3 out of 4 stars
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The Underground: Second Edition by Roxanne Bland is a dark fantasy novel. Set in a world filled with wereanimals, witches, and vampires, the story is told in the third person perspective through various characters.
Parker, a werewolf, is devastated after watching the woman he loves, Garrett, become entranced with Seattle’s master vampire, Kurt. As he struggles to overcome his grief, he meets an alien named Melera who may or may not be the serial killer menacing Seattle. Garrett, who is also a mage, wants Parker to join her in her quest to rule over Seattle. However, Parker wants nothing to with her, but when an unexpected event occurs, he discovers a shocking secret. As Parker unwillingly falls in love with Melera, he encounters many dangers as he struggles to prove Melera’s innocence.
I think the best part about this book was the characters. Each character was pivotal to the plot. Not one of the characters sounded the same, and the characterizations of each character were different. Even with the human side and wolf side of Parker, the author manages to create two different personalities of the same person. The author also does a good job in developing the background information for each character. However, there wasn’t any character progression except for Parker. Parker goes from hating Kurt and Garrett to feeling indifferent of their relationship with one another.
The author does a great job in building the suspense, and there were some surprising twists to the plot. There were many subplots that were integrated into the main storyline which made them complex, but interesting. While the plot had enough suspense to keep me interested, the ending was very abrupt. The ending left a few questions unanswered, and it didn't wrap up the story nicely.
There were a few grammatical errors, but they didn’t detract from the book. However, there were many graphic scenes, so I wouldn’t recommend this book to younger readers. These graphic scenes include profanity, violence, and multiple sex scenes. This book is listed under sci-fi/fantasy, but with the amount of adult content in the book, I think it is better suited under the erotic and romance genre. Although I did know that this book included a lot of adult content, the amount of sex scenes that I came across were staggering.
Overall, I rate this book a 3 out of 4 stars. Although the characters were well rounded and the plot was suspenseful, the abrupt ending plus the disturbing amount of graphic scenes causes me to take away one star. I recommend this book to those who like to read dark fantasy or erotic books.
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The Underground: Second Edition
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This one with all the adult scenes definitely is one I would set aside.
