Noah by Jacquelyn Frank

Let me first start out by saying that I love Jacquelyn Frank for sending out her books in a timely manner. I think that Damien came out about 3 months ago and now Noah. Who's excited? OOoooooh pick me! pick me! Because seriously for those of us who buy a book and read it in a couple of hours and immediately need something new, one book a year just hasn't been able to cut it. I've gone as far as to create a MASSIVE spreadsheet that records all the books I own, and when my favorite authors will have their next books out. So I'm all pins and needles until days like Aug 26 when 3 of my favorite authors simultaneously came out with a book on the same day. So not fair.

Oh and while I'm kinda ranting and/or rambling what is up with these romance authors releasing a new book in hard back and then the paper back 6 months to a year later. That's just mean. I realize that you are trying to make money and I fully support that idea. But it really stinks on the buyer's end. So I'm going to tell you what I do. If I walk into a bookstore, and an author (*cough *cough Christine Feehan) decides to have her new book cost over 20$. ( I know that was a fragment, Miss Shearer taught me right, I just don't have the patience to fix it now.) I take it off the shelf, order myself a coffee, sit down and read the whole thing in 2-3 hours, slide it back on the shelf, and calmly throw away my now empty cup while I walk out the door. And maybe if I'm not pissed off a year later I'll buy the paper back when it comes out.

Ok back to the book of the hour, Noah by Jacquelyn Frank. I really like this book. I've been following the series since Jacob a couple of years ago. She cleverly weaves a world of demons(good guys), Vampires, Shapeshifters, Mistrals, Druids, and Shadowdwellers. Each race had for hundreds of years been fighting each other. Each believed themselves to be a superior race. Subsequently they avoided each other at all costs, which is tragic because it turns out that the species' were destined to be intertwined and intermarried. In previous books Demons and Shapeshifters, Druids and Demons, Shapeshifters and Vampires were all marrying. Because of greedy people in each society their ancestors had created the stigma of inter species relationships. While saving the races at the time, it had doomed almost all of them to live without being Imprinted which is basically finding your soulmate.

Noah is the King of the Demons and as such kicks major Bootay. He is a Fire Demon of immense power who has always been in control until he finds out his lifemate has been killed and sees a vision of it happening. When this happens he breaks all of his rules and vows and kidnaps his niece and friend and make them turn back time so he can grab her out of the past to the present skipping her death. This pisses people off including her. The king tries to give her space and as the telepathic connection grows between them does a better job of keeping out of his mate's head than previous males in the books. So we like him...go Noah!!

We don't really know that much about the heroine, Kestra, in this book. All we know about her previous life is that she had a boyfriend who raped her and killed her family so she doesn't trust obsessive guys and she was mercenary who liked to blow things up. I actually like this approach, because many times authors spend waaaaaaaaay too much time on the character's previous lives. Jacquelyn Frank gave us enough to know that Kestra would have issues with intimacy and the strong unbreakable bond that happens with imprinting. She gets to fight vampires and other icky creatures. Which she does admirably well on her own, but Noah gets to come and save her a couple of times.

The only downside to this book was that I felt it was unnecessarily long ( kinda like this blog entry). The author, i felt, repetitively went into the logic behind each and every action and reaction made by the couple. The same things were said repeatedly with only slight variations. This was a problem I had with her previous books as well.

But all in all, it was an interesting book with fun characters, drama, and more than a little bit of action (wink)! It was a great new installment in the the Nightwalker series.

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