Wicked Abyss (Immortals After Dark, #17)

by Kresley Cole

[EBookObsessed]

I finished this book in a day. Each chapter kept drawing me into the next into the next and then the next thing I knew, it was done.

This had a very obvious Beauty and the Beast premise. Including Lila hiding in plain sight working at the Magic Kingdom, and wearing a yellow dress after being invited to dinner. Sian’s biggest concern is his looks since the once handsome prince of Hell, once he became King of Hell transformed into his Hell Demon form which would continue to become more grotesque the longer he was King. Of course, this was the one thing that Calliope really had no issue with.

While there is no dancing candlestick, there is a magical castle in Hell.

If you, like me, just re-read Shadow’s Claim to reacquaint yourself with the story after the release of Shadow’s Seduction, you will recognize Sian’s fraternal brother in the Primordial Hell Demon who was fighting for Bettina’s hand. Sian’s brother, also handsome until he had become king, was so lonely he wanted to win a bride of his own. So scary, gross, oozy Primordial Demon now get an “awww…” 🙁

I always enjoy a Kresley Cole story and while this is not my favorite story of the series, I did like it more than Sweet Ruin. Calliope is a perfect IAD heroine. She’s clever, smart, witty, snarky and doesn’t take any crap from Sian. Like Belle, Calliope likes to read and learn and Lila uses this intelligence against Sian.

Whenever Sian and Lila put aside their differences, they had magic. Unfortunately, KC uses the premises of reincarnation in this story which I am never a fan of since it always seems that the hero is trying to recreate the love they had with the prior person and that tarnishes the romance for me in a who are you in love with way. Here Lila is the reincarnated mate of Sian who once upon a time chose another over him. Calliope used to be Princess Kari of the same Sylvan Court that Lila is from but Kari was a pompous fey princess and looked down on the beast prince from the demon realm. Sian was only sixteen when he met Kari and didn’t understand why she wouldn’t chose him since he knew she was his mate. So sadly, once Kari is reincarnated as Calliope, Sian intends to take out all of his pain from Kari’s rejection on Calliope. He seriously can’t let it go.

Even the dragon shifter, Uthyr, who hangs out with Sian, and who obviously has some big issues himself since he won’t return to human form, keeps telling him to use this as a second chance and stop punishing her for something Kari did, especially since Calliope didn’t share the same memories and seems to be a nicer person. Sian just can’t get past it. Anytime things are going go between them, he remembers something nasty Kari said to him and everything devolves between them. He’s 10 millenia old, but he remembers every unhappy moment of the two weeks he knew Kari.

This isn’t the first time KC subjected a heroine to punishment for someone else’s ill deeds. In the very first novel, A Hunger Like No Other, Lachlain tortured Emma because she was a vampire and vampires tortured him. Same with MacRieve and the succubus.

I like a romance which focuses on just the hero and heroine trying to work out their relationship, but it would have been a more enjoyable story if once Sian decided to let go of the past, he actually did but he just couldn’t do it which ruined the flow of the budding romance.

Since more of this story takes place in the Hell Realm, we get very little interaction with other characters. Nix shows up at the very beginning and she uses Lanthe and Sabine to capture Lila and present her as a captive/spy to Sian. In another crossover storyline, Lanthe, Thronos and the Vrakeners settled in Pandemonium at the end of Dark Skye, which is Sian’s Hell Realm territory. Lanthe uses turning over Lila as a bargaining chip so Sian will let them stay in the territory they claimed.

With several more members of the Møriør travelling to Gaia, and I am sure they will each be getting a story, I guess we, or maybe just I, need to accept that KC has started a new story arc in this series and may never go back to finish the old stories which were hinted at.