TBR Challenge: ‘DEMON ANGEL’, by Meljean Brook

The topic of this month is Something Different (Unusual setting, sub genre you don’t read all the time, etc.)

Published: 2007

Genre: paranormal

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a Series: The Guardians #1

As I do not usually read paranormal novels, I chose one book of this kind for this month’s challenge.

I loved the Iron Seas series; I wanted to try something else written by Brook. In addition, I have read many good reviews about this Guardian series. That is why I bought several books of this series a long time ago. However, I have not read any of them until this moment.

Why? Because I read the short story ‘Falling for Anthony’, (The Guardians #0.5) back in 2016 and gave it two stars. Therefore, these novels I had already bought went down my TBR pile.

Now it is the time to try it three years later. The world building is great. In this same Earth, there are magical creatures –guardians and demons, vampires and nosferatu, some good some evil. The book starts in England, in the Middle Ages, with Hugh as a virtuous knight. It tells you how he met Lilith, a she-demon, how she tempts him and what happens next for him to be transformed into a Guardian, a kind of immortal human/angel.

This new guardian and the she-demon meet repeatedly, kissing and hating each other, and trying –not very hard, indeed– to destroy one another, this century and the next until they have a terrible meeting in Seattle at the beginning of 1990s.

When they meet again in San Francisco in the 2000s, she is still a she-demon, working for the FBI. He is just human, a teacher in a university. One of his pupils disappears and another one is killed, and one way or the other he finds himself as a person of interest in those crimes.

What really happens is that part of the demons have allied themselves with the nosferatu, those terrible creatures, the worst of the worst, and both Lilith, and Hugh, and the Guardians, and some vampire to add diversity to the lot, want to stop them. That is why the meet again, have to act together, more or less, and, perhaps this time they could save each other.

What can I tell you?

The same old song –Paranormal is not my genre. If it is yours, I think you could easily love this book.

I liked the characters, it is wonderfully well written, an amazing first novel indeed and the author knows how to keep the unsolved sexual tension for hundreds of pages, unfulfilled desire oozes from the pages, really. Now and then a spark of very romantic words shone in the darkness of death and suffering.

There is a moment in which Lilith asks him why does he love her so easily, considering the things she has done.

“I wonder that you accept me so easily, knowing what I have been—what I am.

And he answers this way:

“Easily? It has taken eight centuries, a multitude of kisses bargained and stolen, both of us dead and brought back to life, one terribly translated manuscript and thousands of lies for me to accept you.” His voice was light, amused; but she felt the tension in his hands, saw the self-derision in his eyes. “I only wonder that it took me so long.”

Which, actually, sums their story up quite accurately.

Therefore, I could enjoy this book, more or less, thanks to the setting, the characters, and the way it was written.

Nevertheless, as I did not care about the paranormal part, I was not listening to it very carefully, so there were many things I just did not understand. More than once, I asked myself, why does he do this or why does she act that way? I just did not get it. Moreover, in the end, I did not care about what happened, as far as Hugh and Lilith had their happy conclusion, on page 500.

The sexy scenes, by the way, are wonderful, although with these magic creatures you are always wondering –what do they do with the wings, and the horns and the fangs and all those strange accessories to their anatomy. It gives you some answers, I think.

So as I said about Nalini Singh’s book I commented not so long ago, as paranormal is not my genre, I cannot say that this book was perfect for me. However, it was rather enjoyable, so I recommend it to any paranormal fan.

Shall I read more Guardians novels? I guess so. At least I have another two or three somewhere in my TBR pile, and even with my lacklustre enjoyment of this one, I see myself reading something more of that world, as the characters are so powerful and their sexual life quite –interesting.