Review: The Cursed by LA Banks

Rating: 3 out of 4 Stars
Pages: 468
Genre: Paranormal
Series/Standalone: Series (Vampire Huntress Legend #9)
Publication Date: July 2007
Version: Mass-Market Paperback
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Source: From Private Collection

Synopsis (GoodReads):

The Chairman has been slaughtered, along with Hell’s first almost-successful attempt at creating an Anti-Christ, using Carlos Rivera’s body-double. Dante’s son has also been vanquished. Now the evil Lilith sits on Dante’s old throne, a prize won in her negotiations with Cain. She is The Vampire Council’s new Chairwoman—and Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

All Lilith needs is Damali’s newly discovered angelic powers to allow her evil progeny to walk through the veil between worlds and usher in the true Anti-Christ. Damali and her crew enter a desperate race against time to stop Lilith—even if doing so brings the Neteru Councils out of the clouds and into the Biblical Holy Lands…and kicks off the Armageddon.

Review:

I am taking a break from my normal format and am going to make this short and sweet.

The Cursed only gets 3 stars because it is one of my least favorite books in the series.  Nothing much happens.  All the prerequisites were there, fighting, romance, sex, etc.  But it fell flat.  Mainly, because The Cursed felt like a "filler" book.  All the events that took place in this book were just setup of the final events to come, possibly in book 12.  This alone made The Cursed one of the most difficult books in the Vampire Huntress Legend for me to read.  It took me almost a week to get this one done. Normally I can plow through one of these novels in a weekend, if I have nothing else to do.

It all felt a little drawn out.  I like that Banks could have achieved her goals in this novel in fewer pages.  There was way to much crying.  There was tons of crying.  It was driving me insane.  Every scene someone was brought to tears.

I did like how Banks handled Lilith's as the new Councilwoman.  Instead of using brute force think her male Council members to achieve her goals.  She used mind games and cunning.  Which was neat to see.

Overall Recommendation:

Overall, The Cursed was just so-so.  It's a means to a necessary end, the furthering of the series.  I thought that it could be have been shorter.  If it wasn't part of the series I would say skip it but I am sure it will be needed to understand future books.