Review: Allegiance by Susannah Sandlin

Posted on June 13, 2014June 12, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Paranormal romance
Series: Penton Legacy, #4
Length: 345 pages
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date Released: June 10, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

British vampire psychiatrist and former mercenary Cage Reynolds returns to Penton, Alabama, looking for a permanent home. The town has been ravaged by the ongoing vampire war and the shortage of untainted human blood, and now the vampires and humans that make up the Omega Force are trying to rebuild. Cage hopes to help the cause, put down roots in Penton, and resolve his relationship with Melissa Calvert. The last thing he expects is to find himself drawn to Robin Ashton, a trash-talking eagle shape-shifter and new Omega recruit.

Meanwhile, as a dangerous saboteur wreaks havoc in Penton, the ruthless Vampire Tribunal leader Matthias Ludlam has been freed on the eve of his scheduled execution. But by whom? And to what end? As war and chaos rage on, love isn’t something Cage is looking for, but will his attraction to Robin distract him from the danger living among them?

My Review:

Allegiance wasn’t anything like I expected, but it delivered the two HEAs I most hoped for at the end of Omega (see review) and Storm Force (and this one).

Allegiance also feels a bit like middle-book syndrome, but if it is, it’s the middle of a blended Penton/Omega Force story that started with Storm Force.

Allegiance finishes with one hell of a spine-chilling bang, and the story can’t possibly be over.

I feel like starting my review with “when last we left our heroes…” because Allegiance picks up exactly where both Omega and Storm Force leave off.

Matthias Ludlam, the sadistic asshat enemy in the first three books, is due to be executed for his crimes in the morning. Aidan Murphy, the alpha of the entire Penton vampire community, is due to become the North American representative on the Vampire Tribunal in two weeks. The special non-vaccinated blood banks are supposed to come online any day, providing vampires in North America with safe, clean blood and with no need to enslave or kill any humans. The donors are all volunteers.

Of course, it all gets blown apart. Spectacularly, and with maximum collateral damage.

The Penton community finds itself under attack, and at first no one is sure where the attacks are coming from. Only that they are deadly both to people and to morale.

As events unfold, the community learns that their enemy on the Vampire Tribunal, has freed Latham and is keeping him under wraps for some future evil.

Of more immediate concern, a saboteur is operating in the now tiny community, setting fires and destroying new buildings as they are constructed. Everyone assumes that the perpetrator must be human, because so many of the attacks and subversions occur during daylight hours.

Not only are they wrong, but the truth is more perverse than anyone imagines.

Into the midst of all this chaos, Cage Reynolds returns to Penton from London, and two more-than-human members of the Omega Force arrive to help with the defense. Robin Ashton, the snark-ass eagle shifter, and Nik Dmitriou, the touch psychometrist.

Without going into spoiler central, it’s difficult to talk about the rest of the story. Suffice it to say that everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and goes on a short trip to hell in a handcart. The folks at Penton are in receipt of every kind of bad luck and horrible happenstance imaginable.

Then they discover that they not only have a traitor in their midst, but that their enemies know all their weaknesses and don’t care how many people they kill in order to keep Aidan Murphy out of power.

While things do get darkest just before they turn completely black, in the midst of this seeming defeat the story does end with the light of hope and vengeance at the end of the long dark tunnel.

And Cage Reynolds figures out that what he came to Penton for wasn’t love, it was family. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t finally figure out that the love he wants is just like hope, a tiny thing with feathers. And a non-existent brain-to-mouth filter. Not what he was expecting AT ALL.

Escape Rating B: The evil in this book is really, truly evil. Their version of “by any means necessary” takes the concept to some lows that haven’t been seen since the Nazis went out of business.

I’m not saying that the Pentonites have clean hands, but there are some things so despicable that they can’t even imagine them until they start setting the place on fire. Allegiance is a much darker story than any of the previous entries in either the Penton or the Omega Force series.

Allegiance also does not have a happy ending. I’m not saying that the romantic couple doesn’t end up in at least a happy-for-now, as does a welcome added romantic reunion, but the story as a whole, the Penton vs. the world story, ends the book in a relatively bad and slightly uncertain place.

Cage and Robin provide a lot of the lighter moments in the story. Their unlikely romance is fun to watch, especially since Robin doesn’t seem to censor anything she says or does. But it felt like an HFN ending at the most because the overall situation seems so bleak. It’s not that they aren’t capable of an HEA, it’s that “ever after” at this point in the story could be unfortunately short.

I’ve been hooked on this series from the very first book (Redemption, reviewed here) and it’s driving me crazy to see everything seem so desperate. I can’t wait for the next book. It’s time for the good guys to take the fight to Tribunal and kick (or stake) some evil vampire ass.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Omega by Susannah Sandlin

Posted on August 9, 2013July 28, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Paranormal romance
Series: The Penton Legacy, #3
Length: 328 pages
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date Released: February 5, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

The bloody war between the Vampire Tribunal and the defiant scathe of Penton, Alabama, rages on, forcing its residents and their bonded humans to retreat into the underground fortress of last resort: Omega. There, Will Ludlam is charged with the care of Penton’s humans, though he longs to fight alongside his vampire brethren. He knows the risks: as the renegade son of the Tribunal’s vicious leader, Will’s capture could doom the resistance. Yet he is determined to prove his worth to his adopted scathe, to his vengeful father—and to former US Army officer Randa Thomas, his beautiful, reluctant partner. Randa has little faith that a former member of the vampire elite has what it takes to fight a war. But as their enemies descend upon Omega, Will’s polished charm—and Randa’s guarded heart—finally give way to the warrior within. Fans of Susannah Sandlin’s Penton Legacy are sure to devour this long-awaited third installment of the steamy paranormal series.

My Review:

I think I would call Omega the final volume of the first trilogy of the Penton Legacy. I say this having read that there will be more stories in this world, but Omega certainly lives up to its name; it feels like closure of the first arc.

There are two stories going on, one is the love story, and the other is the war between Aiden Murphy’s followers and the Vampire Tribunal, or at least Matthias Ludlam’s faction. The love story seemed to take a back seat to the war story this time out, and that was just fine.

If all is fair in love and war, both sides definitely played fast and loose with the rules. But Ludlam colored way further outside the lines than the Pentonites. Of course he did, not because he’s a vampire, but because he’s a sadistic asshat.

Matthias has finally managed to manipulate the political situation so that he has carte blanche to do anything necessary to bring Aiden Murphy and Mirren Kincaid back into the Tribunal fold. Matthias Ludlam also has an ulterior motive (I think the man was born with an ulterior motive) to bring his son Will to heel. But he has no clue that any sane person would rather die than be his slave.

None of Matthias’ helpers are exactly sane. They are either temporary hired help or sadists like himself. He’s never understood why Will left.

But he thinks Will is weak and stupid, when the opposite is true. In fact, Will is so strong that he is on the way to becoming a master vampire, a stronger master than his father is or will ever be.

To save their experiment in cooperation, the Pentonites have gone underground at a site they have codenamed Omega. The core group have found a way to take the fight to their enemy in a way that he will eventually understand, through infiltration and espionage.

They send in a spy that Matthias hasn’t met. Cage Reynolds was a psychiatrist. He’s able to figure out just what makes Matthias sickly tick. What he discovers is that someone they all thought was lost, is instead changed and chained. But he can only free her at the cost of his carefully constructed cover.

Have they found enough evidence to convince the Tribunal that it has been pursuing the wrong enemy all along?

Escape Rating B: This was supposed to be about the romance between Will Ludlam and Randa Thomas, and it is there, but it’s not compelling enough. There’s a lot of squabbling but not a lot of heat. I got a lot more sexual tension and romantic interest from Cage and the woman he rescues than from Will and Randa.

Also the way that Will and Randa casually agreed to become mates at the end cheapened the angst that both Aiden and Krys and Mirren and Glory went through over the same thing. In both of the previous books (Redemption and Absolution) there was supposed to be some chemistry involved as well as a blood exchange. I just didn’t feel it with Will and Randa.

But the end of the war between Matthias and Aiden, now that held my attention all the way. Every move and countermove had me riveted. Will’s revelations about his background definitely fed into my feelings about how badly Matthias needed to be taken out and how necessary it was that the good vamps win!

Will coming into his own made for a powerful story. It was the romance side of the equation that just didn’t generate enough heat. But I was very happy to see good triumph and evil mostly get its just desserts. There’s one opportunist on the Tribunal who worries me, so I’m very happy there will be more stories in this world!

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Absolution by Susannah Sandlin

Posted on August 1, 2013July 28, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Paranormal romance
Series: The Penton Legacy, #2
Length: 327 pages
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date Released: August 12, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

With the vampire world on the brink of civil war over the scarcity of untainted human blood, battle lines are being drawn between the once peaceful vampire and human enclave of Penton, Alabama, and the powerful Vampire Tribunal. Mirren Kincaid once served the tribunal as their most creative and ruthless executioner—a time when he was known as the Slayer. But when assigned a killing he found questionable, Mirren abandoned the tribunal’s political machinations and disappeared—only to resurface two centuries later as the protector and second-in-command of Penton. Now the tribunal wants him back on their side. To break their rogue agent, they capture Glory Cummings, the descendant of a shaman, and send her to restore Mirren’s bloodthirsty nature. But instead of a monster, Glory sees a man burdened by the weight of his past. Could her magic touch—meant by the tribunal to bring out a violent killer—actually help Mirren break his bonds and discover the love he doesn’t believe he deserves?

My Review:

Gallowglass. It’s not a word we hear much in the 21st century, and I had to look it up. But even without knowing exactly what it means, the sound of it still sends a chill up the spine.

Mirren Kincaid, the second-in-command to Aiden Murphy in vampire community of Penton, Alabama, was a gallowglass in 16th century Ireland. He sometimes still thinks of himself that way, no matter how much he tries to wall off the part of himself that trained to be an elite mercenary over 400 years ago.

No matter how many years he spent as the Vampire Tribunal’s cold-blooded Slayer. Aiden saved his soul, when all Mirren believed he wanted was to die for his many, many sins; but he just couldn’t make himself wait for the sun.

As part of the deadly political machinations between Aiden Murphy and the Vampire Tribunal, the power-hungry vamps on the Tribunal, especially sadist Matthias Ludlam, want Mirren’s services returned to their soul-sucking side.

He’s captured and starved while cleaning up the mess left behind from the first salvos in this war, the story told in Redemption (reviewed here).

Matthias, because he is a sadistic bastard (just how sadistic will get told in Omega) thinks to push Mirren beyond saving by forcing him into killing a relative innocent, or at least someone whose heart and soul Mirren doesn’t know is black, even if he believes the human woman Matthias throws in his prison cell is a drug-addicted whore.

Gloriana Cummings is none of those things. She’s a telekinetic that Matthias has kidnapped, forcibly addicted to heroin and abused through multiple bleedings for a month. And instead of killing her in a rage of blood lust, Mirren takes just enough blood to break them both out of hell, with the help of a timely rescue from Penton.

Mirren saves Glory, and Glory gives Mirren what he needs most; love and absolution. But saving her from Matthias with her memory intact also brings down the destruction of the place that has provided Mirren with home and healing for decades.

Can a person, who has spent his existence thinking that his only value is in his fighting skill finally admit that he is worthy of being loved and is able to love in return? And will he stand and fight for everything and everyone he believes in, and who believes in him, instead of running from the weakness of emotion?

Escape Rating B+: With all due apologies to Glory’s storyline, the Penton Legacy series is absolute vampire romance reading crack, and I mean that in the best way possible. Maybe potato chips are a better analogy. I don’t think you can read just one. Or I clearly can’t, I opened Omega the minute I finished Absolution.

Mirren’s backstory is complex, but in a different way from Aiden’s in Redemption. He became a gallowglass in the 16th century not just because that’s what he was trained to do, but because it was an honorable profession 400 years ago. He was a warrior. He knows times have changed. Changing with them was hard.

He originally didn’t question the things the Tribunal asked him to do, which, admittedly meant to murder people. He was a mercenary in the 16th century, he became the Tribunal’s mercenary. When he finally got to a point where he had to stop, there was no way out except to fake his own death. So he did. The Tribunal doesn’t leave loose ends, after all; cleaning up their loose ends used to be Mirren’s job.

Glory is Mirren’s equal, not in physical strength, but in spirit. She does have powers. She’s been damaged but she comes back strong, and she fights back the best she can. It’s good for the overall story that she doesn’t get turned. It was important that she be a strong human and stay that way.

The worldbuilding and story arc continue to be well done. This is the middle book in a trilogy, and while it ends well for Mirren and Glory, the overall story does not end on an up-note, which is to be expected. However, I like the way things are building towards what I hope will be a satisfying conclusion.

One last thing. The writer dedicates the book “To Lestat. You were my first.” I had to smile. My first literary vampire was Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Comte de Saint Germain in Hotel Transylvania, but I have very fond memories of sitting enthralled with Lestat poring through Interview with the Vampire one night in almost a single sitting. I only got up once.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Redemption by Susannah Sandlin

Posted on July 25, 2013July 21, 2013 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Paranormal romance
Series: The Penton Legacy, #1
Length: 371 pages
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Date Released: June 12, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

The world’s vampire population is on the brink of starvation since the vaccine to treat a global pandemic rendered human blood deadly to them. Their only hope for survival is a handful of rural areas that the vaccine never breached. The tiny town of Penton, Alabama, is one such enclave, where the immortal Aidan Murphy has established a community of vampires and their willingly bonded humans. Together, they live in peace—until Aidan’s estranged brother descends upon the town and begins attacking its humans. Whether the rampage is a result of his centuries-old feud with Aidan or the civil war threatening to erupt in the vampire world matters not. All that matters is the blood. Desperate to save his adopted family, Aidan breaks one of his cardinal rules, kidnapping an unvaccinated human doctor—and unexpectedly falling in love for the first time in nearly four hundred years.

My Review:

The major drawback with eternal life seems to be eternal politics…at least if you’re a vampire. Live and let live does not seem to be part of the personality that survives the change, or at least part of the personality of those that survive changing.

Nor, it seems, do the bonds of family or brotherly love. At least not the family you’re born to. The family you make seems to be something else altogether. Susannah Sandlin’s Penton Legacy series is very much about the bonds a person (or vampire) takes by choice being much stronger than the bonds of blood.

Ahem.

Aiden Murphy is the vampire mayor of Penton, Alabama. Now there’s a strange concept. He’s also a 400-year-old Irish farmer. Of course he’s a vampire. Which doesn’t negate either of the other two things. Aiden has turned away from just a hunter and a killer. Penton really is a town, in every sense of the word. His vampires cooperate with the humans among them. He could enthrall and enslave them, but Aiden believes it’s better to work together, and so does every vampire in his scathe. All 50 of them. And their entire human community are volunteers.

Having a scathe of 50 warriors may make Aiden the most powerful master vampire in North America. His community is a threat to the Vampire Tribunal, or it may be a way for all of them to survive, if they can get their heads out of their aristocratic asses and see the humans as partners instead of prey.

All some of them see is a rare feast after a vampire pandemic. Humans suffered a worldwide epidemic, which they cured with a vaccine. Humans aren’t aware that the vaccine rendered human blood poison to vamps. Very few humans are not vaccinated–think polio. Vampires are starving worldwide.

Except in Penton. All of the human members of Aiden’s little paradise are vaccine-free. They’re protected.

Until the Tribunal sends Aiden’s long-lost (and well-lost) brother Owen to destroy the community and kill Aiden. Killing Aiden will release his protection and provide a fresh banquet for all those starving vamps.

The first casualty of this war between brothers is the town doctor. His replacement: a woman who holds the key to Aiden’s locked-up heart, but only if he breaks all the rules he has come to live by.

And only if she dies first.

Escape Rating B+: First of all, this book was just plain fun. I not only read it straight through, but immediately started the second book in the series, Absolution, the instant I finished it. So far, the series is absolutely terrific vampire toffee. I’ve bitten into it and I can’t unstick myself.

Dr. Krystal Harris is the kidnapped doctor heroine. The romance between Krys and Aiden contains more than a touch of Stockholm Syndrome! She’s kidnapped and falls in love with her kidnapper. Just because it gets “lampshaded” doesn’t make it not be there. And Krys was abused by her father, which was the explanation for why she had no confidence in herself and no friends. It felt like just one tick too much tragedy in her background. YMMV. And she and Aiden seemed to be set up for the “fated mate” trope into the bargain.

But I enjoyed their story so much that I completely overlooked all of it and went along for the ride. Aiden and Krys are two very wounded people who actually do belong together. They both resisted falling for each other in ways that were hot to watch/read.

And the set up of the community of Penton along with the worldbuilding as a whole were terrific. The idea that if there were vampires, they wouldn’t want us to know (of course) and they would or would not adjust to changes in the world. Aiden’s cooperative model vs. the Tribunal’s coercive operation. I could see why the people who chose to live in Penton would make those choices.

Also, the characters of the rest of Aiden’s scathe were worth reading about, and not just the vamps who are the heroes of the next books in the series. 400 years plus gives a person a lot of time to develop some serious quirks.

Susannah Sandlin is the alter-ego of Suzanne Johnson, the author of Royal Street and River Road (reviewed here and here) She’s definitely worth reading whether she’s writing about vampires in Alabama or ghosts and witches in New Orleans!

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

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