Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark (IAD) Series

IAD is another para ro-no series that includes its own glossary and alternative world (the Lore) hiding in plain sight around all of us humans. Kresley Cole started the series strong, and is losing ground over time, IMO. But I'm sucked into the general plot enough that I will keep reading. The books all suffer the same contrivance - these paranormal species are drawn to each other through a force beyond their control. Thus, they MUST mate, but they may in fact hate each other. It is a good way to ensure you have plenty of sex scenes from start to finish, all while the actual love story unfolds. As a result, many of her romances have some coercive/violent sex scenes that rub me the wrong way. She gets around this by making all the characters super powered so we're not supposed to care too much that they sometimes beat the crap out of each other. All the same, this is the weakest thing about the series (oh, along with the titles. These are some of the worst titles EVER!!!!). Most of them feature this little gang of Valkyrie who scream a lot, drink, swear, and play video games. Fun times.

Series Order

The Warlord Wants Forever - a great kick-off to the series, buried in a collaboration called "Playing Easy to Get." E's husband is still mad for making him pick this up for her at the library. The rest of the stories in the anthology are awful. Nikolai Wroth, the human turned vampire, falls hard for Myst the Coveted, a pretty (lame) valkyrie.

A Hunger Like No Other - Emmaline the half vamp-Valkyrie and Lachlain MacReive, the head of the werewolves meet, do some violence to each other, and then fall in love.

No Rest for the Wicked - Yowza Sebastian Wroth! And Kaderin is pretty fun, too.

Wicked Deeds on a Winter Night - Sexy werewolf meets sultry witch (Bowen & Mari).

Dark Needs at Night's Edge - Another Wroth brother meets his match. Sadly, not great. Featuring Conrad and snoozefest Neomi the ghost.

Deep Kiss of Winter - This is an anthology that includes the story Untouchable - The last Wroth, Murdoch, is mated to an Ice Princess Valkyrie, Daniela. Meh. Not critical to the series, but entertaining.

Dark Desires After Dusk - Cadeon & Holly - demons! Valkyrie who think they're human!

Kiss of a Demon King - Sabine the sorceress & Rydstrom the demon king - HOT HOT HOT. Also, an oddly appropriate title.

Pleasure of a Dark Prince - Lucia the Valkyrie archer, and Garreth MacRieve, another werewolf. This was just ok.

Demon from the Dark - Malkolm, a vemon, and Carrow, a witch, face off in this surprisingly tender romance. I was desperately awaiting the Regin book, and then KC threw this one in the mix. And then it turned out to be way better then the Regin one.

Dreams of a Dark Warrior - the beloved Regin the Radiant, a valkyrie, and Aidan, the Berserker that has stalked her through a number of reincarnations. I anticipated this book for a long time, and was disappointed with how it played out.

Lothaire- by this point, KC is getting stuff into hard cover, and it is too bad that Lothaire had such a huge release and was SO bad. Lothaire is with some human who is possessed by a demoness? Seriously off the rails...

Shadow's Claim - this book starts a series within the IAD series, the Dacian Chronicles. My expectations were low and it definitely did NOT exceed my expectations, so you know what that means. Features Trehan Daciano and Princess Bettina.

MacRieve - Chloe Todd, a human (and then some) and another MacRieve, a tortured and prejudiced werewolf get together and show each other how love can overcome bigotry.

Dark Skye is coming in August 2015 and I'm excited (it takes a long time to shake my loyalty!).  Thornos and Lanthe, characters we've been hearing about for awhile, are finallllllly getting it on. Hopefully some loose story lines will resolve AND we'll get some steamy romance!

E Rating: 4 stars      H Rating: 4 stars

Stand out book: No Rest for the Wicked