Lots to share with you today about The Holy Dark.
This is the third book in The Black Parade Series.
I wasn’t scheduled to do a review but I had time to read this and I’m happy to share my thoughts today.
Come on in and check it out.
I love the cover art.
There’s a glimpse inside the story.
And don’t forget to enter the giveaway!
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The Holy Dark
The Black Parade Series
Book 3
by Kyoko M
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
Date of Publication: April 24, 2015
ISBN 10: 1511543736 / ISBN 13: 978-1511543736
ASIN: B00VULGGBK
Number of pages: 346 (eBook) / 460 (paperback)
Word Count: 147,000
Cover Artist: Gunjan Kumar and Christopher Cold
My Review
I haven’t read the first two books in this series but that didn’t stop me from enjoying this book.
I became acquainted with demon slayer Jordan Amador very quickly. She’s a kick butt, ask questions later kind of gal.
A Seer, Jordan’s job is to guide newly departed souls to the afterlife.
The action starts from the first page. Jordan enters a bar full of demons. She just had one question. She leaves after getting an answer. The problem is the answer wasn’t the one she wanted. She knows demon are liars.
Jordan joined her partner, Myra, in the truck outside, which they then proceed to crash into the bar. You can bet the demon gave her what she wanted after she sent over 60 others back to Hell.
From that point on, the thrills just kept on coming. How could they not when you mix demons, angels, and seers in a quest for the long missing 30 pieces of silver that were paid to Judas Iscariot.
As the demons get more desperate to find the coins, they bring in Moloch, the nasty Archdemon of War, who proceeds to send the demons after Jordan and her husband Michael, an archangel. I wondered if the danger would help their strained marriage or forever tear it apart.
Will the death of the human race imminent, it’s throw out all the rules, kill or killed suspense, with no predictable outcome.
I’m a sucker for these kinds of books. I love a sarcastic, alpha female character and you get more than one in this story.
Jordan is sarcastic to the nth and she’ll be the first to tell ya, “If she’s going to die, she’ll go out a smart ass.”
Her partner, Myra, is tough as nails too. Ex military, Myra’s not happy unless she’s in the thick of the mass destruction. She’s got one mean hellhound too. Ace is huge, larger than a wolf hound, and more intelligent than a lot of humans. He hates everyone, even Jordan, though he tolerates her, making him the greatest of man’s best fiends, oops, I mean friends.
And the bad guys. There are so many and I had fun as they were dispatched in some very creative ways. You have the demons and the archdemons. Both are nasty, selfish things. And some of the humans are worse than the demons .
Jordan’s and Michael’s relationship is a rocky one and I had hopes for them, but sometimes what should draw couples together can also rip it apart. You’ll get some of Michael’s point of view on this too.
What I gathered was Jordan supposedly cheated on Michael, an archangel and her husband, with an archdemon, Belial. She denies it and I tend to believe her. I’ll find out soon enough.
This also explains why the angels are reluctant to help her in her quest for the pieces of silver. Angels value loyalty above all else and Jordan betrayed their commander.
Even though I hadn’t read the first two books, I had no trouble diving in and enjoying this story. With helpful mentions of past events placed in the right places by the author, the story drew me in.
There are a lot of characters, some new and some old. While bits of their previous exploits were mentioned in order to follow their part in this book, I needed to know more.
I’m big on character driven stories and knew almost immediately I would be going back to read the first two books. I wanted to learn the cause and affect that landed these characters where they are now.
With demons, archdemons, angels, archangels, seers, and hellhounds, and the imminent threat of the next apocalypse, what’s not to love in The Holy Dark.
4 Stars
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A couple of fun scenes I want to share with you.
This first one is Jordan taking down a nasty demon:
I whirled around and kicked him in the crotch. He howled in pain. Didn’t matter that he had superhuman strength. Nuts were nuts.
LOL
And this one is a conversation between Jordan and the other Seers on Skype:
“Is it just me, or can Jordan not stay out of trouble for two seconds?”
I sighed.
“It’s not just you.”
“Thought so.”
The other Seers in the Skype chat agreed…
This felt so normal, so human, yet they all battle demons and hang with angels.
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Book Description:
Sarcastic demon-slayer extraordinaire Jordan Amador has been locked in a year-long struggle to hunt down the thirty silver coins paid to Judas Iscariot. The mere touch of these coins is enough to kill any angel.
Jordan’s demonic opposition grows more desperate with each coin found, so they call on the ultimate reinforcement: Moloch, the Archdemon of War. Moloch puts out a contract on Jordan as well as her estranged husband, the Archangel Michael. Now Jordan and Michael will have to find a way to work together to survive against impossible odds and stop Moloch’s plan, or else he’ll wage a war that will wipe out the human race.
Available at Amazon
Excerpt:
Chattanooga had been a nice place to live for the past ten months, a fact proven by my utter disapproval of the hotel we checked in the following night we left. The safe house was in Montpelier, Vermont and by car it was an eighteen-hour drive. However, the two of us were exhausted from the recent fights we’d had and needed some sleep so we stopped in Newburgh, Connecticut. We’d camp out here for the night and then leave first thing in the morning.
Myra worked at an office supplies store back in Tennessee, which paid alright, but neither of us were exactly swimming in cash. The hotel we chose was not of the highest caliber. The only benefits it boasted were cable television and air conditioning. I missed my thin pillows and slightly lumpy mattress back home.
We were behind schedule, but only slightly. Myra went to buy some dinner while I opted for a long, hot shower. It wasn’t a nice place to stay, but it had one admittedly awesome amenity—a handheld sprayer with plenty of settings. I stayed in until my fingertips were pruny, mulling over recent events and hoping that a clear solution would arise. No such luck. We were still on defense. I didn’t like it, not one bit. The weight hanging off my soul was starting to make my knees buckle. I had to fix this. I had to save the angels. I owed them. They had shed blood for me more than once. I wasn’t going to disappoint them, not again. Never again.
I finished rinsing out my hair and groped for the towel with my eyes closed to avoid getting any residual shampoo in them. Weirdly, my fingers hit nothing but the moist air near the rack. Frowning, I reached out farther. It wasn’t there. Had it fallen onto the floor?
“Lose something?”
I froze. A deep, mocking, dry-as-sandpaper voice. No. Please, God, let it just be my imagination.
I pried my eyes open and ducked my head around the shower curtain. There, in front of the sink, stood a tall, pale-skinned man with shoulder-length hair as black as soot and a smile as sinister as the devil himself. His eyes were the lightest hue of blue that existed and the pupils were thin and diamond-like rather than round. His features were vaguely European—small forehead, narrow nose, thin but sensual lips, arched eyebrows—but I knew he didn’t have an accent.
He clutched my towel in his long-fingered hand, the other tucked in the pocket of his easily seven-hundred-dollar black suit pants. I recognized his favorite dark color scheme—a charcoal grey button up shirt, black silk tie, and Gucci dress shoes.
“Looking good, my pet.”
The archdemon Belial was standing in my bathroom.
Shit.
About the Author:
Kyoko M is an author, a fangirl, and an avid book reader. Her debut novel, The Black Parade, has been on Amazon’s Bestseller List at #5 in the Occult Horror category. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Lit degree from the University of Georgia, which gave her every valid excuse to devour book after book with a concentration in Greek mythology and Christian mythology. When not working feverishly on a manuscript (or two), she can be found buried under her Dashboard on Tumblr, or chatting with fellow nerds on Twitter, or curled up with a good Harry Dresden novel on a warm central Florida night. Like any author, she wants nothing more than to contribute something great to the best profession in the world, no matter how small.
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