Title: Lord of the Vampires
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Book Review: Lord of the Vampires (Royal House of Shadows #1) by Gena Showalter

March 10, 2013
Reviewer:

After a horrible attack on his castle, Prince Nicolai’s parents are killed. That is not before Nicolai’s powerful mother uses her dying breath to send him and his siblings away from the house for their safety. Problem is, they were split up. And to make things worse, Nicolai has ended up on the sex slave market and has been bought up by Princess Odette. Her and her sister Laila are ugly and cruel witches who have taken Nicolai’s memory and more.

So, of course, Nicolai becomes desperate. So he sends a special book to someone who can help him, a woman named Jane who knows more about the paranormal than most. Jane falls asleep and is immediately taken to a different world. She is not herself; she has in fact been spelled by Nicolai to look like the Princess Odette who Nicolai has recently killed. He wants to use Jane and just get the hell out of there, but after seeing her, that changes. He fell for her hard and lucky for them both, they both have skills and strength to escape not only the castle, but vengeful sister Laila.

Wow, the mixed reviews this has been getting. I will say first and foremost, I love Showalter. One of the best in Paranormal Romance (I beg anyone to argue that). So with that being said, this wasn’t my favorite from her. Oh my goodness, my heart skipped a beat when I wrote that. But good news I did enjoy it.

Nicolai was a manwhore. Definitely has the hit it and quit it mentality. So when he first met Jane, he had every intention of using her just so he can leave. But that changed quickly when he needs to save Jane. I love how he protects Jane and through that, he finds out he is more than a vampire. He has a very special and convenient power. I loved Jane, she was super smart and if not for her, Nicolai probably would have died. She thought outside the box and used her brains. Also a plus, she use to work for the government and her branch experimented with vampires and teleportation. The woman was a genius. Nicolai was smart too, but he was more animal than anything. I love how possessive he was, but sometimes his dialogue was a bit to Tarzan for me.

I did like the plot, but there were holes that I wish were addressed. I mean I do understand this is a debut and that this story will be spread across three more books, but there were some things I would have liked some more explanations on. For instance, bit by bit, Nicolai gains his memory back, but we aren’t told 100% how. Also there was the incident with Jane. She gets the book from Nicolai and it is addressed to her, but she doesn’t know how he knows her and vice versa. Then there is the how of how she got there. From my understanding, there was history there and he knew her before, so his powers were blocked, but we don’t know when exactly it happened. Did it happen after her car accident when she was in the hospital? I mean, did he have some access to her spirit? That would have been a nice fact, but we still don’t know the how.

Nonetheless, Lord of the Vampires was a good read. It was a good debut to this great collaboration (on to book 2 Lord of Rage by Jill Monroe as we speak), so big thanks to Netgalley for this and book 2. This is written by Showalter, so it is still worth reading in my opinion. This is quite a ride and it is very very sexy. I just think the plot needed to be cleaned up a bit and it needed to be more complete.