Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Vampire King

Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

sophie63's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

Not bad but not memorable either. The characters were a little boring at times. The story dragged at points and other times I would have liked a little more information.

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Mafia
Vampire king

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alejandra_guerrero's review

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

It wasn’t a bad story, but I didn’t really feel the “connection” between the MCs. Eloise sees herself as chubby, but only sometimes, she thinks she doesn’t care for fashion, but sometimes she does, and so on and so forth. Her character was very inconsistent. Ambrose was just a run-of-the-mill alphahole, and sometimes not even that. Kinda underwhelming. His physical description changed quite a bit, and I just couldn’t say what color his hair was, since sometimes he’s “golden”, and has blonde hair, but other times “his dark hair” does things to fMC. His stubble is mentioned sometimes, but most of the time any mention of facial hair is absent, which made me think he didn’t have any. In sum, very inconsistent characterization.

And when they started to throw around the word “mate” it was just awkward, if not plain cringey. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you see it) this mate business only comes up after the first half. And is never fully explained. We just get “Ambrose explained mates to me”. Bitch! explain it to me then!

I have no idea how vampires work, or what their powers are, except they seem to be stronger and faster than humans, and have sensitive hearing.

Ambrose seems to be able to read emotions but it’s not clear how, since sometimes he can smell them but other times he seems to have mind powers of some kind. He and Kasar apparently can “sense” people in a 3 or 5 foot radius respectively, but again, I don’t know how that works. Eloise mentions compulsion, but just once, near the end, and I was left wondering if all vampires had that power, or if it was just Eloise’s stereotypes talking, or if it was just Malachi who could do it. But she didn’t seem to be worried Ambrose was using it on her, and to control that other guy they seemed to need a witch to cast a spell, so… inconsistencies again.

And the history of vampires is mentioned, only to be dismissed after a “Little does anyone know that this history and the fallout of our kind becoming forsworn are the reasons why humans are able to be turned into weaker Children of the Night”. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? And, apparently, to be turned, a human must have a certain genetic trait (which we’re told about 70% in, as if we already know, but were never told about it before then). How does this connect with the aforementioned history is never addressed either.

Another thing is the many mistakes, with a lot of sentences having extra or missing words, and the few times when there was the wrong name. Not to mention the few sentences that had me reading them multiple times and still couldn’t make sense of them.

There also were some things that are brought up almost at the end, and then they’re “solved” off page and we’re just told about them, very unsatisfying.

Like how he had someone he wanted to marry, but he got turned, and then he attacked her and tried to turn her but didn’t work, and then we find through Eolise that he told her she had been with another man, but now he’s OK with all of it. I just couldn’t feel any sympathy, he didn’t seem to care at all. And how that stupid coin he has all the time was connected with this other woman is never addressed, he just “lets it go”, after centuries of holding onto it, without the reader knowing why this coin represented or reminded him of this woman. Whose name changes from the first mention of it to the rest of the book (could have been a typo, with the horrible editing everything is possible).

Finally, this thing should have trigger warnings, but they’re nowhere to be found. There’s a shitload of blood play, biting, and murder happening. He seems to get off on killing people and she on watching him do it. They fuck covered in blood multiple times, with him fingering her with hands that are sticky with blood (his words). All I could think of was: “Gross, she’s gonna get an infection”. I skipped most of the epilogue, since they just get even more disgusting.

The side characters were mildly interesting, but not enough to make me want to read about them, so this is where I stop with this series.

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