Lord of The Vampires Audiobook

By: Gena Showalter

Narrated by: Genvieve Bevier

Published by: Harlequin 08/2011

Hot

Royal House Of Shadows – – Book 1
7hrs and 42 mins

 

Once upon a time… the Blood Sorcerer vanquished the kingdom of Elden. To save their children, the queen scattered them to safety and the king filled them withvengeance. Only a magical timepiece connects the four royal heirs – and time is running out.

Nicolai the Vampire was renowned for his virility, but in a twist of fate “The Dark Seducer” had become a sex slave in the kingdom of Delfina – stripped of his precious timepiece and his memory. All that remained was a primal need for freedom, revenge – and the only woman who could help him.

In her dreams, a wanton vampire called to Jane Parker, drawing her to his dark sexuality and his magical realm. But for a human, all was not a fairy tale in Delfina. Jane was the key to Nicolai’s memory… but exploiting her meant dooming the only mortal he craved.

This is the first book in Royal House of Shadows. The Quartet features new books from some of the biggest names in paranormal fantasy romance: Gena Showalter, Jill Monroe, Jessica Andersen, and Nalini Singh. Listen to a new book in the series every month, from now through November. 

Sample

My Thoughts

First in the Royal House of Shadows series….  And I’m debating if is going to be my last.

I’ve been posting mostly about books I have really enjoyed, and I still have over 150 books that I really have taken pleasure from that I haven’t  reviewed, and I thought, do I really want to take the time it takes to write a review on a book I didn’t like at all?

Then I decided to give my opinion of the books I enjoyed as well as the ones I didn’t.

I was very excited about this book; you see, this series is a collaboration of some of my favorite authors, and  first at-bat was Ms. Showalter with Lord of the Vampires. I do feel I owe to her to mention how much I love her series, Lords of the Underworld, in fact, one of my most anticipated releases of the year is the next book, The Darkest Surrender, which, by the way, is narrated by one of my favorites, Max Bellmore.

In this first entry to the Royal House of Shadows we get the Crown Prince Nicolai’s story. Nicolai has ended up on the sex slave market and has been bought by the Princess Odette of the Kingdom Delfina. Odette takes him home where she and her evil sister use and abuse him, and if that’s not horrifying enough,  they have also taken  all  the memories of his family and kingdom away.  Doesn’t it sound promising?

It’s hard to write anything good about a book when I thought the best part was the prologue. This book quickly degenerated; the world setting was flat, the dialogue was forced, unimaginative and primeval. I found no depth at all in the characters or the story. I felt no connection or chemistry between the protagonists, and in my opinion when all these elements fail in this genre, you are left as if you are just watching an adult movie made for the male demographic, where the sex scenes take center stage without any depth of emotions.  The fairy tale undertone just didn’t work for me.

The book did improve somewhat by the second half when some of the action kicked in, but wasn’t enough to save the book for me.
3.60 · rating details · 282 ratings ·  145 reviews on Goodreads

Narration

Unfortunately, Ms. Bevier delivery did nothing to help a “not so great book” come to life as a better one, as a matter of fact, her approach felt completely wrong; the narration was lacking any emotion, and her portrayal of Nicolai combined with the not so smart, cheesy  and too primitive  dialogue had me thinking the whole time he looked like Bigfoot, and from that point on, this audio book didn’t have a shot with me.

The entire time I felt like I was going from one bad acting scene to the next, and it makes me wonder; could a good narrator deliver a good performance of a mediocre book? Or could mediocre book make a good narrator deliver a bad performance?  I don’t know, I have to listen to other books narrated by Ms. Bevier to be able to form a better opinion on her ability.

I really wished I would have read this book before I listened to it, then I could tell you for sure that this was all about a bad audio delivery.  There are some 5 stars ratings for this book among my reading peers, so this just makes me wonder even more about what really went wrong with this audio book.

So there, I hope that wasn’t too harsh, I still love Gena Showalter, and since this is my first experience with Ms. Bevier, I am going to have to put most the blame on her. (But really, she didn’t have much to work with). My advice, just read this one.. If you have to.