Ah, Garreth and Lucia. If we were waiting for Murdoch and Danii's Ice Capades for years, we had been waiting for Garreth and Lucia's for a millennia-- they were arguably the first foreshadowed couple in the series before everything blew up, seen in the Val Hall dungeon as Lachlain tried desperately to break out and get to Emmaline in A Hunger Like No Other.
Have I mentioned I prefer Lykae to Vampires? I mean, those Wroth brothers are something else, but they have nothing on the brothers MacRieve and their uber-sexy, no-longer-heartbroken cousin Bowen (though I think Bowen is a hero much helped by the likability of his heroine. Bowen might be a tool, but as long as he's Mariketa's tool, it's fine.) I mention this because there's something extra special sexy about the way Cole writes her Lykae as opposed to the way she writes her vamps-- they all have their The One (Brides, Mates, whatev), and all become physically affected when they find them. Not just sexually affected; the vamps get blooded (heart beat, more physical strength), while the Lykae's Beast gets a little more tempermental and starts running around and growling mine instead of... well, just growling.
Kresley Cole has put a lot of thought into the psychology of the Beast-- how it's a primal entity almost separate from the Lorean it inhabits, taking control almost without any thought or choice from the, er, carrier. The Beast's mate is everything-- he will literally follow her to the ends of the Earth to ensure that she is safe, or, if she's in no danger, to ensure that he can continually get in her pants. The full moon in Cole's mythology does not portend a beastly turn-- that can happen at any time-- but rather a frenzy of sex for those mated, and a potential frenzy of violence for those not. The Beast can appear at any time depending on the danger and threat level surrounding the Lykae, but he is guaranteed to appear and seek his mate at the full moon.
Garreth and Lucia, like all of them, are beset by one problem after another that Keeps Them Apart. Naturally there is a lot of fooling around in the forest, lots of arguing that ends in fooling around in the forest, and lots of Nucking Futs Nix running around and confusing the hell out of everyone.
I enjoyed Garreth and Lucia's story more than I thought I would-- when the story opened with Lucia's binding to an ancient god of... something (I don't know what, but whatever it is it's GROSS), and consequentially her flight to Skathi, who turns her into a mythical archer, threatened with paralyzing pain if she misses her target-- I was a little leery of the fictional mythological infodump. Fortunately this resolves itself and we are able to coast along on what we already know for most of the rest of the book.
One day in modern times Garreth is playing rugby with the demons near Val Hall (as you do... I think this would have been a perfect opportunity for some pre-bound Cadeon and Rydstrom banter, but hey... I have a weakness for demons almost as strong as my weakness for Lykae. So I'm biased. Whatever.) He sees Lucia and he's done. Down. For. The. Count. We kind of already know what happens next. He busts into Val Hall while Lucia is agonizing over a missed shot, helps kill the vamps who are trying to take down the house (in search of the already missing Emmaline... but you already knew that), then they use Lucia to bait Garreth back so they can in turn use him as bait to get Lachlain to bring Emma back.
And we all know where that ends up.
It's not until the 1/3 mark that we start to actually get fresh story, starting a year after the Lachlain-Emma love connection and finding our hero and heroine on a boat in the Amazon, searching for an aptly named Dieumort. Those of you who don't speak French can go look that up. I'll wait.
Problems ensue, blood is spilled, Lucia and Garreth finally consummate things on the forest floor (3 for 3 on first sexorration in the woods for our Lykae! Woot!). They yell, they make up, they fight vamps, they Find The Treasure. Happily Ever After (though only after some minor "I thought you were dead" torment. Really, it was minor, for which I can't decide if I'm sad or happy-- if this was a Judith McNaught, he would have thought she was dead for 50 pages. But this isn't Judith McNaught, and that's why we like it. I'm just saying a little more torment wouldn't have been out of order. Sigh).
A couple of things: At a certain point Lucia is held with a knife to her throat by a vamp and Garreth... is almost unaffected. Now that's not true, but let's review how other Lykae reacted when their mates were threatened, shall we? Lachlain, as I recall, beheaded two vampires and a demon hybrid when all they did was cause Emma to scream and run away. Mariketa the Awaited was kidnapped by Colombian mercenaries (silly humans!) and Bowen destroyed everyone in their compound (not to mention the poor bastard whose stray punch hits Mari in Dark Needs at Nights Edge). Lucia is held with a knife to the throat by one of his mortal enemies and Garreth growls... "Let her go"? Disappointing. And honestly, a little against character. I get that he'd want to be careful of her, but come on. He didn't even let the Beast out. I'm not sure this goes along with anything written previously-- or even in this book-- to describe a Lykae's reaction to his mate in imminent danger.
Thinking about it, maybe neither of these plot points (the threat to Lucia and Garreth's convince-ment that she's dead) needed anything more than a bit of Garreth's perspective. Cole, who rocks socks at writing the male perspective, suddenly stops writing it in the last bit of the book.
The ending of the book was intriguing, addressing all of my previous concerns about where this series is going. A small point though: By the end Regin the Radiant has been kidnapped by who Nix foresees to be "[someone I can't remember], the CIA or a berserker." Now the berserker assumption is a fine one considering that there has been one stalking her for centuries, but by the epilogue it is clear that it is not a berserker who has Regin and a number of other characters (including Carrow the Incarcerated, who is, we're told, the heroine of this summer's Demon from the Dark) for reasons unknown. These are good guys and bad guys, kidnapped on what is still the eve of the Accession.
Since Nix is never wrong, either we have a seriously pissed off berserker army, or the CIA is involved. Note to Kresley Cole: I'm OK with you taking a page out of Joss Whedon's playbook and bringing in The Initiative. Just don't screw it up, got it?
Finally, I'm not even close to breaking up with this series, but I have to confess that since Cadeon's book (Dark Desires After Dusk) I have been less and less thrilled and psyched and ohholyhell-ed by the characters and books. Maybe it's the re-hashing of past events because we have to backtrack for the perspective of our "current" heroes. Maybe this is all just taking too long. Maybe I'm tired of the Valkyrie getting to have all the fun. So, Note II to Kresley Cole: I love you, and I love everything you do. Could we maybe do one IAD book per year and save the other one for... something else? Like a contemporary? You haven't done a straight contemporary yet. Or maybe that rogue Sutherland cousin who we last saw heading to the West Indies? You remember the Sutherlands, don't you? They put you on the freaking map. Please consider going back to your roots.
Vote Nix for Goddess 2010!
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