| Series: | Immortals After Dark #7 |
| Pub. Date: | May 7, 2013 |
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster Audio |
| Narrator: | Robert Petkoff |
| Length: | 12 hrs 10 min |
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Kiss of a Demon King takes place contemporaneously (in part) with Dark Desires After Dusk (DDAD), which was the story of Cadeon Woede. This story was also narrated by Robert Petkoff who is one of the few male narrators I enjoy. While his female affectation wasn't great in this story, I still enjoyed his performance. Petkoff does great accents, and I love his wide array of male renderings.
Rydstrom Woede is the dethroned king of the Rage Demons who lost his crown to Omort nearly 900 years ago. During DDAD, Rydstrom was abducted by Sabine, Queen of Illusions, and Omort's sister. Part of the story takes place in the dungeons of Rothkalina, Rydstrom's former home, where he is sexually tortured by Sabine. Then Rydstrom turns the tables on Sabine and is able to escape and take her prisoner back to his home in New Orleans, which is where DDAD ended. So captive turned captor, Rydstrom is full of fire and vengeance in this story. His alpha maleness took quite a hit as a captor, so he has to take back his dominance and show Sabine just what happens when you mess with the King.
Sabine, Queen of Illusions and her sister, Lanthe, have spent their lives trying to survive the best way they knew how. Despite outward appearances, Sabine has managed to keep herself pure to preserve her power levels. (When a sorcerer takes a sorceress, he also steals her power.) This is quite a coup as Omort is in lust/love with her and has only kept his mitts off due to a prophecy about her being the one magnet to Rydstrom's babymaker juice. (Rage demons are unable to ejaculate until they meet their one fated mate... but once that happens, the baby juice flows whether they are servicing their fated mate or any other female.) Sabine has her own agenda and reasons for abducting Rydstrom, though I can't say that hers was any better than that of Omort.
As you can imagine, this is an enemies to lovers story. Heavy emphasis on the enemies. Rydstrom and Sabine seemed to hate each other for the majority of the story. There was a lot sexual torment, mistrust, angst and suspicion. I'm not a big fan of hate sex or revenge sex... so this romance didn't really do it for me. I found Sabine to be, at turns, bitchy and whiny, and she just got on my nerves. The only thing I liked about her was her loyalty to her sister, Lanthe. I liked Rydstrom for the most part, even though I felt his vengeance made him short-sighted. He was also hypocritical once he went all caveman realizing that Sabine was his mate and wasn't letting her go... yet he expected Cadeon to give up his female for a sword. But between Petkoff's performance and my general attraction to the alpha males, I couldn't dislike Rydstrom. I liked seeing his interaction with the Rothkalina refugees and could tell that he was a fair and well-loved ruler of his people.
This book was not as action-packed as DDAD, where Cadeon was on a quest to find the sword which would kill Omort. Rydstrom was more interested in taking his revenge on Sabine rather than worrying about his brother who was off trying to save his kingdom. Rydstrom disappointed me in this regard, particularly when he continued to have negative feelings and expectations for Cadeon.
I felt like Cadeon and Rydstrom's story took place somewhat out of the story arc of the Immortals After Dark (IAD) series. I don't quite know how Rothkalina fits in to whats going on in New Orleans and with the Valkyries. However, it has been so long since I read the earlier books that I will admit my memory is not so fresh and so clean on the details. Hopefully things start coming back to me as I try to get caught up with IAD.
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