Whitley’s review of Wild Darkness (Bound by Magick #4) by Lauren Dane
The bombing that almost killed Owen witch Molly Ryan has worsened the tensions between the humans and the Others. While the Others desperately campaign to prevent the passage of a law that would strip their people of all rights, the human separatists develop an agenda far worse than anyone imagined. With her position more precarious than ever, security head Helena Jaansen finds herself relying more and more heavily on her personal guard, Faine Leviathan, and, despite her better instincts, falling more deeply into the intimate connection that they share.
As Helena and Faine’s explosive passion grows, a deadly separatist plot is discovered, one which could bring ultimate destruction for the Others, and war breaks out between the two opposing factions. With the Others forced into hiding, Helena must overcome her fear of repeating past failures to save her people—and her heart—before it’s too late…
I came into this series at the end (by accident, oops!), but the book was good enough that it kept me hooked anyway. It had enough explanations for a newcomer to follow along without being so overbearing with them as to bog down the story, which is a pretty impressive balance to strike. Although it pretty much has to get introductions out of the way fast, there’s so much story to get through!
This plot was right up my alley: political machinations told by someone from the sidelines. We get enough of the politics to know what’s going on, but since Helena isn’t a politician herself, when those get too boggy we get to bounce off to something more interesting. Not that we need to do that often, because whole plot line of magical civil rights activism and backlash and riots and speech-i-fying is pretty exciting in its own right. Not to mention I found the antagonists in this novel toed the line of being heinous without being so cackling that they felt unreal. I hated those guys, but I always believed they were acting like real people might really act. Bravo!
The setting was interesting, if a bit bland. We could have been reading X-men fanfiction if you just changed the terms around, because there wasn’t much to set it apart from “real life” besides “there’s special people around.” Which isn’t really a bad thing, it kept everything pretty tight and focused on the action. Helena is my dear, dearest, darling little baby for very professional flavor of badass. As someone who has worked in security before, I always appreciate when safety measures aren’t thrown out the window with the excuse of “I can handle anything, I’m the heroine!” Helena can kick ass and do it within the rules and then explain to you why the rules are there for a good reason so quit you’re bellyaching.
But who cares about that, what about romance, right? And there’s where this book falters a little bit. Because as much as I did love the main characters (and do truly, madly, deeply love Helena), and even though they did have good chemistry together, I just didn’t buy their end-state romance. The A-plot was too big and too busy and on too short a timeline for them to do “fall in love and get married.” I could very easily see some explosive sex after and long and lusty bout of sexual tension all in the name of stress relief, sure. Maybe some feelings thrown in to make life more complicated, okay. But every time Helena said “I’m too busy with all these KKK wannabes trying to kill us to make a new relationship,” I was nodding along right with her. The book didn’t leave much room for more than stress-relief sex, either, so when more got shoved in it felt quite rushed. Which is a shame, because “riots + sex” would have been a perfectly fine outcome.
Rating: 4 out of 5
The Series:
This title is available from Berkley Sensation. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.
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