Goddess With A Blade by Lauren Dane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really liked this book. The funny thing is that when I first read the title I thought, hmmm, what a catchy title. But, when I read the book and the history that explained that it meant more than some woman with a sword, I thought, now that is really good. I like that it is set in Las Vegas. I've only visited once and for only 24 hours at that, but, it was a truly different place. I also visited someone's home that was enough away from the strip that I could see what it was like for families to live there and what lawns and yards looked like. We drove in from Arizona so I got a good look at the scenery on the way in before it turned dark outside, then the look of things as the lights blazed at night from all the casinos and wow what a huge contrast. But, this book with the descriptions of the different places where Rowan went each day fed my mini-vacation imagination Even the descriptions of Ireland left me wanting to see them for myself.

The characters were a bit different. It is hard to have a vampire book stand out and also very difficult for an author to have originality. Outside of the romance genre vampires seem to have taken a backseat to dystopia and zombies so there is some room there for authors still writing about vampires to branch out and hopefully find their own place. Goddess With A Blade does that. It strikes out and tries to find its own place in a genre that is pretty-well saturated especially when publishers and pushing paranormal romance as urban fantasy much to my dismay. As someone who does NOT like a strictly romance book, regardless to whether it has vampires in it I prefer for a book to advertised according to what it truly is and saying a paranormal romance is urban fantasy or muddying the waters is really bugging me. I do not mind if the book is urban fantasy with a romance in the background but I do not want it to be the cusp of the story. Goddess With A Blade is being shelved with the paranormal romances but so far the cusp of the story is Rowan, her history, and the mystery she is trying to solve. There are other parts to the story but they do not overwhelm the story so I can accept this book as one written the way I like them, with a kick butt hero/heroine and it doesn't matter to me which as long as there is action and cool supernatural powers. A good mystery is always a clincher.




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