DemonessTenebrae

“Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them. He thinks you have the heart of a warrior. He believes in you. Believe in him.”

The evident transformation in MacKayla Lane is her shoulder length black hair unlike her blonde hip length Barbie hair she had when she arrived in Ireland, Dublin. The occupational hazard. The unseen transformation happened inside Mac. She finally accepted this new strange world she fell into and her role as a sidhe-seer. Upon finding out how she and her sister came from an ancient Celtic bloodline and that now with her sister dead she was the only one of her bloodline left, something changed inside Mac. She grew up a little. She crawled from under her pink hole sprinkled with glitter and started to see things bigger than her and her normal Arizona life she left behind.

Mac is still eagerly working on avenging her sister as well she is working with Jericho Barrons on finding the Sinsar Dubh, a million-year-old book containing black magic that just might save or destroy our world. While looking for the priceless book, she learned she can also sense the sacred Fae relics that hold the deadliest of their magic. One of them is in her possession, a spear she uses to defend herself because this spear is one of the rare things that can actually kill a Fae. Troubled with nightmares, mysterious figures that follow her, under a threat of being discovered and killed by the Unseelie Hunters and torn between an angelic appearance of the irresistible V'lane and devil-like sinfully gorgeous Jericho who still remains an enigma, Mac has her hands full. Not to mention she discovered other women with a gift of a sidhe-seer who would like for her to join them and give them the spear but did nothing when V'lane almost publicly raped her.

The world is full of deceit and masks that Mac has only begun to unravel. She knows little of the Fae world and she is having a hard time believing anyone since everyone seem to want to possess her because of her gifts and an object she possesses. Every mistake will cost her dearly. Now that the veil between two worlds is coming down and vile creatures are taking hold of our world, MacKayla seems to be the only one standing between them.

"There are only shades of gray. Black and white are nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which we try to judge things, and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, are as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We can only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we can no longer aim for the light."

Review:

The storyline is really engrossing. There is no sleep until you finish it. Fae lore and our history with them is still largely in the dark. We get bits and pieces every so often to diminish our curiosity for a bit. I believe more could have been revealed but I am a patient girl who knows how to wait for the important information.

The female protagonist, MacKayla Lane has grown up a little tiny bit, and I mean that from all that pink and shiny and rainbows she upgraded to occasional jeans ware. Here and there. She still has pink nail polish and pink gloss. One of my favorite scenes which cracked me up was Jericho painting her nails. The mere idea almost made me suffocate from laughter. She also learned how to wield her spear even though she didn't train. It just happened, no explanation whatsoever. She felt it and kicked ass with it. It was a bit frustrating if you ask me. It wasn't the only frustrating situation, it keeps piling up and I was struggling to see what everyone else saw in her.

I mean really, she was extremely selfish, girly annoying, stubborn because she was raised in the south (really?!) and she kinda betrayed Jericho. Even though the fate of the world was in question, she blindly went through motion only to get the revenge for her sister so she could get back to her normal southern life and get married and have southern babies... Damn, girl... How self involved do you have to be? And then she gets pissed when Jericho saved her life because he did that by tracking her with the tattoo he put on her without her knowledge, tattoo she didn't even know it was there...

“One day you may kiss a man you can’t breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.”
“Right, and one day my prince might come.”
“I doubt he’ll be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.”

And here it is, the man of the hour, the male protagonist Jericho Barrons, a frustratingly mysterious man that makes me drop my knickers (pardon my language) every time he makes an entrance. The dark aura that surrounds him is simply - breathtaking. He doesn't talk much and he hates being interrogated or manipulated. He does however do everything in his power (which I believe is immense) to keep the silly American girl alive and breathing. That is self-evident by the way he treats the damsel in distress every time she gets hurt and how he leaves everything to run to her rescue. Actions speak for him. Which the said American girl doesn't seem to understand. If someone doesn't sugarcoat it in sweet words, she can't seem to see pass the hard exterior (*facepalm*). She is questioning the only man keeping her alive. And when she slips (and she so does), she is waiting for him to save her. Oh, man, get a grip and start appreciate him more. If you don't, I'm gonna kick your pretty petunia (reference in the book).

Finally, some tension and romance between the two. Jericho always gave off that sexy lethal vibe but miss Mac was a little slow on the uptake so she was surprised he cared for her or liked her or whatever that was (it isn't explained in this book). Jericho seems like a jealous, possessive type (mmmm, way to go) and miss blondy doesn't get it. At all. Oblivious. Frustrates me to no end.

"And no, I am not like any other player in this game and I will never be like V’lane, and I get a hard-on a great deal more often than occasionally.” He leaned fully against me and I gasped. “Sometimes it’s over a spoiled little girl, not a woman at all. And yes, I trashed the bookstore when I couldn’t find you. You’ll have to choose a new bedroom, too. And I’m sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybody’s does, and you go on. It’s how you go on that defines you.”

Storyline is awesome. Fast-paced, easy to understand, suspense at its best as well as the beginning of something between the male and female protagonist. I'm running off to the next book ;)