Customer Reviews

Sword of Darkness

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Despite being a huge fan of Kinley MacGregor's Dark Hunter series (written under the name Sherrilyn Kenyon), I was a little nervous about this book. Fantasy novels about Merlin and Camelot usually disappoint me. However, MacGregor has written a fabulous book with action, intrigue, time-travel, talking gargoyles, and, best of all, humor.

Camelot is no longer the shining beacon of hope it once was and is instead a colorless, evil place where only might is respected. Moran, the fey Queen, rules over Camelot and Kerrigan is her champion. No one can kill Kerrigan as he possesses the sword Caliburn; Caliburn is Excalibur's polar opposite and the wielder of the sword must handle demonic powers.

Gawain and the other good knights from the legendary Camelot now reside in Avalon where they are awaiting the birth of the next Penmerlin, the wizard who will oversee all of the lesser Merlins (Merlin is the name given to a magical advisor rather than one specific person). Seren believes herself to be a simple peasant woman who only wants to rise from apprentice weaver to journeywoman. She is terrified when two of the Lords of Avalon, Gawain and Agravain, surprise her with the news that she will be the mother of the next Penmerlin and that she must go to Avalon with them. She escapes only to be "rescued" by Kerrigan and taken to Camelot. However, Seren sees a spark of good in Kerrigan and teaches him about love and sacrifice. Seren becomes pregnant with Kerrigan's baby and Kerrigan is then forced to choose between the love Seren offers and the evil he is familiar with. How will the Lords of Avalon handle Seren and a child of Kerrigan's? Will Kerrigan choose to overcome his demons and be able to defeat Morgan? MacGregor answers these questions and more- with the added twist of time travel.

Overall, this was a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. I didn't want to put it down as I just had to know what crazy twist MacGregor would think of next! There are some laugh-out-loud moments that really stand out (gargoyles as Star Trek fans for one) but you'll have to read this one for yourself to see what I mean. Highly recommended!

I have enjoyed most of Kinley/Sherrilyn's books but I couldn't even bring myself to finish this book. Great idea but so badly written. Modern slang/gargoyles that talk like Beavis and Butthead/cheesy love scenes/historically based villians that sound like bad Bold and the Beautiful dialogue etc. Kerrigan sounded hot and I loved the cover but the rest was such a disappointment. Quote from chapter 2: "His body fired at the innocence he tasted, at the knowledge that no other man had ever tread upon this mouth before him". I should hope that no other man had ever tread upon her mouth...sheesh.

I am looking forward to the next Dark-Hunter novel, but I will pass on the Lord of Avalon series.

I tried to like this book, but I was barely able to finish it.

The characters were underdeveloped, the plot got lost, and there were some gaping holes in characterization and the world of the books that needed explaining or fixing.

The only bright spots I found were the gargoyle leader and Blaise. Kerrigan was an unconvincing dark lord, and for a villainess Morgen is about as effective as Hilary Duff in goth-wear. And don't get me started on Seren. I liked her a lot better after her apparent personality transplant halfway through, but I never felt any affection for her. I found myself more intrigued by the minor characters.

There were spots of humor, spots of genuinely good writing, but they were painfully few and far between. It just read like a rough draft of a much better novel.

I won't bore the readers with another summary of the this book - other reviewers have covered it quite nicely. This will be the last book I purchase with MacGregor as author. There were so many plot holes in this book, it started to resemble a piece of Swiss cheese. In one scene, MacGregor writes that the mandrake, Blaise, looks up to see Kerrigan being beaten to a bloody pulp, and loses all color in his (Blaise's) face. I'd like to see how that happens, as he is supposedly an albino. The end of the story culminates into a rescue of Kerrigan, headed up by Seren, of course. Mind you, they have to extract him from Morgen's evil clutches, on Morgen's turf, where she is most powerful, and she has all her minions around her. No brilliant plan of rescue, no prior planning at all, just a, "I'm going in to get him". Amazingly, they land in the castle, push their way through the crowd, Seren gets p*ssed off, and knocks down everybody with her anger (though it might have been her breath, I don't know, this reader lost interest after page 50). Another plot hole - Garafyn complains that he is "tired" of getting Morgen Starbuck's coffee, and is ready to rebel. If Morgen is that powerful to transport gargoyles into the 21st century, you would think she could whip up a Starbucks coffee, or a coffee machine at the very least. I mean, apparently, she already has a CD player and several cds, why not a Starbucks cafe?

Another irritant of MacGregor's, she has the characters use a mixture of 21st century slang, intermixed with period Old English. I don't mind that as much as I mind Seren, about the ONLY character who has never been into the future, start using slang, too. At one point, she asks Kerrigan why he doesn't "pop" into another area. I don't think the word "pop" was around waayyyy back then. This is a huge problem of all of MacGregor's works, she gets confused between her role as MacGregor the historical romance author, and Kenyon the contemporary romance author. Some people may not have a problem with the character's dialogue, but it was extremely distracting to me. So many other authors seem to be able to match the dialogue with the period.

As far as the chemistry between Seren and Kerrigan, all I can say is "ugh, whatever". Just can't see why Seren could fall for Kerrigan, who is supposed to be a bad guy, but comes across as a powder puff (all bark, no bite...er rather, he does bite....oh well). He's supposedly so evil he carries no heat (I can't see how it can turn Seren on to make love to a cold fish - I said eww for their first love making session), and his eyes glow red when he's angry, in addition to him yelling at her all the time - nowadays, we call that an abusive relationship. Oh, yes, did I mention that he stabs her, too? But, unintentionally of course. She ends up looking like a huge Welcome mat.

Overall, this story is a disjointed combination of vampires, knights, sorcery, dragons, gargoyles, RVs, "troubled" heros, etc. I enjoyed my niece's book "Eragon", written by Paolini, better. At the time Paolini wrote Eragon, he was only 17 - and at 17, he wrote a better medieval/fantasy/sorcery book than MacGregor has ever written. MacGregor needs to seriously, do more research on medieval times. I don't recommend this book at all.

I have always found Kinley MacGregor/Sherilyn Kenyon books nearly perfect escapist reading and this one is a keeper. Ms. MacGregor takes the myth of Camelot and shakes it up, turns it around and teaches it how to dance!! After the fall of Arthur, Morgen le Fey takes over Camelot, and establishes a new King with the opposite sword to Excalibur, The Sword of Darkness. The new king, black-hearted and evil Kerrigan is of course devastatingly handsome.

After a few centuries, Kerrigan is pretty much bored with being King, even with his time traveling abilities but kidnaps Seren, the peasant girl who is destined to be the mother of the next Merlin. Morgen thinks she can take over the world with the power of the child under her sway.

The plot of the rest of the book is pretty much to formula-the power of a good woman's love to reform the worst of rogues, etc. However it is written with such humor and charm, and with a wealth of entertaining characters. I got a lot of good chuckles, especially from Garofyn, the gargoyle.

Great escapist fun!

I am sorry that I did not like this book.

When I read a book I look for anything to be drawn into the story and I'm not that fussy. It just is not here in this book. The twists did not 'pull' me in, the characters I really tried to like but, huh, why do they not have any depth, I feel like I can predict what is coming, and the dialogue is superficial.

I'm certain to be in the minority but instead of reading these miserable books and feeling dissapointed I'll just move on. Compared to other authors Kinely books just don't hold the magic anymore for me. My money is worth more.

Sorry to the author and all the supportive readers who just seem to accept it at any cost but this is just NOT an interesting read!

I'm a fan of Kinley MacGregor's work. Love the "Master" series and the Brotherhood of the Sword books are great. The author stated that she interrupted her Brotherhood of Sword series because she was "inspired" to write this instead. Unfortunately inspirational isn't a word i could use to describe this. The descriptive words that DO come to mind include: trite, insipid, maladroit, and rudimentary. Considering the effort the author obviously put into coming up with the world in which this novel takes place, one would think she'd have put SOME effort into the plot This book was a real let down. Or rather a real put down, as i put it down half way through and couldn't bring myself to pick it back up. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

Kerrigan is the king of Camelot and Darkness. He is ruthless and cares for nothing until he captures a spirited peasant who is unlike anything he's ever known. Despite the fact that her sassy attitude speaks to a part of him he didn't know existed, he will do what he set out to do. He will either kill Seren or barter her away in order to claim King Arthur's Round Table. What he's not counting on is Seren waking his long dead heart or makes him think his life could be better.

Seren has no idea what her future holds. She dreams of one day being a freewoman and weaving her wonderful fabric for sale to the nobles. Imagine her surprise when she is taken by a handsome knight and then forced to face the fact that Merlin and Arthur aren't a made up characters and that her life is directly tied to Camelot. Will she be able to accept her destiny and Kerrigan as he is or will she turn her back on her chance at happiness?

Ms. MacGregor's latest series is off to a grand start with "Sword of Darkness." Ms. MacGregor has taken the Arthurian legend and given it a twist making this a unique series that I eagerly look forward to continuing. Kerrigan is an anti-hero and she has done a wonderful job of turning this character into a hero the reader will care about. This demonstrates the talent of this writer.

At first I thought I was really going to enjoy this book. Good girl and bad boy, etc. Then it became, well ... just stupid! They travel in time to the future, talks about Star Trek conventions, and talking gargoyles. Do yourself a favor and skip this book!!

This effort by MacGregor/Kenyon is like so much of this genre anymore; sub-par. While she has some elements which add up to a storyline that should be intriguing, the book suffers from its sophomoric handling by MacGregor.

Both the hero and the heroine talk and behave as if they are still in High School-if they had High School in medieval times. The passion is lukewarm and the chemistry between the two seems as if the writer is following a connect-the-dots pattern to emotional intimacy-and misses more than a few dots. Add to that the balance of such platitudes as; "All people are born with goodness inside them. All. And I know that deep inside you is still that goodness you were born with." and you have a ship headed for bottom fast.

And since I'm an optimist (with a capital `O' according to friends), that's saying something. Good doesn't have to be treated as trite, even though it's become sadly trite for people to do so. Good usually has to figure its way through this world more carefully than evil, just to survive; it would be refreshing-possibly miraculous-to find an author whose treatment of the subject wasn't trite and hackneyed to the point of being sheer knee-jerk prejudice. Still, one can hope; Judith Ivory does have a book coming out in October.

Many of Kenyon/MacGregor's works suffer from this kind of sophmorishness, but not to this degree (with the possible exception of Kiss Of The Night); this is one I truly had trouble finishing. Sentence structure used by this author almost seems like a flagrant display of her shortcomings; ""And now he looked into those large green eyes that held no hatred of him." Be still my heart. Instead, how about: "And now he looked into eyes that held no hatred of him." More poetic, more economical, just better, and a big bad on writer and editor for not FIXING IT.

(Note to Author: READ MORE HEMINGWAY!) Or; "His eyes blazing, Kerrigan swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed that no longer had a canopy." The bed that no longer had a canopy? As opposed to what? The bed that still DID have a canopy? Are we in a bedroom or a hospital ward here? And why would the canopy need to disappear to begin with? Was he planning on bouncing her THAT HIGH?

These were the thoughts that snickered through my mind when I read this. If you must make the canopy disappear, how about; ". . carried her to the bed. Its canopy had disappeared." This is not the first book I've seen these kinds of things in; but I believe in giving an author time to grow, so have overlooked them until they kind of rose up in this book like some primordial blob and over--well, rather--UNDERwhelmed me.

I'm not sure if it's being too lazy to use a period, or simply a case of a writer who hasn't mastered the proper and melodic use of words, but having read other works by Kenyon/MacGregor, the pattern seems to lead to the conclusion that it's the author's own ineptness/inexperience-not with writing, but with reading other authors in order to better her own writing. How arrogant to think you don't need to read anyone else's writing-AND to foist bad writing off on others because of that.

When you can write better than the person you're reading, and find yourself stopping in the middle of a love scene to correct the writing, that's not a good thing. It says that, not only does the writer make mistakes, but that those mistakes are so glaring and annoying that they seriously detract from the story.

They certainly destroy its flow, which brings me to another thing that bothered me about this book. Why is it that a writer thinks that the middle of a love scene is the place to stop and give the reader background on one of the characters? HELLO! The time to do that is either BEFORE or AFTER; you don't interrupt the flow of action in ANY kind of action scene for ANYTHING-except MORE ACTION. But it's especially bad in a love scene.

It's like watching a movie where the hero/heroine finally kiss, and, as they begin to make love, we are suddenly segued into his head for a scene from his abused childhood. Why would a writer spend all the time and effort needed to set up/build up to a love scene, only to jerk the reader away from it, then try to bring them back and have to regain all that lost momentum? And why isn't this as obvious to writers as the nose on their faces? It's hardly Rocket Science.

Returning for a moment to the characters; one can only hope that in ten or fifteen years they'll grow up enough to become interesting. Using magic powers to knock people out of a boat into the water as a form of amusement might seem funny if the hero were mature in other ways; it would show a little mischief, a bit of a little boy never willing to grow up, which is always attractive in a man. But when you add it to the mix of a melodramatic, whiny emotional coward-well, it doesn't quite work, does it? I saw reviews which gave this book four stars. Reviews like that can only make me wonder about the kind of kickback-rewards system one finds in the world of writing.

If you look at my other reviews, you'll see that they're upbeat, and that, even where the material is not great lit by any stretch of the imagination-see the Danse Macabre review for that-I treat it kindly and with humor. Now, if you're just out of High School, or still in it, this book will probably seem like Tolstoy Does Romance to you; we all start out there. But if you have already read the works of some really good authors in various genres, you'll be sadly disappointed I think, especially given some of the really too favorable reviews here.

Another thing which has become very annoying is the author's tendency to praise herself. She gives herself a plug on the cover here; that's right, Sherrilyn Kenyon-the author's other pen name-says that Kinley MacGregor writes fantasy the way SHE would write it. This is passed off as an attempt at humor in the back of the book. It might actually BE humorous if it weren't for the fact that this author makes so many references to her own work in so many of her books. The first time you read this, it is a little funny; after the second or third time it just seems self-congratulatory.

And that's what seems to be creeping into this author's work; her earlier efforts, while never up to standards like LKH at her best, or the aforementioned Judith Ivory, were perfectly acceptable and reasonably well-turned out attempts. Now it feels as if Ms. MacGregor has decided that her laurels will suffice for the reader and decided to rest on them. My grandfather used to say, "Rest on your laurels at your funeral." That is, rest on them when you're dead.

Which, sadly, is where this author's writing and career may end up if she doesn't get up off her laurels. *G* C'mon, MacGregor; you can do better than this.