A Review
Genre: Dark NA Fantasy
Rating: 5/5
!!This book has some serious trigger warnings, please check those before diving into the series!!
Blurb:
They like their women barren in more ways than one, void of the bits that make them anything other than an object of male desire. A woman doesn’t need her faculties, or her body in one piece to open her legs.
Dark, brutal, and punishing – this is the world Dell was brought up in. Nothing more than a Lesser Fae female, owned by a master who sells her body to the highest bidder and takes what’s left for himself. She’s been through it all. She’s witnessed it all. She’s survived it all … so far.
Dell unwittingly binds herself to the Sun Gods – four primal, territorial High Fae males who have a taste for power, pain, and pleasure. But they want more from her than she initially expected.
They can read, control and govern her body. They can see through her lies, sense the secrets she’s been cowering from for years. For Dell, the only thing worse than trying to survive the darkness, is the prospect of being dragged back into the light.
This is book one in the four-part Spawn of Darkness series – 38,500 words written from Dell’s perspective. It features a strong, albeit mentally shattered female lead, and four protective High Fae Gods who will do everything in their power to protect her.
It is a slow burn reverse harem romance with sensitive and taboo subjects, sex slavery, offensive language, explicit sexual content and violence; particularly as the series progresses. It contains content which some readers will find triggering. Intended for a mature audience aged eighteen years and over.
This book was recommended to me by @theaviciouscosplay on instagram, and is not going to be for everyone. This is a reverse harem dark fantasy where the FMC speaks about her vagina in the third person, if that’s not your speed then take a cookie and keep moving with your day. Now to those who say speaking to their vagina is unrealistic, hello my vagina has been a him since I was in high school, fuck off, you are lucky enough to not know that kind of loneliness, depression, and trauma. Good for fucking you. (Yes I am calling out the other book bloggers and book reviewers because what the fuck guys?! SA Parker put her blood, sweat, and tears in this book. Just because it wasn’t your cup of tea doesn’t mean you get to shit on it. We’re supposed to support each other and build a positive community. Shame on you) Dell has become so numb to her own trauma that she pretends it isn’t happening as much as she can, its her normal. If you didn’t get that from reading this book then you need to go back to school for reading comprehension.
There are reviews out there saying Dell is inconsistent acting weak in one second and then feisty yelling at the gods in the next. I would like to point out that trauma changes a person, the affects it has make a person inconsistent, and Dell being a courtesan who experiences trauma on a daily basis is going to be a little screwed up. But when she is approached by the gods she learns they need her more than she needs them which gave her the freedom to speak her mind and become the feisty woman she has always been but was too scared to release. Dell locked me into a chokehold and kept me reading the book I love her character so much. She has gone through the worst at the hands of the people who surround her when all she wants is to be loved, and yet she keeps fighting for people who would let her be eaten by monsters if it was a choice between their lives and hers. Where she would be willing to sacrifice herself. But, I’m not sure if that is a note on her selflessness or her suicidal ideations. I will literally fight someone over this character, try me.
I love the winged sun gods, I don’t want to give too much away about them. There is still so much in this world that I want to discover. This book is a quick read, while still having those fantasy elements of world building that create the world around the characters.