VAMPIRE’S KISS
Ella Summers
Series: Legion of Angels #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Night Spark Media
Pages: 242
Release date: October 14th 2016
“You have both darkness and light in you already, a perfect balance.”Leda Pierce is working as a paranormal bounty hunter on the Frontier, the dividing line between human civilization and the plains of monsters. Life is simple and the pay modest, but at least she has her family. That is, until a vampire hunt goes wrong and her brother goes missing, captured by the dark angels of hell.
With no magical powers of her own and no way to find him, Leda’s only option is to go to New York and join the Legion of Angels, an elite unit of supernatural soldiers with powers gifted to them by the gods themselves. If she can survive long enough to make it up the ranks, she will gain the magic she needs to find her brother.
But Leda soon finds herself on the wrong side of a conspiracy that will shake up the supernatural world—and at the mercy of a fiercely powerful and tempting angel.
Vampire’s Kiss is an action packed and magical Urban Fantasy novel. The premise mixes paranormal creatures and a dystopian world, creating an interesting setting for the story. The world-building is unique and fresh, but sadly is not explored much and is a bit shallow and vague. There are twists, a love triangle, and a main character – Leda – that is special and loved by almost everyone she meets.
Ella Summers’ writing is incredibly easy to get into. The pace is fast and the flow between chapters is done very well, although a bit of the action scenes pass by too quickly to have any kind of impact. The characters are somewhat flat and stay underdeveloped throughout the story, and the main reason behind Leda’s character arc is glossed over and pretty much forgotten through most of the book.
I was really excited about the world-building when I started this. The beginning of the novel does an incredible job of introducing readers to this new and somewhat dystopian universe. There are angels, demons, gods, vampires, werewolves… you name it. There is a lot of potential for the author to work with, but the world-building mostly stays flat and vague. Explanations are short, glossed over, or non-existent, which makes it difficult to understand why certain things are important to the plot.
As for characters, Leda is good as a narrator but she’s very much a “special” kind of girl. Everyone who meets her loves her or tells her how good/special she is. She always manages to excel at everything she does without too much struggle, and most of her actions have absolutely no consequences. Every other side-character pretty much exists to further Leda’s own plot, meaning they are one-dimensional and discarded as soon as they aren’t relevant to Leda anymore. In fact, the main reason behind Leda joining the Legion of Angels impacts pretty much none of the plot, aside from making her sign-up to fight.
There is also a love triangle, although I’d say that isn’t the focus of the story! The ‘everyone who meets Leda likes her’ aspect also comes into play here. There is a lot of unresolved sexual tension between Leda and two other characters, but those relationships don’t see a lot of development. It also doesn’t overshadow Leda’s goal to become a soldier.
The novel does have a lot of action scenes, but they’re not very descriptive. In just a paragraph or two, Summers starts and ends fights that are supposed to be difficult and a big deal. They fall flat. Same for most of the twists throughout the novel: either they’re predictable, or there is little to no build up to the revelations.
Overall, Vampire’s Kiss is not for me. The lack of world-building and special snowflake main character contributed to my dislike of the novel, as well as the flash action scenes and little character development. The ending is also rather abrupt, which leaves me with no desire to continue the series.
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