Implementation of mythology. Lack of proofreading. Hades raised a brow. Employ them. The terms of bets and contracts. The audiobook narrator. View all 11 comments. Jan 17, Claude's Bookzone marked it as dnf. She'd allowed Hades, the God of the Underworld, to instruct her, to touch her, to play her and question her. And he had won. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that there was a side of her, a side that she'd never known existed until tonight, that wanted to run back inside, find him, and demand a lesson in the anatomy of his body.
View all 7 comments. In this episode, we will discuss the book "A Touch of Darkness" and how disappointing it was. Please, take a seat and remember: my review contains spoilers, so watch ahead! You've been warned! Said that, let's start. Y'all probably know that I love Hades and Persephone retelling, so, I was excited for read this book. Also, the hyp 2. Also, the hype on bookstagram and booktok was really big, so I said "why not, Ale?
You love this retelling with your life, so, let's give it a try. Huge mistake from me trust in the hype over a book, as if I have never been in this place before if you want references here is my shelf big hype, big lie so you can have an idea of a few of my big disappointing and regrets in this life, lol. You could say that I've learnt my lesson, but I guess we'll never know. In fact, Ale never learnt the lesson. So, Persephone is this not-like-the-other-girls girl, who's unique, different and speshul.
She and her friend Lexa go to the Nevernight, a cassino owned by Hades and that is popular bc he makes bargains with mortals and according to the rumors, he takes away their souls and is a ruthless god. Persephone finds herself playing cards with the God of the Underworld instead of actually looking for her best friend, and after that, she leaves her, lol. Hades touches Persephone and leaves a dark mark on her skin, so, she goes back to Nevernight and as she lost playing cards with him, they have a bargain: she has to create life in the Underworld in six months or she will live there forever.
There was no plot. The "plot twists" were stupid and you can easily know what's gonna happen. Aphrodite just appears like 2 times and that's it. I wanted to kick and scream so fucking loud. It was disgusting. But of course, it's excused because "there's attraction between them".
Persephone couldn't make a decision for herself and it seemed like she was waiting for others to solve all of her problems, like magic.
She has no braincells and the way she was portrayed was weird and??? It made no sense. I mean, she's a virgin and it's like she thinks she's better than the others just because of that.
Persephone has no personality, beside "being" a journalist btw, the way she wrote all of her articles being subjective didn't appeal to me like that's the way a journalist would act, but since I don't know a lot about journalism, I won't talk about it , being horny and don't use her braincells at all. The only thing to which I can relate with Persephone is her relation with her mother, Demeter. I for sure know how's the life with a strict mother trying to decide for you and that stuff.
Don't get me wrong again: I love my mum with my entire life, I just wish she had given me more freedom to discover the world by my own long time ago, lol. So, yes, I know how that works. The girl on girl hate was awful and childish. I get that Minthe was jealous of Persephone, but that Persephone wished since the exact moment she met Hades that she wasn't there, and basically made her see like "the other woman" made me sick.
Please, let's stop this. I guess the author had a good plot, but didn't know how to develop it, or the characters. In ao3 or even wattpad there are good Hades and Persephone retellings.
Hades was like "yeah, you have power and I will make it surge and shape it because you know, we're predestinated you're mine". Yeah, I'm tired of toxic males. The smut was fine??? It wasn't bad, but it was the only trait that Hades and Persephone had. They had a lot of sexual tension, but I didn't see the romance there so, this book goes to the "this shit has no romance" shelf. The other characters had no personality Hades' personality was whisky and Persephone's was being horny After what happened in La Rose with Adonis, Lexa and Jaison were dating too quickly, but not for the reasons y'all think, but because he appears out of nowhere.
This book made no sense to me, it lacked of sense, plot, personality for the characters and many more things. Unfortunately I won't continue this series. It was a waste of time and emotions. If you followed me through my updates, you could see that this was a rollercoaster.
Not worth the hype tbh. View all 6 comments. Mar 31, Georgia rated it did not like it. First, I just want to give a shout-out to Bookstagram and BookTok for really doing me dirty on this one. With that said I did not enjoy this book. Profanity, spoilers, and general f First, I just want to give a shout-out to Bookstagram and BookTok for really doing me dirty on this one. Profanity, spoilers, and general frustration to follow; you have been warned.
Grammar first. And now the syntax. Everything read in a fragmented manner, and I constantly found myself re-reading passages because they were awkward or difficult to understand due to how they were written. World-building For a book deriving much of its material from the lush atmosphere of Greek mythology, A Touch of Darkness had very weak world-building. Characters: I really, really wanted to like Persephone. And I actually did like Persephone at first, but very quickly found her character to be wildly inconsistent and frustrating.
Though slightly more interesting—probably due to the mystery surrounding him—I overall found Hades to be a weak male lead. So, anyways, here goes. Being that the contract between Hades and Persephone is what sets the story into motion—and I guess is, therefore, the plot? Alas, we did not get that, and after breaking most of the tension of the story by having Hades and Persephone get together—way too early in the book, in my opinion—St.
Clair just seemed to be throwing in any little conflict she could think of to keep the number of pages growing. In addition, Hades had announced that Persephone was the inspiration behind the Halycon Project chapters earlier. However, Persephone remarks that the photos getting out and confirming the relationship would be damaging for two reasons: Demeter finding out and attaching a label to a relationship seemingly built from a contract in which Persephone feels she is a prisoner.
Yes, the photos would confirm Hades and Persephone are together, but, honestly, does Demeter need confirmation to imprison her daughter?
What really irritated me about this subplot, though, was that Persephone decides to not just go to Hades right away. The second example of St. I think maybe if St. The sex: Yes, I really am dedicating a whole section of this review to the sex in this book because… reasons. However, in A Touch of Darkness , pretty much every sex scene felt weirdly rushed in both the sense of not taking up a lot of page-time, but also in descriptions. I just feel like since this is first and foremost a steamy romance read, then why not commit to going all out on the sex scenes?
The romance: Perhaps the biggest let down for me with this book is that I really never reached a point where I actively cared about Hades and Persephone getting together. It was during these moments that her connection to him grew, and she found she felt far more passion for him than she ever had before. Clair could have just made Persephone a blogger or freelance writer and it honestly would have made way more sense.
Hecate explaining to Persephone that she bought life to the Underworld and within Hades was just…odd. I started delving into Lore Olympus midway through completing this book because I wanted more Hades and Persephone content in my life. I only remark on these because, to my knowledge, these are dynamics and elements unique to Lore Olympus and are not derived from actual Greek mythology. View all 21 comments.
There was literally no plot to speak of whatsoever, but I somehow found myself absolutely immersed and unable to tear myself away. I sat and read for like 3 hours straight!!
There's nothing particularly special or nice about the writing, or the characters for that matter, but the way that St. Clair was able to write the slow burn was That being said, the ending really fell flat for me - it seemed unnecessarily rushed and a touch too I don't know.
Far more easily resolved than I had expected. Overall, there was something that really charmed me about this book and I simply wasn't able to put it down. The romance was cute in a way that reminded me of Elide and Lorcan from Throne of Glass. Side note: I have no intention to read the second book because a I don't need a second book, b the synopsis is making me hate it, and c I usually end up hating the second book in these kinds of series this is a fact, proven by a whole shelf of these sorts of books.
View all 4 comments. View all 13 comments. Jul 13, Lucy Tonks rated it it was ok. I went into this book with fairly low expectations considering the things I've heard about it and whta I tend to enjoy in books, but this was really a surprise. Persephone is the goddess of Spring only by title. All her life she has been hidden by her mother, but when she moves to New Athens, she hopes to leave a simple life disguised as a mortal journalist.
But things don't go as plan as she ends up meeting Hades at his own club and struc 2. But things don't go as plan as she ends up meeting Hades at his own club and strucking an impossible bet with him: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever. The bet does more than to expose her failures as we see her love for the God of the Dead grow.
So as you can tell, this is a Hades and Persephone retelling. First of we need to be clear on one thing. This book is New Adult, not Young Adult. Please don't go into it, thinking anything else as you are in for a big surprise.
Anyway, this was an interesting take on the greek myth so many of us know. Hades and Persephone's myth is probably the one that intrigued me the most as a child when I was first exploring Greek Mythology and I'm always ready to try and find more books centered around it. The characters weren't that bad bit I cannot say I don't have actual complaints about them. Persephone could be annoying at times and her character didn't really get that much development.
Actually, she didn't get any at all. I would not call that development. Her personality traits just changed at some point through out the book without actually seeing that gradually happening. Hades was an interesting character. I believe I liked him more than Persephone as there was just more to his character than hers and I actually had a bit of fun learning more about him through the book. I cannot say he was well written because he really was not.
None of the characters were actually well written as we all the characters had a lot of steriotypes to them and were not crafted that well at all. Take, Lexa, Persephone's best friend, for example. Her character is what you would call a basic supportive character in a romance. There was nothing original about her and I've found characters just like her in other books.
The romance was okay, but I could have done without that much smut. I just found it so cringe at times, but honeslt that might have been my dislike of smut in general and not actually the book's fault, so really I'm not the best at saying what is good or bad about it.
I would have liked more developement for the romance to be honest at this point I think I would have liked more development in the whole book and it actually felt a bit insta love. Lacking the development is probably what made it insta-lovey for me and I really don't understand how some people can refer to this as a slow burn. The dynamics between Demeter and Persephone were intrigueing for the most part, but they weren't anything new. When I read retellings of different stories, I like seeing how the author adds their own touch to it and changes some of the stuff we originally knew.
It was a bit tiring seeing the same thing in their relationship and considering how many new things Clair added to her story, I believe she coudl have done something so much better with this. Don't expect really finding a plot. There is something there that you coudl call a plot but it's honestly pretty bad and it doesn't really deserve that much attention from me.
I gotta say I hated the subplot with Adonis as it felt really unecessary. To me it felt like it was just added to the novel only for teh author to be able to explain the sudden change in Persephone which honestly it didn't. It was just annoying and added nothing to the story. Also Aphrodite's bet with Hades was once again soemthing taht felt very unecessary to me. It was just added there for more conflict between our two main characters.
Why do romance novels need all that stupid conflict that is always resolved way too fast? In here it jsut felt like high school drama when both characters are supposedly adults. There isn't any worldbuilding there. I'm not even sure what genre of fanatsy this could be categorize as high fantasy, urban fantasy or historical fantasy. Considering everything is this book comes from Greek Mythology, I believe the author thought everyone who will read her book knows about it and just decided to not bother with it.
The same with the magic system which was pretty confusing in the beginning. A bit of an explanation would have been nice, thank you.
The writing style is really not that good. I was able to actually ignore it since I was listening to the audiobook so I cannot exactly comment on it. I managed to ignore it and probably if I read this book physically I wouldn't have been able to do that.
Surprisingly, I liked this better than Lore Olympus. I know a lot of people love it, but that Webtoon was just not my cup of tea and I just had much more fun with this novel. But this is just based on my enjoyment.
If we were to actually compare the storylines and characters of both of them, objectively speaking Lore Olympus is better. Even though I had fun, I have no intention of reading the sequel. From the sypnopsis it does not sound like something I would enjoy and I really have no wish of trying my luck again as I doubt all would turn out well a second time. Good thing this book could actually be considered a standalone and i don't actually feel the need to know what happens next.
Even though I had fun I'm not sure I could actually recommend this book to anyone. There are people who will enjoy this book and people who will not. It's really up to you to decide on which side you are on.
No scents of unfamiliar cologne or sweat found my nose. A quick glance at the wind-up clock on the bookshelf showed it was A. The cat hissed and leapt down from the bed to stand next to me.
The guttural thrum reminded me of the approach of a distant trash truck. The sound faded away after a moment, leaving only the wind and snow beating against the windows. There are a lot of windows in my loft, formerly a factory in the lower downtown of Denver, called LoDo by the locals. I renovated the place so that the old, thick industrial glass would rise above the floor on the west side for two full stories.
Rain and snow hitting the wall of glass tend to set up a rhythmic vibration that becomes white noise after years of hearing it. Blank stayed with me, crouched low next to my feet as I descended the staircase to the main level, carrying my little circle of light. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, while I was still surrounded by walls that gave some measure of defense, I opened up my senses.
Being psychic has advantages at times, and this was one of them. I can touch minds that are nearby, can communicate telepathically with family and loved ones in danger.
But mostly, as much as I hate it, I can sense where the Thrall are. Though the whole Denver hive should be up and about at this time of night, I was met with a smooth, flat wall of… nothing. Either my ability to touch the hive was being blocked by the queens, or they were holed up, sleeping out the storm like sane people.
I played volleyball… beach volleyball. Warm sun, soft sand. So, I was betting it was option number one, which was a bad thing. The wind stopped for a few moments, the calm before the next blast of snow. A steady trickle of water that was like a dripping faucet, but more hollow. It seemed to come from ahead of me, but there was nothing along the wall of windows that had pipes, except the dripper lines in each of my potted plants for when I go on trips.
I suppose the sudden cold could have split the plastic hoses. It made me sigh, because it would be a mess to clean up if it was in more than one place. The tension in my muscles was replaced with a weary resignation. My brother Joe called me Jungle Kate for the sheer volume of greenery … well, he did back when he was speaking to me, anyway.
The last time he spoke to me was at his wedding months ago. It was just a tense thank-you in response to my congratulations, and only after being prodded in the ribs by his new bride. He even returned the gift Tom and I had given them, unopened.
That had brought on the first of many tears. The power chose that moment to flicker on. Both Joe and the Thrall were instantly purged from my brain by the horror that made me gasp and Blank hiss and dive for cover, almost simultaneously.
My wall of windows was a waterfall—literally. Hot Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton by Laurell K. Hot Into The Darkness by L. Ryan by L. Great book, Touch of Darkness pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Into The Darkness by L.
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