Guest Review: Demon Blood by Meljean Brook

Long before she was transformed into a Guardian and trained to fight demons, Rosalia knew darkness all too well. Raised by a demon, Rosalia learned to guard her heart–and her soul–until she found a man worthy of her love.

After losing everything to the lies of a demon, Deacon lives only for revenge–and is taken aback when Rosalia offers to help. A vampire who has nothing–who is nothing–isn’t worthy of her attention. But Rosalia wants to do more than just look, and the explosive need between them can’t be held in check. And when Deacon’s vengeful quest creates a dangerous alliance of their enemies, she will be his only hope…

Deacon has issues. He screwed over the Guardians in the last book rather than asking for their help – but he truly felt that they couldn’t do anything to save his vampire community. Now that his community is gone he’s on a rampage to kill every demon on earth. He wants them gone but he really doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. On top of that no other vampires, or Guardians for that matter, want anything to do with him. While he was previously a respected leader he is now less than nothing to the vampire communities in Europe.

Rosalia is on a mission as well. She’s determined to kill all the demons on earth, sound familiar? Only she needs Deacon’s help to do it. But Rosalia has an ulterior motive when it comes to Deacon. She feels that she needs to pay him back for a kindness that he doesn’t even remember from 90 years earlier. Rosalia manages to appeal to Deacon in a way that he agrees to work with her but it’s not all a bed of roses. Rosalia is a manager. She loves to manage people and she has a hard time letting go of control. Though Deacon hates being managed he is having a hard time thinking that he’ll eventually have to let go of Rosalia.

As usual Meljean Brook gives us a great story. Demon Forged (the previous book in the series) had a huge amount of information in it but it was done so incredibly well that at no time did you ever think it was just too much. With Demon Blood Meljean has continued the story but in this book she focused more on the romance between the h/h.

While I didn’t really love either character to death I saw good in both of them. Rosalia might have been a manager and control freak but she was absolutely brilliant. Planning the demon and nephilim destruction down to the minutest detail. Deacon was a bit harder to appreciate but his strength and the small views of kindness were worth reading about.

The climax of the story was a bit of a disappointment for me I must admit. I’m not sure if it was because of the build up prior to it happening or what but I was a bit let down that it wasn’t more. More what? I’m not sure I can say.

Now from reading my thoughts on the characters and the climax you may think that I didn’t like the story – not true. Meljean Brook has an amazing way with words and I found myself turning pages as fast as I could so I could just read more. Demon Blood is a very good book that I definitely recommend.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place.

This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here or here in e-format.