Review: Powerful, Dark, Edgy, Subtle, Sexy Story of Love & Redemption
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 9, 2012
I LOVED this story!! I would give it more stars, if I could. It was so well-written, I re-read it immediately, lingering on the details. I loved the dark, edgy, REALLY bad boy anti-hero, who was definitely NOT perfect.  The heroine is beautiful, but that is not dwelled upon as much as her character: good, brave, valiant and proud, but stressed, lonely and tormented, too. The writing is extremely good, top notch. The characters are extremely well-defined and believeable, especially for such a short work.  The sex is steamy, sensual and actually necessary to the story.  The editing is extremely good; no typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, or missing/wrong words.The fans of perfect-hero-and-heroine-happily-ever-after-all-wrapped-up-in-a-neat-package may not "get" this story.  The hero, Dardanus, is an assassin and womanizer:  highly intelligent, devious, bitter, and full of anger at the lifetime of cruelty and disrespect he has received as a royal bastard. Although he is a trusted advisor to Nestra, the queen, he is killing and scheming his way to take the throne from her, because he deems her too weak to rule the country effectively. But for all that, he is a man of principle (his own code, not others'), a patriot who loves his country.  The magic amulet Nestra wears protects her from attempts on her life, so he schemes to seduce her into removing the amulet, so that he can kill her. What happens is a very touching story of love and redemption, with a great twist.*Spoiler Alert* Even though many reviewers did not understand the ending (and so assumed it was NOT happily ever after), it HAD to be a happy ending, for this reason:  The entire story was told in the first person, from Dardanus' point of view.  Therefore, even though it ends with his belief that he will die in the morning (as a result of his actions), he is alive and telling the story, so the queen MUST have forgiven him.I got this as a free download, but this author's work is so awesome, I am definitely going to spend actual money to buy more of her work, ASAP.