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Book Review of Born of Night (aka Born of the Night) (League, Bk 1)

Born of Night (aka Born of the Night) (League, Bk 1)
reviewed on + 55 more book reviews


There is a line that differentiates a damaged character from a man that has been completely stripped of every human right and emotion. I mean, good god, I'm surprised Nyk survived long enough to even become adopted because I would have ended it long before then. Every time you learn something new about Nyk you realize that the author has created yet another horrifying memory that is usually so often I couldn't even have imagined it in the first place.

I think almost every plot device is used in this book throughout all of the characters - rape, parental death, lack of nurturing, betrayal, pain, loss, miscommunication between lovers, an out of the blue unexpected pregnancy, a child he never knew about, reconnection with his birth parents....just, damn!

About 3/4 of the way through the book though I started to get severely annoyed at the number of times Kiara and Nyk could and could not be together. One minute good. The next its over. You keep thinking they are finally figuring this out, it can finally all come together so that they can get themselves out of the trouble they are surrounded by, but no - first there has to be yet one more unthoughtful word or phrase to set the other off and cause untold amounts of hurt.

I am all about the tortured hero, its a great story line that usually leads to a lot of emotion and twisted plots, but this has hit the ridiculous point. At some point the author should step back and say 'is this really necessary'? but Kenyon never does that. she just showers her poor characters in yet more pain, hurt, and loss. Its like a typhoon that none can avoid.

Yet in the end she miraculously pulls it together with one huge happily ever after. So convenient. Not even a secondary character death. Normally this would make me so happy but it was just so completely unrealistic that it annoyed me. And Syn's showing up at the 11th hour with no explanation (yes its in the next book but that's not the point) totally annoyed me. He was a huge secondary character, completely disappeared, and then just shows back up like he was out on vacation.

All in all I could not put this book down. I devoured the missions, the danger, the torturously slow revelations about Nyk (past and present), and the growing love in Kiara. What really held this book back though was the under polished sci-fi aspects of the book. So much more could have been elaborated on that would have made the rest of the book so much better. For instance, have the climax be a space fight was a good shift away from the rest of the book with its hand to hand combat, but because the sci-fi elements of the book were so lackluster it caused the climax to all short. I waffled back and forth between 3 or 4 stars, but went the higher route in the end as this book definitely kept me engrossed and up till the early hours of the night to read it.

All that said I will definitely read the next book to figure out just what the hell happened to Syn for those few weeks that he completely was off the radar.