I was drawn in by the premise of a heroine falling in love with the villain.Guess if I was dissapointed...Confusing narrative,characters who never come alive and lots of other problems this book has.

Id never recommend this to anyone.Period.
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96 points, 5 stars!
Warning: Cliffhanger (NOOOO! GIMME MORE!)

Quote:

Three more years had passed in her search for an end to the war, but she had found it. One isolated path, one frail possibility, offered hope. She had walked that road, over and over, looking for any other answer.

Review:
My co-blogger, Strix, started this book and told me it was everything I have been looking for. So I can only thank her, because I loved reading this so much. I didn't want to sleep once I started.

The premise of this series is that there is a light side, and there is a dark side, and they've been at war since they met for the first time. Which is also when they created life. Very common premise for an epic fantasy series. However, what made this unique, and for me absolutely perfect, is that the First of the Light side went looking in the future to figure out how to end this never ceasing war. She found one path towards the end of fighting, but she knew she would have to sacrifice to see this future play out. She just has to believe - in both herself and her pawns.

Enter Erin, the First's granddaughter. We meet her as she is just a little girl. Her entire life has been war, and all she wants to do is fight for her side as soon as she is able. You watch Erin grow up through Into the Dark Lands. And you learn what the First means by having to sacrifice to see the future without war come to be.

In a lot of ways, it is really hard for me to figure out just what to say and how much in this review. The first half of the book and the second half of the book feel so utterly different. In the first half, it is mostly Erin just growing up in a world where they are always, always at war, wanting to be a warrior herself. It is slow and it is deliberate. I liked being with her during this time, because it really sort of hurt to be her.

Then there is the second half of the book, where there is so much to talk about, but is in such a different place I can't bring myself to do so. That ending, though? My, what a cliffhanger. I need more. ( )

I read this one because I it was described to me as high fantasy with a good, very dark romance. The first half of the book traces the heroine's childhood and early adulthood - growing up as a high-caste warrior and healer for the God of Light. The novel jumps from key moment to key moment so we get a sort of highlights reel of everything that happened during Erin's early years.

The meat of the novel - the Beauty and the Beast tale - gets started about halfway through, when Stefanos, the #1 guy on the dark side, captures Erin. He's a Darkwalker and he feeds on pain and suffering, but thus far the Darkwalkers haven't been able to feed on people like Erin, who's blood is linked so tightly to the God of Light as to be unpalatable and not very nourishing. Stefanos decides that he's going to figure out how to do the impossible and feed on Erin, so he takes her prisoner instead of killing her.

The romance itself is, indeed, a very dark one but fairly satisfying. Because of some tragic incidents in Erin's past, she's not afraid of dying - but she's very afraid of falling in love, so Stefanos, who thrives on pain and fear, finds himself drawn to emotions to which he's not generally exposed. Tenderness and consideration don't come naturally to him, but then, he's not one to fret or worry; he accepts his change of heart and keeps his talons sharp by punishing anyone who tries to question his soft spot for Erin, which is most everyone.

So I enjoyed the romance but two things about [[ASIN:193210058X Into the Dark Lands (The Sundered, Book 1)]] really frustrated me.

(1) Not enough description. There is so little description it's kind of like the high-fantasy equivalent of Lars Von Trier's Dogville set, or maybe someone waving a flashlight around in a dark room. I never had a very good sense of place, of the atmosphere, of characters taking up space or engaging in a fully fleshed out world. My senses were not engaged, even if my emotions were.

(2) During the first half of the novel, before Erin is taken prisoner, she's a tough, no-nonsense warrior type. She loses her father at a young age, trains as a soldier, her mother is scarred by the death of her father and becomes emotionally distant, then dies while Erin is young, sleeps with her sword and never wears pants. Basically, pre-Stefanos Erin is a driven, hard-nosed brute. Once Stefanos steps into the picture she turns into this dress-wearing, weepy, self-sacrificing girly-girl. To me, it felt like two different people - not the evolution of a single character through different circumstances. I felt like readers are supposed to remember Erin's past and think she's complex and let Sagara West off the hook as far as actually writing her as a complex person. That felt like cheating to me.

The book ends on a cliffhanger but, honestly, I doubt I'll be reading further in the series - more than anything else because I don't like the vague, dreamy feeling of reading a fantasy so short on description. ( )

Review of entire series posted under [b:Chains of Darkness, Chains of Light|437678|Chains of Darkness, Chains of Light (The Sundered, Book 4)|Michelle Sagara West|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174768950s/437678.jpg|426541]. ( )