Review: 3.5 Stars - Prequel to Showalter's Lords of the Underworld
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 16, 2008
Darkest Fire, available so far only as an e-book, is a short story that is a prequel to the Lords of the Underworld series but it is completely standalone, no Dark possessed Lords here.  Instead it is the story of the origins of the box which originally imprisoned the demons before being intrusted to Pandora.  It is a beauty and the beast style romance between the beastly Guardian of the Gate to the Underworld and the beautiful Goddess of Opression whose strength keeps the walls of the Hell intact and the demons (lust, death, wrath, disease...) from being unleashed on the mortal world. It very much has the same type of feel as P.C. Cast's Goddess of the Rose with the romance between a creature that sees himself as so ugly that doesn't dare to hope that the beauteous object of his affection could see beyond his skin to his noble heart, it also has a similar type of bittersweet happily ever after. I thought that this was a nice little tease to the series before it hit the bookstores, and now that the books are out it's a brief 'just so' historical note to the series, since the box is what got all the Lords into an eternity of trouble.  One caution though to readers, if you find a love between beings of two physically different species uncomfortable, this may not be the story for you.