Review: Lucinda, Darkly

You know how it is when you read a new author and you don't know how they write, or if you'll even like their book. This is how I approached Lucinda, Darkly. I wasn't certain what I was getting myself into. The promise that I'd "love" Sunny (author) if I were a fan of Laurell K. Hamilton, which I'm not, gave me pause. So, I tread carefully down this dark, dark path.

I was sucked in with the first paragraph merely by the prose. When an author can paint a scene and it grabs you by the ankle and pulls you in and you're there with her characters--that is the sign of an excellent writer. I found moments between my bus runs, hiding somewhere alone, and quiet, so that I could read just a page or two in the 5 or so minutes I had. And during those five or so minutes I was with Lucinda, this blood-drinking, sexy-as-you-please female demon equipped with fangs and deadly claws which she keeps under wraps with her gloves.

I'm not sure when demons became sexy women, or men, but I must have been asleep at my writer's desk. I used to write and read horror fiction, where demons aren't sexy, but if they want sex it's usually pretty graphic, horrific and usually leaves the human dead.

Well, I guess my eyes have been opened. I haven't picked up a book by a horror writer in over a year. Just a bit squeamish, I guess.

Lucinda, Darkly is a tale of a demon-dead, (has no heartbeat, as apposed to one that does). She lives in, of all places, Arizona. Probably because it's hot there, because her actual home is Hell.

Her job is to find a rogue Mone`re warrior and return him to his queen--who will first severely punish him and most likely kill him, and who wants to go through that? Since our demon princess isn't apposed to having sex, she likes it rough, and his blood is more than enticing, there's something about him that brings out the nice in Lucinda.

I enjoyed this tale, and Sunny (no last name), has many other titles in this series to check out. Lucinda is a character from her Mona Lisa novels.

The sex scenes although erotic, flow like absolute, dark poetry. At no time did I feel like I've just walked into something I shouldn't have and wanted to turn around and leave (put down the book merely because it disturbed me), unlike with the Laurell K. Hamilton books. If sex were this way in real life, and men were our sex kittens, I think we'd all be floating on cloud 9.

Sunny's ability to go back and forth from third person to first person with this tale, at first stumped me, but I could see how she used it flawlessly, separating the first person sections from the third person by chapters.

This book does stand alone in the series, and I may have to check out others in the demon princess chronicles series. Very well written for this dark genre. I recommend it, if you like a fantasy that will pull you along with every aspect of surprise an author can pack into a tale of dark fantasy.