Swoony Sunday Book Review: "Slaying the Vampire Conqueror"
Carissa Broadbent delivers yet another savory and sexy entry in her ongoing tales of vampires, epic adventures, and kickass heroines.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the book follow.
It’s not every author who could so effortlessly combine the conventions of epic fantasy with vampire fiction, but that’s exactly what Carissa Broadbent has done. I remember being quite captivated by The Serpent and the Wings of Night, which introduced me to her darkly sexy world of Nyaxia and its various residents, and so I was very excited when our romantasy book club announces that her book, Slaying the Vampire Conqueror, would be our next read. I was not disappointed, and I found myself absolutely captivated from the first page to the last. As she has in the rest of her books, Broadbent manages to get just the right mix of erotic tension, narrative propulsion, and character development.
In short, I loved this book.
Though Slaying is set in the same world as the other Nyaxia novels, it focuses on a different set of characters. In particular, we are immersed in the point of view of Sylina. A member of the sinister sisterhood known as the Arachessen, who have trained her to be a deadly assassin, she is dispatched by her superiors to ingratiate herself with the vampire conqueror Atrius and ultimately to kill him. Like so many other romantasy heroines, however, she soon discovers that it’s one thing to set out to kill a vampire conqueror; it’s quite another to actually do it, especially when you start falling in love with the person that you’re set out to kill. With each step of their blood-soaked journey together she finds herself drawn more and more into his orbit, and she has to decide: will she choose her sisterhood or this unexpected love?
Personally, I love romantasies that are based on the enemies-to-lovers trope, and there’s no question that Broadbent is a master at this particular subgenre. After all, you don’t get much more enemy-to-lover than a trained assassin who ends up falling in love with the vampire conqueror that she’s been sent to kill. It takes a while for the romance to start bubbling to the surface, but when it does it’s clear that Sylina is no mere automaton, content to do as she’d been ordered. In fact, she is a woman of many depths and shades of character, a survivor of unspeakable trauma who has nevertheless managed to forge a life for herself. When it comes right down to it, she is going to do what is best for herself, regardless of what those in power might have to say about it.
Because the novel is told entirely from her point of view, we come to really appreciate just how much Sylina has given up in order to get where she is today. In addition to sacrificing her sight so that she can be a fitting vessel for the will of the goddess Acaeja, she has also basically given up whatever attachments she might have had to her life before she was taken in by the Arachessen. This is a lot for anyone to endure, let alone for someone who is still a young woman when the novel begins. Thus, we're led to identify with and to sympathize with her, and to cheer her once it becomes clear that she’s falling in love with Atrius.
For his part, Atrius is a fascinating character. Like so many of the other vampires of this world, he’s far more than just a blood-drinker. Instead, he’s a man who carries around a lot of trauma and damage, not least because Nyaxia has cursed him, leaving him with a perilous darkness inside that nearly kills him. As with Sylina, it’s easy to see why he should find himself drawn to someone who sees him as something more than a conqueror, who is willing to reach inside of him to find the warm and beating heart. In other words, he’s the perfect wounded romantic hero that all of us love to see in romantasy.
The sex, as always with Broadbent, is nothing short of scorching. I continue to be amazed at the way that authors like her manage to make me get engaged with hetero sex–on the page, at least–but I suppose that’s the power of a true mistress of the sex scene. When you’re not afraid to let your characters encounter and experience soul-shattering sex, it makes sense that the viewer would feel some of this, too.
While the relationship between Atrius and Sylina is obviously the heart and soul of this book, one of the most heart-rending moments actually involves the heroine and her brother, whom she discovers working for a warlord. For all that she is supposed to have left her past behind her, Sylina still can’t resist the chance to try to save him, even though she knows that it might be all in vain, that he might have slid too far into the shadowy world of addiction. Anyone who has ever watched someone in this struggle will now doubt recognize and sympathize with Sylina’s struggle
Arguably the most powerful and terrifying moment in the entire novel is the one in which Sylina manages to force a confrontation between Nyaxia and Acaeja. This is a world, after all, in which the gods are willing and able to intervene directly in human affairs, and both Sylina and Atrius have been playing with fire when it comes to the divinities that they serve. It’s always exciting when a novel gives us a scene like this, and Broadbent more than delivers. Even though our heroes manage to emerge alive from all of this, it’s clear that their encounters with these immortal beings has just begun.
Even though Slaying the Vampire Conqueror is a self-contained story that ends quite satisfactorily, the epilogue makes it clear that there is much more in store for our two heroes. I know that I, for one, will be devouring each and every one of them!