Sherrilyn Kenyon – The Guardian

Book 21 in the Dark-Hunter series, published November 2011.



Dream-Hunter Lydia has been charged with the most sacred and dangerous of missions: To descend into the Nether Realm and find the missing god of dreams before he betrays the secrets that could kill her and her kind. What she never expects is to be taken prisoner by the Realm's most vicious guardian.

Seth's time is running out. If he can't hand over the entrance to Olympus, his own life and those of his people will be forfeit. No matter the torture, Seth hasn't been able to break the god in his custody. Then there's the beautiful Dream-Hunter Lydia: She isn't just guarding the gates of Olympus - she's holding back one of the world's darkest powers. If she fails, an ancient curse will haunt the earth once more and no one will be safe. But evil is always seductive...


This blurb doesn’t make any sense at all, once you have read the book. And I truly hate that.

I have read some very enthusiastic reviews about this book, but it took me some time to finish, as I am so very much disappointed by it.
A tortured hero, who is still sweet and loving, who keeps getting tortured and bla bla. He doesn’t trust anyone. But there is the heroine, coming to rescue her father, and he admires that. He keeps her safe from harm, and she falls in love with this wounded warrior. They escape, are hunted, he keeps her safe to be captured again himself. And she comes back for him, together with her father and friends and his family who have never come looking before in the 4.500 years or so he has been enslaved by Noir.

There is hardly any story here, no insight in why Noir and Azura keep him other than to drain his powers from him. What do they do with it? What do they want, other than rule the earth instead of their demonic realm? How come Lydia is the Key to Olympus? What does it mean? How did the “bad Greeks” find out? How did they know to torture Seth to find Lydia?

The only thing new in this book, the hero is an Egyptian half-god. The heroine is half Dream-Hunter and half Katagaria Jackal. And mute, until Seth gives her a voice in the first chapter of the book. I really do wonder if there is still an overall plot arc going on here. I can’t remember what it is al about.

I am really going to stop reading those books now. And yes, I know there will be movies and tv series about her books, and I probably will watch those if they are aired here in Holland.
But her recent books just are not as good as the first Dark Hunter / Were Hunter books.

5 stars (out of 10 that is!)