From one extreme to the other...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

The premise of this book sounds silly in the extreme: an 11,000 year old Atlantean god, born of mortals, and abused his entire mortal life, the lover of a virgin goddess, killed at the hands of her jealous brother on top of the body of his murdered sister and nephew. Who then goes on to save the world from a spoiled god's curse for the next 11,000 years and be abused by his goddess lover who he now hates, but is tied to. :) Seeing the point?

But nevertheless, I have been following Sherrilyn Kenyon's, "Dark Hunter," and her, "Dream Hunter," series since they've both come out. Some of what makes them special is that they are firmly in the world of what if. What if the gods are real? What if they really are the b*tches and d*cks that we read about in the mythologies? What if, even very damaged people can trust, just one more time and get a happy ending?

Maybe that's what I like so much about these books. Being a victim of abuse, like the author who warns us in her foreword to this book, this book had me on a roller coaster. What Acheron dealt with was an extreme, but the feelings were so valid to what an abuse victim feels. If the abuse goes on long enough your abuser does convince you that you're not worth more. And however long your life lasts, you're always looking over your shoulder or flinching inside waiting for it to happen again. Not that you don't come to trust and love people...it's just that IMHO, when you have had a childhood trust broken, you have a small part of your psych that isn't innocent anymore and is wincing away ready to be abused again.

Kenyon does a good job relating this, and far from being upset that Acheron, "didn't get over it," like other reviews I've read, I liked to see him work through a bit of it, after 11,000 years, he'd earned some time to heal.

I liked the heroine's spunk and compassion; her qualities were badly needed by the hero, who is so compassionate it is hardly believable himself. But again, I understand that quality, if enough pain is inflicted on you...you don't want to inflict it on others and will go to extremes to see that you don't.

So all in all, it was an enjoyable 13 hours spent lost in Sherrilyn Kenyon's world. I laughed, I cried and I felt at peace when he finally got a HEA. It was a long time coming.

Which was such a change from the techo-punk highschool computer savvy of the day before :)

but puzzled goddesses like to go from one extreme to another, it keeps them puzzled.