Deidre Knight: GODS OF MIDNIGHT

Author: Deidre Knight

Series: GODS OF MIDNIGHT (SMR)

Ratings: V4; S4; H2

Publisher and Titles: Signet

      Red Fire (2008)

      Red Kiss (2009)

      Red Demon (2010)

      Red Mortal (2011)

 

     A review of Red Mortal, the newest and last book in the series, follows this brief synopsis of the series so far.

     At the Battle of Thermopylae, the Persians defeated Sparta, with some demon help on their side. King Leonidas and his six top warriors all die in the fighting, but when they reach the banks of the River Styx, they are commandeered by Ares, god of war, to go back into the world as immortal battlers of demons and fighters of wars. In the twenty-first century, this translates into defeating powerful conniving demons who are harming the human population. Also involved is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. In each book, the warriors fights a variety of enemies, and as the series progress, Ares becomes more and more evil, manipulating the warriors to do his bidding. Eventually, the warriors revolt against Ares, and he punishes them for their disobedience in many devious and terrible ways. Each book tells one warrior’s story as he battles the bad guys in modern-day America and finds his soul mate along the way.

     In Red Fire, Ajax meets Shay Angel in 21st century Savannah, Georgia.  Ajax is a morose Warrior who fears that he will never find his true love. Shay is a member of a powerful demon-hunting family. The couple must fight off the monsters that are after Shay because of her magical ability to see through their glamours. Red Kiss continues the story with River Kassandros, Ajax’s servant who has the ability to transform into any weapon. The only problem is that he’s become trapped in the form of a dagger. Emma Lowery finds the dagger on an isolated island off the coast of Savannah and frees River. When River's freedom and powers are threatened, the couple joins the Spartan warriors as they battle Ares and his demonic forces. In Red Demon, Aristos (Ari) Petrakos still hasn’t mastered his unpredictable, newfound magical abilities. In the meantime, he still mourns the death of his true love, Julianna, a century ago. Now, a Djinn demon offers to help Julianna regain her physical form so that she can reunite with Ari, but with the Djinn, there's always a deadly catch somewhere.

     In Red Mortal, we get the long-awaited story of King Leonides (leader of the Warriors) and Daphne (an Oracle of Delphi), who have been mooning after one another throughout the series, but never really getting together. At the beginning of the story, Ares punishes Leonides (Leo) for pursuing his love for Daphne, Ares' half-sister. Ares has always wanted Daphne for himself, even though she hates him and loves Leonides, whom she has watched over for centuries. Unfortunately, Ares has prevented their love by casting a spell that prevented Leonides from seeing or hearing Daphne. Leonides had only one glimpse of Daphne just after the Battle of Thermophlae, but that was enough to make him fall in love with her. In a previous book, Ares' spell was broken, and Leonides and Daphne declared their love for one another. Now, however, Ares has devised an even more dastardly scheme. He removes Leonides' immortality and causes him to age rapidly. The couple must find a way to defeat Ares and remove the curse. They must also deal with the huge amounts of guilt and remorse they both feel about various past events. Leonides must also deal with his gigantic male ego, which causes him to believe that he is now so old and decrepit that Daphne can not possibly love him. Eventually, their relationship deteriorates into a never-ending litany of it's-not-you-it's-me scenes in which they do awful things to each other in the name of love.  Since this is the last book in the series, you know in advance that all the good guys get their HEA endings and the bad guys get their just punishments.

     This is a typical angst-ridden soul-mate romance series, with lovers who always have tragic pasts to deal with. After all, they are thousands of years old, so there have been centuries of time in which many bad things happened to them.  You need to start at the beginning with this series, since a knowledge of events in earlier books is necessary for understanding events in later books.