Customer Reviews

Mona Lisa Darkening (Monere: Children of the Moon, Book 4)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a HUGE fan of this series, and could not wait for this book to come out. I am so disappointed in this book that I am writing my first book review ever. I do not know if Sunny was under a word limit (this is the first book published in mass paperback size -- the rest were in TSP), or if this was supposed to be a transition book to move the series in a new (undisclosed) direction, but I thought this was a tremendous let down. There were a lot of characters, a lot of information and a lot of ups and downs, but they were all very quick and very perfunctory. The most well developed part of the entire book were the last few pages and Mona Lisa's decisions about her relationship with Dontaine. All the other men in her life made a "guest appearance" and disappeared. There were no tremendous revelations and no great resolutions. I did not feel as if the series moved forward, and can only guess where it is going. Read the book because it is part of the series, and we can only hope that the next book reverts to form and is, once again, exceptional.

I was highly anticipating the next installment in the Mona Lisa series but I was unfortunately disappointed. I don't feel that the major points of the plot (i.e. Mona Lisa descending to NetherHell, her duality with Mona Louisa and the development of her relationship with the Gargoyle warlord) was fleshed out enough. I was left with way too many questions (like, why the hell did a black light come down and take Lisa when she was basking anyway?!? Is it because partly dead ppl can't bask??) and the ending was really unsatisfying. It basically loops you right back to the beginning situation, although the characters feel very differently about eachother - but it crops up another host of questions. My other bone of contention is that the first part of the book moves too quickly and the latter half dRaGs... I feel like it was filler to make a deadline. Who wants to read about a protracted day in the salon? And lastly, the sex was lackluster. There were some good "moments" -- but Sunny, you could do better than that. I hope this was a fluke and the next novel is way better... or else this series will turn into a cheesy weekend miniseries that I'd dub "The Adventures of Mona Lisa and her Demon Friends" complete with unfinished plot threads and chemistry that fizzles.

Mona Lisa is the first mixed blood Queen the Monere have ever had. Descended from the moon, her people, the Monere draw their strength and long lifespan from it. Once a month her people gather to her to bask in the light of the moon while she draws down its power. On this night of the vernal equinox, one of the two times a year when night and day are equal and the barrier between Earth and Hell is at it's weakest something goes terribly wrong. She is engulfed by darkness and disappears only to find herself in NetherHell.

NetherHell is the lowest level of hell and a place where even her mate and a Crown Prince of Hell, Halcyon, dares not go. While struggling to survive in NetherHell a gargoyle warlord named Gordane captures her. He's soon obsessed with Mona and she finds it difficult not to return his affections. By becoming her protector through NetherHell Mona Lisa finds herself more and more drawn to him. Her feelings for Gordane begin to grow and strengthen, but what happens when Mona Lisa's lost love reappears and crosses the threshold of NetherHell to rescue her? All this while her inner demon, the evil Monere queen that she shares her body with, Mona Louisa, is doing her level best take control of Mona Lisa's body.

Mona Lisa Darkening is Sunny's newest installment in her Children of the Moon series. Mona Lisa Darkening is her best since The Children of the Moon debut novel, Mona Lisa Awakening. Mona Lisa Darkening not only introduces a well thought out new character, but brings back a favorite of readers. Life is anything but boring for Mona Lisa and this time around things become even more incredible. Halycon is probably most people's favorite of Mona Lisa's loves, but Gordane makes a strong go at the title. He will leave readers demanding to know more about him.

Mona Lisa Darkening is a self describing title. The sweet, innocent Mona Lisa we met in the first novel is long gone, but in a good way. The character continues to grow throughout each novel making her boldest moves yet. While Mona Lisa comes from an alien race who need the moon in order to draw down their powers, she's only human. Using the Superman mythos of having incredible powers while at the same time tempering those powers with her human upbringing and the morals that go with that, you will find yourself drawn in.

If you haven't read Sunny's Monere, Children of the Moon series, and I confess I read all four to do this review, I believe you're missing out. I was pleasantly surprised by all four and can't wait for the next installment.

Reviewed at Bitten by Books Paranormal Fiction Review Site by SunandHeir

Like any good Mary Sue, Mona Lisa is the superuberspecial point around which the entire universe -- living and dead -- revolves.

And it gets just a little more nauseating in the plotless, hilariously silly slog of Sunny's fifth novel, "Mona Lisa Darkening." In this case, she transports her obvious self-insert (and her hotter alter ego) into a brand new realm so she can dazzle everyone there, rendered in prose that runs from Victorian purple to awkwardly stilted.

Mona Lisa and Co. are basking under their "mother planet" (since when is the moon a planet?) when she's suddenly whisked away to a wasteland where damned souls go.

Since Sunny has established that obviously Hell is a fun and cool place to be (they set off FIRECRACKERS!), this turns out to be the horrific Netherhells. And since Mona Lisa has the evil Mona Louisa's consciousness in her brain, she got dragged along for the ride. And now she's dealing with the huge deformed bull dheus, imps, and the occasional gargoyle.

In the meantime, her demon dead hubby Prince Halcyon and emo boyfriend Gryphon decide to enter the Netherhells to rescue their Luv. Unfortunately, Mona Lisa has been (oh, how Victorian!) drafted into a tall, dark and brooding gargoyle's harem, and finds out that he wants her knocked up. But even if she handles THAT situation, she may not be able to get home -- and it may cause some problems in HER ever-expanding harem

Five books in, and Sunny still hasn't figured out how to map out a plot. From the first chapter onward, "Mona Lisa Darkening" is basically a string of randomly-occurring events. Sunny throws random plot twists (Roman-style arena! Duel for kingship! Berserker bloodsucking! Poorly-described monster!) whenever things get too slow.

Unfortunately, the entire book is too slow: endless emo moping, ghastly cartoonish dialogue ("Don't be silly. Our gargoyle friends can fly us there"), random third/first personal flipflops, and hilariously cliche romance-novel prose ("I felt the caress of those dark eyes stroke across our skin"). And for the unspeakable realm of the damned, the Netherhells seem an awful lot like the Middle East (complete with palm trees, harems and veils), except that by the end everyone is worshiping Mona Lisa's magic vagina.

And the sexual content is the worst -- a random S&M threesome (because obviously only sex can cure self-hatred and trauma), spreading her legs for a literally horny gargoyle, and details about Mona Lisa getting a Brazilian. Three words: Too Much Information.

Mona Lisa herself remains a nauseating example of the Mary Sue -- she can cure psychological ills with sex, is so hot that all men lust and all women get tantrum-throwing jealous, and she's so good and pure that she makes her nastiest enemies turn good. She even ogles herself a few times, presumably because she's the only person whose opinion matters.

As for her men, few of them have any individual personality -- and some of them are outright absurd, such as insisting that Mona Lisa have sex with other guys, or wanting to go on a "girl's day out" with her. Puh-leez.

"Mona Lisa Darkening" proves that when even when a series scrapes the bottom, it always has room to go down. And sadly, it's still not over.

This is the fourth book in the Children of the Moon series by Sunny; and it was actually my favorite of the series. The setting was more interesting than previous books and there was a lot more action; there wasn't as much sex and romance so people who really dig that may not like this book as well as some of the previous ones.

The book starts out with Mona Lisa basking for her Monere. Suddenly a black light comes out of the moon and Mona Lisa is taken somewhere else. Strangely enough Mona Louise's personality is stronger in the new place and Mona Lisa soon finds out she is in a different version of Hell than she ever knew existed. Can Gryphon and Halcyon save her before something more deadly finds her?

I really liked that Mona Lisa's character took things into her own hands in this book. Mona Lisa's compassion matched with toughness really set her character above all other characters and made her character something special.

I loved that both Halcyon and Gryphon were in this book a lot; Halcyon is my favorite character and it was interesting to see him have to deal with limitations to his power. Once again though Amber was absent for most of the book. Mona Lisa did make some progress in her relationship with Dontaine which was nice to read about.

I thought this book had more purpose, a better story, and a faster pace than the previous book. There are less sex scenes than normal; the ones that are present are well written. I enjoyed that this left more room for action scenes. After the third book I was ready to give up on this series, but after reading this book I am convinced to stay with this series a bit longer.

I had mixed feelings about this last book in the series. I like the new gargoyle characters and I like how Mona Louisa's character developed (but I still didn't like her duality with Mona Lisa). I also loved the return of Gryphon. But there were a lot of loose ends that were not resolved. For example, what happened to Dante and what was Mona Lisa's status at the end . . . was she still a demon? It was a little frustrating and Sunny indicated that she had no intention of following this book up with a sequel any time soon because she was occupied with other endeavors. Very sad. I was left wanting more.

Queen of the Louisiana Monere Children of the Moon Mona Lisa behaves very differently towards her followers than her peers. She treats her subjects with respect rather than contempt. Perhaps it is her being the only half-breed Monere queen or her having lived amongst the humans.

On the night of the vernal equinox, Mona takers her followers outside in the bayou to celebrate the holiday by drawing on rejuvenating power of the light. However, under the full moon, something goes wrong; instead of light Mona is cocooned in an eerie darkness. While some of her shocked subjects remain paralyzed with fear and others want to act but don't know at who or what, she vanishes. In the realm of the damned, a gargoyle captures her while the evil Monere queen Mona Louisa tries to take control of Mona Lisa's body. However a hero will step forth to go into hell for the heavenly cause of rescuing Mona or being damned for eternity if he fails.

Using an excellent twist, Sunny totally refreshes her unique erotic urban fantasy saga. A simple celebration turns dangerous for Mona Lisa while her loyal followers feel helpless and concerned as they do not know what happened to their beloved queen, whose involved or what to do; their frustrations enhance Mona's trek through Netherhell, the realm of the damned that makes Dante's depiction look PG. The superb DARKENING focuses mostly on a beleaguered Mona as she struggles to survive while trying to control her appetite of wanting the hard gargoyle inside her and not succumbing to the sexual desires if becoming enslaved to him.

Harriet Klausner

I really enjoyed Sunny's Series of the Monere, Children of the Moon. Mona Lisa's journal from outcast human to Monere Half Blood Queen is fascinating. The first three books were great.
That being said, Mona Lisa Darkening left me flat. It was a decent read, but not nearly on the same scale as the first three. this book felt rushed and half finished.
I will look forward to the next in the series, but will give the editors this tidbit....Don't rush Sunny for the next book. Give her time to write the full story and make it a better read!

I was looking forward to this addition to the series. Sunny's Mona Lisa series is fascinating, erotic, with unique characters. This addition seemed a bit rushed and did not flow. It begins with Mona Lisa being drawn into a dark realm of the dead during Basking. Simply, a black cloud covered her and swallowed her in. She arrives in this strange NetherHell with murderers and pretty much the most evil criminals around. Here Mona Louisa (still a piece of her) has more power over Mona Lisa. The beginning that I'm describing was great. Mona was fighting for her life, Sunny was introducing new, interesting characters and fantastical people in a new setting. It was fabulous, but half-way through the book, she solves Mona Lisa's problem of being trapped and the rest of the book just plods along. It wasn't bad, just a bit disappointing. Hopefully her next book will be more developed.

The past two books in the Mona Lisa series ended on such sad notes that I decided to take a break and read other books that had a more cheerful ending. Well, that never happened. I felt compelled to read Mona Lisa Darkening because even with it's not so happy parts, I have enjoyed the overall series immensely. This book was a total surprise because all others have been written in first person from Mona Lisa's point of view. For the first time we were able to glimpse other events that were taking place while Mona Lisa was away from home. Surprise, she went missing yet again (kidnapped twice in the last book) but this time Mona Lisa finds herself in Nether Hell, aka the Cursed Realm. The story was very creative and Sunny did such an amazing job at describing Nether Hell in such vivid detail.

I felt that there were two journeys in this book. ML's physical journey home, and an emotional one that was far over due. Even though ML loves her men greatly, she had been pushing Dontaine's love away. Deep inside she was still grieving from Gryphon's death, so she had set up barriers in order to protect herself. Dontaine tackled the matter head on for what turned out to be a very happy ending.

This book almost felt as if it were meant to be the last of the series in that, Mona Lisa made love with all of her lovers in this book: Gryphon, Halcyon, Amber, Dontaine and a darkly erotic scene with a gargoyle. And I'll just say the scene with Gryphon and Halcyon was an unexpected surprise. And Amber did something was so sweet..I just love that man. He is on of my absolute favorite characters/lovers of all books I've ever read. Issues with Mona Lisa and Mona Louisa sharing the same body were finally addressed. This book ended on a feel good note for once so It gets a solid 5 star rating from this fan.