Brook, Meljean - Demon Angel

Lilith and Hugh have been battling over human souls for centuries as demon and Guardian (a cross between angel and human), though neither are allowed to interfere with human will. But after eight hundred years of trying to save people, Hugh grow bitter, decides to fall and finally kill Lilith.

Sixteen years later, there's a new threat in San Francisco, involving demons and nosferatu (sort of like Buffy ubervamps), and Hugh and Lilith have to team up, though he's human, and she's not as she was.

I loved the concept of Lilith a lot, though I was a little sad that she wasn't the Lilith. I also like the insane worldbuilding, all the demons and angels and wars between Heaven and Hell and two people battling over centuries, each growing more disillusioned.

On the other hand, nothing in the latter 300+ pages lives up to the snippets of battles between Hugh and Lilith over 800+ years; once we move from snippets to in-depth prose, Lilith and Hugh both lose some of what made them interesting to me as characters, and a lot of the tension between the two disappeared. Hugh in particular got rather boring; I wanted more disillusionment and scruffy amorality a la Wesley. Lilith stays cool in that she gets to kick a lot of ass, and she's the one who grows the most as a character, but even so, I felt that Brook underplays her demonic-ness and tries too hard to make Lilith morally acceptable.

Also, the sex completely threw me off -- what's the point of having a demonic heroine and a fallen angel hero if he's in control of the sex every time we get description? Lilith does take control, but it's off-scene, which makes it much less effective, and the first major sex scene completely didn't work for me (save one detail, which was made of win).

On the other hand... Hugh writes a book for her! To make up for all the dead white men writing her out of their books! This won me over.

I'm not sure if I'll read more Brook. I'm particularly uninterested in Colin and Savi together, especially because I was rooting for something on Colin and Selah going into the whole captive blood-sucking thing. And I want more demon women!

On the other hand, I enjoyed the worldbuilding a lot, despite feeling like the vampires and nosferatu detracted from the world as a whole, and I am a total sucker for angels and demons. And Brook seems to focus more on the woman in this book, which is rare enough in romances that I'm willing to give her another shot.

Joyce, Lydia - Voices of the Night

Maggie of King Street is an thief trying to get out of the flash life, only she's unfortunately gotten the attention of gang leader Danny O'Sullivan. Meanwhile, Charles Crossham, Baron of Edgington, has just made a Pygmalion bet with his sister, and when he sees Maggie audition at an opera house, he snatches her up.

To my surprise, the book focuses much less on the transformation of Maggie and more on the threats by Danny. I particularly love Maggie; she's hard and grim and cynical, and I really loved her attitude toward sex and money. Charles is fairly boring; he's your standard privileged white male with some attendant angst, but nowhere near as interesting as Maggie.

I'm not particularly sure if this is a romance, or if it's fulfilling for romance readers. I didn't buy the romance between Maggie and Charles, and it's resolved fairly quickly. The rest of the suspense in the book comes from the actual plot, from Maggie's increasing desperation and her attempts to fight for her life. Unfortunately, the plot fails to work at the climax and quickly goes into a completely unbelievable happy ending.

And yet, I will continue reading Joyce because she seems to be writing Gothics -- I am not certain of this, as I haven't read any Gothics outside of Jane Eyre, but they seem to fit rachelmanija's cracktastic posts on Gothics. I love the atmosphere and the grit, and I especially like that Joyce doesn't gloss over the seedy underbelly of Victorian London. In fact, I am fairly sure reading Joyce is to blame for my current mainlining of Sweeney Todd (strange bedtime music, I know, and I wish I had the whole thing).

She, like Brook, seems to focus on the heroine, again something rare enough in romance that it's enough for me to keep reading. She also seems to do very good desperate, scrabbling heroines pitted against powerful heroes, which I like when the book actually acknowledges things like power differentials.

I'm not sure if people in strictly for the romance or strictly for the plot will like this, but if you feel like visiting foggy, gas-lit, crime-ridden Victorian London, this may work.