Warrior is book three in The Fallen series by PNR author Kristina Douglas and was, at its heart, a meaningful story of love and adventure. Though Warrior lagged in bits I was overall entertained by the adventure and mystical angel worlds.
Plot:
Every little girl imagines, now and then, that she’s a princess held captive in a tower. But Victoria Bellona is almost twenty-five. And that whole fairy-tale scenario? That’s her real life. The drop-dead gorgeous man who rescues her is no Prince Charming. He’s the gruff archangel Michael, and he insists that Tory is the Fallen’s only hope for ending Uriel’s vicious rule. She insists he’s crazy.
According to the prophecy, Michael must marry this frustrating, fascinating creature, bed her, and drink her blood. But their fate is a double-edged sword. If they give in to their urgently growing desires, Tory will die in battle. If they refuse, she will die anyway, and with her, all of mankind. Michael is determined to find another solution when a traitorous kidnapper forces him into a deadly confrontation. Even if he can save Tory from Uriel’s ruthless clutches, will they ever really be together? Or is her fatal destiny—and the world’s—written in stone?
If I had to boil Warrior down to its very bones, you would find it had some impressive shanks. While I thought the story had a little too much fat on the top, there was plenty of meat for the story which had flavor and substance.
Victoria has been bred for one thing: to either be the latest reincarnation of a goddess or be killed on her twenty-fifth birthday. So not so many balloons and cake and more ritual sacrifices. Not long before the big day an angel appears to tell her he's taking her away from the only home she's ever known, and whisking her off to a different realm to be his wedded wifey. No dinner, no dates, zip, niltch, nada. Talk about your whirlwind marriages! And does Victoria have a choice? Not really, because it's basically marriage or death. She goes with the option that lets her keep living, thank you very much!
The story then jumps into a world filled with hunky, drop-dead gorgeous angels and their mates; this is a world without the fairy dust, halos, and ponies, though, it's all about the bloody fight against evil! The hulked out warriors of this saga can absolutely hold it down on the battle front and the ladies, while not as buff, certainly have powers of their own! The action was intense and nail-biting to the very end.
The romance between our lead pair was not an issue at all for me. The characters had a nice amount of build up and romantic connection that was easy to picture. Where I have the biggest issue was the constant back and forth with Michael. One second he's saying damn all the prophecies and the next he's pushing away the gal he's clearly in lust with, and this happens repeatedly thru the story which starts to get old. I would have liked a lot less of this whole aspect and more of what was going on in the world around them.
It's a tough balance putting characters in a vivid world with complex relationships, but what lacked was vital to this story. As someone who was walking in at this point, I really needed a frame of reference to help understand what was going on. At a point, the pair take on an Alice in Wonderland type of scenario and each level that they enter into is crazy and wonderful in equal parts. I was really frustrated with the lack of information on these worlds that they visited, especially the world that was drained of color, I would have liked more details on that place.
I can imagine that future books will give way to more details, but the not knowing was what killed more of my love for these characters. Overall this is a fun book that's worth the read.
Getting 4 '50's era' sheep
KD
