You can find it here if you missed my last Shadow City article, the Royal Vampire Trilogy.
I am sorry I took so long to get you the next trilogy in the Shadow City series. This time I am reviewing Shadow City Demon Wolf Trilogy. The three books that make up this trilogy are Ruined Mate, Shattered Curse, and Fated Souls. This is like the other two trilogies, this is a spicy fated mate book. The author has said that the trilogies are stand-alone that are part of a series. I usually take that to mean that reading the books out of order is fine and that there shouldn’t be confusion or missing plot points. Christine Feehan does this beautifully. With these, you really do need to read them in order, or you will be missing connections that make the story make sense.
The wonderful thing about having to read this in order, you get to watch the characters grow in some cases, and it doesn’t stop after their three books. The way that Jen L. Grey is doing this, we get to keep seeing the characters we fell in love with, even if they aren’t the ones in the spotlight. That being said, we see the core group in this trilogy too. Griffin and Sterlyn are there with Killian and Sierra, and it wouldn’t be a party without Rosemary. Ronnie and Alex, and his sister Gwen are back too. Of course, Ronnie is back, this trilogy is about her sister.
The background characters are there too. We see Ezra, Azbogah, Erin, Breena, Diana, and Rosemary’s parents (It is a pain to go look up how to spell their names every time). I supposed Gwen is more of a background character than part of the core group. She is genuinely supportive of the core group.
In the Royal Vampire Trilogy, we meet Ronnie’s sister Annie. In fact, Annie was the reason Ronnie even went to Shadow Terrace. If you check out the link above, I will tell you all about it in the article. However, needless to say, Ronnie got Annie away from the vampire that was using her as a blood bag, and in the last fight with the demon that wanted Ronnie, Cyrus, Sterlyn’s twin, carried Annie to safety.
At the beginning of the trilogy, Annie is plagued by nightmares that she can’t hold onto upon waking, but they make her cry out in the night. She looks rough and is drowning while trying to look and act like everything is ok. When a vampire attacks Annie to make a point to the King and Queen of the vampires (Alex and Ronnie), Cyrus saves her. She is once again being pulled into the supernatural world. Which is bad because she is human and at a huge disadvantage physically. See, this is why I say read them in order.
After the vampire attack, Cyrus, Eliza (Annie’s foster mom), and Annie decide for Annie’s safety, she should go back to Shadow Ridge with Cyrus. Annie is both ok with it and a little uncomfortable with it. She is drawn to him in a way that she never wanted to be drawn to someone. She can also tell that Cyrus has his own demons that he fought. When Annie and Cyrus stop fighting their connection, they mark each other and find out, Holy Shit, Annie is a wolf! She is not a regular wolf, though, she is a demon wolf, the opposite of Sterlyn. So where Sterlyn is the strongest on the night of the full moon, Annie is strongest on the new moon. She is also promised to a demon. To further complicate things, it seems, someone on the Counsel is trying to take Annie too while looping back around to trying to capture Sterlyn again too. The mastermind wants the Yin and Yang of wolves.
There is a lot that goes on in this book. Cyrus is in charge of the silver wolf pack, and they are making it hard for him. Well, some are. The pack is not his, his. Sterlyn is still the alpha wolf, and Cyrus is the beta. Their uncle, Bart, was the alpha of this pack. Unfortunately, he died. Bart’s beta, though, is still alive and acts as Cyrus’s beta. Because the demon wolves want Annie back, they attack the silver wolves. Four of the wolves in the silver wolf pack break off of the group and do their own thing and attack the demon wolves before everyone was ready, which led to their capture. Which in turn led to Cyrus’s capture. This then led to Annie’s capture, though admittedly, hers was more controlled and was to go rescue Cyrus and the others. Plus, some of the political stuff with the council, which I get why the group hates dealing with it.
In this trilogy, we are back to more physical action. Annie, having worked with the children in the foster care system, is a much more sensitive soul, so she is great for helping Cyrus and members of the silver wolf pack shovel emotional rubble. She makes great points and is so good for Cyrus. Both of them help calm and soothe the other when stress is high. I love them together. They kind of remind me of me and my hubby broken but perfect for each other.
The story is still good. I mean, I keep reading, right? Some of this one was hard to get on board with. Like her sister, Annie seems to have grasped fighting with supernatural speed. Annie was never a scrapper, but she can kill demon wolves in her wolf form within a month of getting her wolf? Yeah ok. Ronnie was similar. She wasn’t a fighter, and she learned quickly how to fight with a dagger and use stealth to glean information. Neither received training prior to this. I don’t think just ‘tapping into my wolf” is going to teach you how to fight like that. It is instinct for me to move out of the way of something at me. Training will tell me how to move effectively during a fight. Sterlyn makes sense to fight well, she grew up training. Also, Sterlyn is perfect in every way. She needs to have some flaws or weaknesses besides the new moon.
The next trilogy in the Shadow City series is the Dark Angel Trilogy, and I will be reading it. I figure I have come this far (nine books in), I might as well finish. I think there is one more trilogy after Rosemary’s story. I hope the last one is for Killian. Goddess knows he deserves to find his fated mate. Or maybe Rosemary and Killian are fated, but I doubt that. Look at the trouble with silver wolves now.
What do you think so far? Is this a series that you might try? Or have you read it? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, have fun storming the castle!
