Reifu Rising, where have you been all my life, during the times of Twilight when I started despising vampire stories? How much I needed you then. Or during the times I started getting bored with SciFi space romance?
I don't know how this book managed but it took everything that annoyed me in a book: vampires, spaceships, religious bigotry and transformed it in the most pleasurable of reads. Throw in a hunky vampire prince and a human slave caught up in twisted love hate romance and you had me howling.



The book has many flaws though and sometimes those flaws didn't make the book a page turner so it took me a little while until I finished it. Many reviewers complain about the ending. What I complain about is this: the world building was fascinating, the plot was spread like a spider's web, there were political intrigues the likes of the War of the Roses, so why, why, why:
1. the exciting things happened "off camera"? e.g. the coup in Neminora
2. was the ending so abrupt? I've spent pages and pages building the plot, getting excited and at the end it was all a little anticlimactic. I felt like I've been playing Monopoly for a week expecting in the end to reach Boardwalk and purchase it, but I ended up on a poorer neighborhood instead when Boardwalk was sooo damn close. A fight, even a little skirmish would have done the trick. Loki mangling a bunch of guards doesn't count.
3. were the main ilthy villains as dumb and as complex as two sunken sea rocks? They acted like petulant babies the entire book. From the moment they first appeared on the pages I said to myself, "Xia Xia, watch out for these two. They're shady as funk!"



Oh well, at least we didn't see much of them during the book...
...which now brings me to the good stuff. This book was really complex from a plot, word building and character development. The main characters were great for each other and the relationship grew immensely as the book progressed. The writing flow is also something I enjoyed very much.

Yes, true, there were some torture scenes, a little bit of rape and there was the pretty grin of Stockholm syndrome making its presence known, but in comparison with other things I've read in my life these were miiiiiiiild.

Count me as a fan of Reifu Rising, 4 stars for Loki and Sid. May their voyages be filled with wonder.

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