Blood of the Wicked (Dark Mission, #1)

by Karina Cooper

[Cocktails and Books]

I'm going to make a confession. I bought this book partially to piss my husband off. He was nosing around reading an open email I had from Harper Collins and opened a blurb for this book. He looked at me while I was cooking dinner and asked "Is this the kind of crap that you're reading?"

I immediately took issue with this classifying my book selections as crap and ordered the book that he was so offended about. Really....if he thinks this is bad, I shouldn't let any of the erotica lay around.

On to the book.....

I'm still on the fence about this one. I know this is the first book of the series, so the stage was being set, but I just didn't like the way we got left hanging.

Jessie Leigh has been hiding for her entire life. A witch who has lived under the radar, she keeps to the lower levels of New Seattle in hopes of staying out of the reach of the Holy Order (which has deemed witches the root of all evil which must be eradicated). She realizes her luck has run out when Agent Silas Smith walks in the strip club she bar tends at asking about her brother.

Seems Jessie's brother Caleb is now running around with a coven that is practicing dark magic and killing humans. The Holy Order has decided to use Jessie to get to Caleb. Jessie figures they'll kill them both, so she decides to go along with their plan in hopes of saving her brother and herself. What she doesn't expect is Silas breaching her barriers.

Silas is a broken soul, who's watch too many innocent people hurt or killed by witches. At the same time, he has a problem with following the orders of a Holy Order that is bent on killing in the name of all that's holy. Despite years of being in their service, he's become jaded and doesn't believe the propaganda any longer.

He reluctantly agrees to use Jessie (still believing her to be an innocent human) but vows to keep her safe. But keeping both of them safe turns out to be a lot harder than one would expect when you've got witches chasing them (instead of the other way around) and the order breathing down their necks.

The book seemed to alternate between being very fast paced to unnecessarily slow. And then when we got to the big fight scene, things happened so fast I needed to go back to try and figure out just what had happened.

I did really enjoy Jessie and Silas (even though Silas is a horrible name for a man with a body as hot as what's on the cover). Both worn down by the lives they've lead, it was nice to see them both decide there was more to life than what they had.

I could take or leave this one.

3 Cocktails.