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Darkest Knight (2012)

by Karen Duvall(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0373803443 (ISBN13: 9780373803446)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Luna

series

Knight's Curse

review 1: Review Courtesy of Dark Faerie TalesQuick & Dirty: Dark Urban Fantasy with a likeable heroine and a steady plot.Opening Sentence: “You’re coming with me, right?” I asked Rafe when he opened the silver veil that separated the physical world from the realm of angels.Review:After the events of Knight’s Curse, Chalice has spent the last month in the light veil learning from her father how to control her gifts. Now that she has been released from her gargoyle curse and her evil mentor is dead, she finally has a chance to make a new life for herself. The first item on her to do list is to free Ayden from his curse, which leads Chalice to a not so surprising encounter with Shojin, the gargoyle that Ayden is bonded. With the gargoyle’s heart she finally has a chance to f... moreree Ayden but he refuses to end his curse.After being rejected by Ayden, Chalice journey’s back to Colorado with her guardian angel Rafael. There she meets up at Halo Home, the home of her grandmother and grandfather. There are also Hatchet Knight’s living in the home, Chalice finally gets to meet up with her sisters, something that she has wanted to do since she learned of her heritage. Unfortunately just before she gets to Halo Home someone has murdered forty Knights’ in their sleep.In Knight’s Curse, Chalice absolutely hated magic. It was a big cause of a lot of her problems but she is immune to some charms and curses which makes her the perfect person to handle the charms that Ayden has collected over the years. Chalice’s job at Halo Home is to teach her fellow sisters how to use magic to their advantage. The Hatchet Knight’s are dwindling in numbers and need all the help they can get to defeat the bad guys. A Hatchet Knight is murdered and Chalice brings her back with a charm. Then Chalice is nearly murdered herself but when a fellow Knight runs away with some of the charms Chalice takes it upon herself to go find her.Ayden and Rafe join Chalice in her search for the missing Knight. Ayden believes he is better off helping Chalice as a gargoyle and he definitely comes in handy. Chalice tries to search for her missing comrade while trying to avoid the Vyantara from learning she is back in town. Chalice’s mission leads her to the black veil, the home of the Fallen angels, where she discovers a devious plan in works for the creation of a whole new order of Knights.Chalice is still the resilient heroine that she was from Knight’s Curse. She never had family around her and now that she has seen what could be she doesn’t want to lose the family she could now have. She fights hard for acceptance while still remaining true to who she is. She is delivered bad news about her love life but she doesn’t care. She makes no excuses about being in love with Ayden even though he is not human anymore.The world-building expands in this book to include the white and black veil, dimensions where angels and other creatures live. The plot is a little more straightforward in this book compared to the first book in the series. Darkest Knight does work well as a standalone novel. The main plot points are resolved by the end of the book, a few points are saved for later in the series. The tone is still one of doom and Chalice puts herself in another situation that I have no idea how she is going to get out of it.In the end, Darkest Knight is a suitable follow up to Knight’s Curse. It is the tale of a thief turned hero who wants to help save the world from evil. Darkest Knight is an urban fantasy that has the potential to be a great series but so far just manages to ride the fence.Notable Scene:Rusty’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe what I heard about your mother was true.”If she said one bad thing about my mother I’d make sure she lost more than just her powers. I felt the weight of the knife sheathed between my shoulder blades.“What was that sorcerer’s name?” Rusty’s eyes rolled as if she tried to think of the answer. “Oh, yeah. Gavin. The Vyantara’s head honcho and your mother’s lover.”I sprang at her.It was totally impulsive and completely driven by some primal part of my brain. Anything having to do with my mother was a sensitive issue. To hear the name of that sociopathic sorcerer and my mother in the same breath sent me over the edge. I couldn’t stop myself.The knife was in my hands so fast I barely registered my fingers wrapping around the hilt and my thumb springing the latch to pop the blade.The Knight’s Curse Series:1. Knight’s Curse2. Darkest KnightFTC Advisory: Harlequin/Luna provided me with a copy of Darkest Knight. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.
review 2: RECEIVED FROM: Net Galley For Review***NOTE MY REVIEWS OFTEN CONTAIN SPOILERS***Chalice has left the realm of the Arelim and is on her way to join the Hatchet Knights and finally meet her grandmother. She only has one stop to make first; she needs the heart of Shojin to save Aydin from eternity as a gargoyle. That Shojin would offer his heart willingly is a surprise, but when Aydin can’t take it because of pain from the loss of his longtime friend, Chalice doesn’t know what to do. Worse than this while she’s robbing the Vyantara of a gargoyle assassin, most of the Hatchet Knights are murdered in their sleep, suffocated with no evidence of how or why it was done. Chalice must now find a place for herself in the world of the Knights, try to convince Aydin to return to his human form and discover just who is murdering the Knights and why before the Order kills Aydin for crimes he didn’t commit. Will she stop the killer before all of her new family is lost?This is another novel where I debated on rating, I chose to give this a four stars because it offered a lot more of story arc than the first novel in the series and the world Duvall creates is really interesting. I do however still think that book has some issues. First of all, and this could be said for both novels in this series, the book could use and extra fifty to a hundred pages just in fleshing things out. Duvall’s stories read less like a singular story arc and more like a journal from someone who has a very strange and exciting life. I say this because yes I guess there is a main story arc, last time it was Chalice getting free of the Vyantara, and this time it was discovering and stopping the person who’s killing the Hatchet Knights. But she doesn’t focus on the story arc and it really isn’t until you get to the final climatic scenes of the book that it’s clear what that main story arc is. In the mean time she begins all these subplots that aren’t really fully explained or played out and which leave you with a lot more questions than answers when the novel is done. She also creates this who subculture of Arelim, Hatchet Knights, Vyantara and the Fallen without fully explaining how the organizations came to be, what they exist for and the whole magic creature subculture is more like a naming of all sort of creatures rather than really weaving them into the world Duvall’s created. Her works feel like I’m only getting half the story and I think would be considerably better with more length and fleshing out. She’s created and story and world that are really interesting but it’s like we only glaze the surface of that world. This story does move the series in a more adult direction because it does include a semi-graphic sex scene which is always a little uncomfortable to read in a first person narrative because it feels almost like one of those T.M.I. conversations with a girlfriend who doesn’t seem to realize her friends really don’t want to know anymore more than he was hot and good in bed or bad in bed whichever the case may be. Maybe extending to a he’s really good at or really bad at such and such but never into a play by play of their sex life because nobody really needs that much detail about someone else’s sex life. I think the reason first person sex seems like that to me is because the first person is probably the closest point of view you can get and it’s a lot more personal reading a sex scene in that point of view than it is from the outside with a close third person point of view. The first novel in this series I would have easily said would be fine for teen readers, but with this new addition I’d now say it’s more for older teens and adults only, meaning my eleven year old won’t be reading this for many years to come. Duvall creates a sort of love triangle with this new book by bringing Chalice’s guardian angel Rafe who was briefly introduced at the end of the first novel in as a more constant character in this novel. It’s sort of a one-sided love triangle however as Chalice is completely wrapped up in Aydin who’s still a gargoyle for much of the book even though he could have been human in the first couple chapters. Rafe wants to father a child for the order and become human to raise that child and as Chalice is the one who he’s supposed to guide from the way things are set up it seems as if Chalice is his only option to do that. The other Knights are of course pushing her toward Rafe in this very medieval arranged marriage sort of set up, but even though I still don’t get that connection because Duvall never really fleshed it out, Chalice is in love with Aydin. Again Chalice is quick to accept her new life and her new family as if she’s always had them which doesn’t fit with the lifestyle previously created for her. Also some of the things established in this novel don’t really make sense. Like everyone in the Order seems to know all about Chalice’s life before even meeting her, but none of them came to get her in those thirteen years when she lived in the monastery before the Vyantara found her? You’d think the angels guarding over and mating with the Knights would notice a young knight living in a monastery and since her grandmother’s already kind of running a half way house for orphaned knights it would make sense she’d be brought there. The story never explains why that didn’t occur other than Chalice needing a different background to be a more interesting character for the plot. Which isn’t really an explanation or said in the novel, it’s just well interesting characters are a lot of what sells books, so it’s just a logical deduction on my part. The book was well written and fast paced as well as a lot more intense than it’s predecessor. The final scenes were more climactic than the first novel and I’d definitely describe the book as a page turner. I think the main fault I find with this book is that it needs more fleshing out of ideas and character relationships. It needs the extra time and space to finish out the half done subplots and to better build the world. Duvall definitely has the talent to make the extra length interesting and I think it would definitely enhance her work if she’d slow down and really take the time to build the world and the character relationships rather than focusing on having constant action occurring in the story. Chalice is always in some predicament or another, she doesn’t really get downtime and though I’ve always been a fan of the fast paced novel, what the series really needs is a little downtime to flesh out histories, backgrounds and establish realistic relationships between characters as well as character motivations. We as readers need to know more than just the what that’s occurring, we need to understand the why and that’s not really offered so far in the series. Chalice is as always an extremely well developed character, this is pretty much a given for a first person novel. Aydin is fairly well developed as well but he’s built more on what Chalice tells us rather than what his actions show us. Other characters are distinguishable and Maria was decently built as a character, but as I said above motivations for their actions weren’t really offered. The secondary character were moderately built, but not really fleshy. I mean each was definitely separate from the others, but at the same time, time isn’t really taken to understand each of the secondary characters. Overall I’d definitely recommend the novel to readers of fantasy and probably paranormal romance. It’s an exciting fast paced read that keeps you interested from beginning to end. I just maintain that if Duvall slowed down and fleshed out the plot, character and world know the book would be so much better than what is currently offered. less

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