Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh

Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Honor had been held captive by vampires for months before she was saved. Her captivity has left some serious scars on both her body and mind. Because of this she feels nowhere near ready to go out into the world, let alone work together with vampires to uncover a killer. Unfortunately, she is given little choice in the matter when the Tower calls demanding an expert who can identify some odd markings. Soon, Honor finds herself facing Dmitri, one of the oldest and most dangerous vampires in New York.

Well known for being brutal and cold hearted, Dmitri is a far cry from the man he used to be. Lately though, Dmitri has been finding it harder to bury the painful memories from his past. This doesn’t get easier when Honor shows up in his office. Her scars and behavior, remind Dmitri too much of what happened to his wife and family. However, never having been someone who could tolerate women and children brutalized, Dmitri takes over Honor’s case. Soon, both of them are working together to track down Honor’s abductors as well as discover who’s behind a rash of murders.

Now this is how an anti-hero book should be. Dmitri has always verged along the lines of being an antagonist in the series. In the first book, he seems fairly intent to kill Elena until the arch-angel Raphael nixes that. But even after that, his main role in the books seem be threatening to kill Elena if she shows any weaknesses. With this in mind, I wasn’t too thrilled to see him get his own book. I was worried that having him as the lead would destroy his character by making him suddenly all sunshine and bunnies or make him out to be such a huge ass that you just don’t understand why someone would fall for him. Luckily, I never felt that in this story. This book stays incredibly true to Dmitri's character, while at the same time making you want to see him get some happiness. Throughout the book, you feel like, in the other novels, you had only been seeing one side of the coin and I really enjoyed seeing the flip side.

The other reason why I was hesitant about reading this addition to the series is because reincarnation stories are not my bag. However, I really liked the way Singh did it in this book. She took a subtle approach to it that you don’t see too often. Throughout the story, you just kind of slowly assumed what Honor was. This was a huge relief, as it never forced a section of the plot to be about Honor trying to prove anything to Dmitri. That would’ve completely undermined the rest of the plot, which essentially centers on both characters slowly healing and coming to terms with past events in their lives.

And holy shit those events were horrendous. Singh really tortures both Dmitri and Honor in this book. What happened to Dmitri alone would make any of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s tortured heroes look like they had just been tickled by kittens. Luckily though, Singh never goes overboard with the details. What happened to both of the characters is revealed slowly, which made it much more palatable to read about than having it come up all at once.

All in all, this was a wonderful addition to the series. And I can’t wait for the next book which is going to be Jason’s.

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