Of Shadow Born is Dianne Sylvan‘s fourth Shadow World novel. Despite how overpowered its protagonists are, and despite the introduction of gods, elves, and grand designs in this particular entry, I enjoy this series quite a bit. There’s just something remarkably relatable about its characters’ personalities.
Amanda Bonilla‘s second Shaede Assassin novel, Blood Before Sunrise, unfortunately does not share this trait. The opposite actually. Most of the character personalities in here are flat-out awful, the centerpiece being the protagonist herself. Not only is she completely lacking any sort of common sense or reasoning ability (which is particularly hard to swallow considering she’s supposed to be a century-old assassin), her combat abilities have spontaneously regressed to the point where she’s nearly helpless without assistance.
Crave the Darkness is the follow-up to Blood Before Sunrise, which I only ended up reading since I ordered them both at the same time. In a way this turned out to be a beneficial development, as this third book is notably better. Not quite good mind you, as there are still lots of character-personality issues, but decent enough that I don’t regret ordering/reading it. That said… I don’t think I’ll be following this series any further. While Darian’s competence issues have mostly been cleared up here and Raif is perfectly fine, neither of the two love interests is particularly likeable (one is narcissistic and manipulative while the other is extremely over-protective) and it doesn’t seem as though their parts are going to shrink any time soon.