chronicler: "Exactly why are the gods contemplating his punishment with anything other than glee?"
Did his obedience mean he was gentle? Caring? Nurturing? No. Oh, no. He could not afford softer emotion. Love, compassion and mercy were enemies to his plight.
Anger, though? Rage? Those he sometimes embraced.
Azrael: "Both anger and rage."
Woe to anyone who pushed him too far, for man would become fully demon. A beast. A sinister entity who would not hesitate to curl his fingers around a human heart and squeeze...
Loinfire Club laughs.
The Anthropologist (referring to the new Halloween toy): "We have to get the heart!"
Squeeze so tightly that human would lose his breath and beg for the sweet kiss of eternal sleep only he could offer...
The Loinfire Club each squeeze the "Throbbing Heart" in turn.
With that thought, the Prologue ends and the first chapter begins...
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