Climbing Stories

2.9 stars
The mythos: the Blood Curse which is put on the vamps, who are human descendants of an ancient royal family. One concession of this curse is that some of these descendants get to have a destined mate, and has to convert-her-or-die. Yet, while reading this cumbersome tale of these descendants, divided by two brothers, two houses, good and evil, and twins begetting twins, I couldn't help but hope for an injection of cleverness of dialogue and character.

From the ancient royals, twin brothers, Jaeger and Jadon, are like Cain and Abel, one evil, one good. Despite this, both are cursed that they and all there descendants have to give up their first born son as a sacrifice for all the lives taken by the evil brother and not protected by the good brother(history of this is vague). Therein, we meet the hero, who is a descendant of Jadon, the good one. We meet his brothers and of course, a few descendants of the bad twin.

From there come the painful births suffered by human women who carry the evil ones' seed, the painful conversions of the human female mates allowed only to the descendants of Jadon, the skirmishes between the good ones and their evil cousin counterparts, who in turn seek endlessly to capture the human mates (violent descriptions), and the spirits who come to snatch the first born and/or "dark" babies on either side. Last but not least, comes the human female mate who meets her vampire destiny and fights against it while staggered into disbelief that there are actually Vampires...until its too late or until she miraculously accepts the inevitable ...not too clever.

This book did not wow with the erotic encounters (H and h only have actual sex two times after 80% of book. During(and immediately after) that one-two bam sequence, the heroine is converted to vamp and has a baby within 48hrs (LOL, this is not the only thing in this plot that can be construed as a "raw deal for the woman").

This book did not wow with the chemistry between the hero and his lady. In fact, I forget when his lady said she loved him back, and though he said it the first time during sex, and he showed some tears during her conversion, I just didn't feel the love.

However, I felt the power. Tessa Dawn spent more time writing inside the Vamps' heads(the good and the bad­). Details of grief for lost brother and of strategies against enemies racked up so it was more like reading a combat video game than a PNR. But, I liked the action and the powers each vamp possessed.

The author took this epic-ness further by adding more enemies: werewolves. This made it necessary for good and bad vamps to unite in some instances (thus the delicious evil vamp Sable is introduced, paradoxically, when he inadvertently saves the heroine). And if werewolves didn't produce enough gray area in this good vs. evil saga, then the epilogue spills the beans on another ancient one, who is a female descendant of the ancient first family. She is an anomaly b/c this Blood curse allows for no female offspring. There's also the question of whether or not/how she is affected by the curse.

Honestly, all that makes the reader want to continue the series, but wary enough that the author could sell short on the romance or the clarity of how to break the curse (I mean this is the main purpose for reading, right?).

Giving more advantage/power to the female characters would be a good thing too.