Customer Reviews

Son Of The Shadows (Silhouette Nocturne)

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I don't often read Silhouette, and I am concientous about reading a series of books in correct order. So imagine my irritation when I read Son of the Shadows and discovered I was two books behind.(Actually,Amazon confirmed my intense suspicions.)

What fires me up is that there was no mention of the previous books to WARN me that I was stepping into a complicated plot and relationship. The backcover's summary hinted that the characters had a past, so I checked the inside cover and flyleaf for evidence of prior entries in the series--nothing. I checked the advertisements at the back of the book. Still nothing. Previous books in the series weren't listed among Holder's published works. In fact, I read that this was Holder's first book for Nocturne, so I figured I was okay, that perhaps this story was a plot thread from another author's work in The Gifted series and that I could jump on board. Boy, did I figure wrong. This may be a great story, but it's not for the uninitiated. THE PUBLISHER SHOULD GIVE READERS A WARNING IN THIS SITUATION! Something like "Book Three of The Gifted" would work REALLY WELL!


So, that's one reason I'm confused and here's another. (SPOILER WARNING)





Climactic battle between good and evil wherein the hero drinks heroine's soul and cradles her dying body. (weird, huh?) THEN, the last sentence of the last chapter has the heroine stop breathing. As in "She stopped breathing." Now comes the epilogue. Ooookay, I figure we'll find out the hero jump-started her heart with his Guardian mojo. There must be some explanation...but no! The hero's in a meeting with his pals and the heroine's ex. Our hero leaves the meeting. He goes to check on his sleeping wife who is apparently pregnant with twins. WHAT?!!??!
Again, maybe the previous books explain what happened here.
Meanwhile I'm lost and wishing I'd bought a straightforward read like The Blind Greek Billionaire's Virgin-Mistress's Secret Time-Travelling Baby.

I have waited almost 2 years for this book and was a little disappointed. The relationship development between Jean Marc and Isabella was very disappointing, it just wasn't there. She started out with amnesia and couldn't remember what she was, plus she lost all her gifts. This was the reason her relationship with Jean Marc was at a stalemate.The author drug this out for most of the book. Got boring. The ending seemed hurried and didn't flow very well. It jumped from them being enemies to realizing they loved each other to being back in New York, all in a matter of pages. For this series you must read the other 2 in the order written to understand anything at all. A word of caution, there is alot of blood and gore. If you you are a mother of babies or young children there is scene which I found distasteful involving 2 young children. The author mentioned them twice and made sure the readers knew one was a toddler. I know this was a fictional story and a very small part of the book but as I was reading this my 17 month grandson was sleeping upstairs and it bothered me. Anyway if you do decide to read this book reading the other 2 is a must.

Jean-Marc de Devereaux Guardian of the House of the Shadows loses much of his essence when a demon depletes his soul. Guardian of the House of Flames Isabelle De Bouvard uses her mage powers to enable Jean-Marc to regain much of his soul and live, but the cost to her is immense. She suffers from amnesia after over extending herself.

Meanwhile Isabelle's twin sister Lillane, Guardian of the House of Blood, owns the remaining part of Jean Marc's soul. She tries to use that to manipulate him into killing her sibling; if Isabelle dies, Lillane will begin a world of evil under her control. As Jean-Marc struggles to control the dark that coaxes him to kill the woman who saved his life, he must open the remainder of his soul to Isabelle although that means falling in love.

The latest Guardian romantic fantasy (see DAUGHTER OF THE BLOOD and DAUGHTER OF THE FLAMES) is a terrific entry due to the sacrifices made by the lead couple to save their beloved and the threat of her twin who owns the rest of his soul. That weird triangle makes for a powerful tale as Jean-Marc struggles between the pulls of the sisters; as he loves the one he must kill while hates the one he obeys. Fans will appreciate this character driven exhilarating trek into the Guardian world of Nancy Holder.

Harriet Klausner

I forced myself to finish Son of the Shadows but I was actually considered giving up half way through. Looking back at the reviews for Holder's other books, I discovered that this is the third book with Jean-Marc and Isabelle and the Gifted and I strongly suspect the reason that I couldn't connect with Jean-Marc and Isabelle is that there is must have some development of their relationship that carries forward from the previous books. Without that background, Son of the Shadows just wasn't at all romantic. The heroine doesn't remember much but she thinks that she is in love with a human police detective and not Jean-Marc. It also doesn't help that much of Jean-Marc's internal dialog centers on just 'taking' or 'forcing' Isabelle as he struggles with the demon essence which replaced part of his missing soul and his external dialog with Isabelle consists of mostly telling her that their race, the magically 'Gifted', don't do love and commitment -- just sex for working spells and gaining power. So with this lack of connection between the leads, the happily ever after comes from nowhere and there wasn't anything in their interactions to get me rooting for these two to get together. And unfortunately, I didn't like the rest of the story well enough to make up for the big hole in their relationship.

The previous two books in Holder's Gifted series are Daughter of the Flames and Daughter of the Blood, but I can't say after reading Son of Shadows that I am at all tempted to go back and find them to fill in the blanks.

****synopsis***
As the story begins, Jean-Marc the Son and leader of the magical House of Shadows is at the mercy of the heroine's evil twin who has torn his soul from his body and is beginning to feed it to a demon. The demon takes a bite but the Heroine Isabelle draws Jean-Marc's damaged soul back from the brink of destruction by a sex magic ritual with his soulless body. But somehow during the spell Isabelle, who is the leader of the also magical House of Flames, looses her memory and her magic. She comes to conciousness in the midst of a battle between her sister's followers from the House of Blood on one side and the House of Flames and Shadows on the other thinking she's been raped because she doesn't remember Jean-Marc.