Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh

Archangel's Blade
Nalini Singh
Guild Hunter #4

From Goodreads: The severed head marked by a distinctive tattoo on its cheek should have been a Guild case, but dark instincts honed over hundreds of years of life compel the vampire Dmitri to take control. There is something twisted about this death, something that whispers of centuries long past...but Dmitri's need to discover the truth is nothing to the vicious strength of his response to the hunter assigned to decipher the tattoo. 

Savaged in a brutal attack that almost killed her, Honor is nowhere near ready to come face to face with the seductive vampire who is an archangel's right hand, and who wears his cruelty as boldly as his lethal sensuality...the same vampire who has been her secret obsession since the day she was old enough to understand the inexplicable, violent emotions he aroused in her.

As desire turns into a dangerous compulsion that might destroy them both, it becomes clear the past will not stay buried. Something is hunting...and it will not stop until it brings a blood-soaked nightmare to life once more...

I miss Raphael and Elena. Their stories of angelic maneuvering mixed with the slowly unfolding mystery of Elena's past were fascinating, and the effort of balancing their relationship kept things interesting even in the third book after they got together. 

That's not to say that I didn't like Honor and Dmitri. Dmitri is sexy and a little disturbing (which in real life would mean a whole lot disturbing, but that's beside the point). Honor is more a scholar than a warrior, but it's clear she knows how to kick butt too. The problem I had with this story was that everything in it was about sex.

There were two separate threads to the hunting plot. The first relates to a body found with a symbolic tattoo, the reason Honor and Dmitri meet in the first place. That one comes from Dmitri's insanely screwed up past, which we learn about during the course of the story. The second is tracking down the vampires who kidnapped and assaulted Honor. And then, of course, there was the growing desire between them and blah blah blah.

I promise, I have no objection to sex in books. I just think there should be something else there as well, and there was virtually nothing in this book that didn't relate, somehow, to sex. Honor and Dmitri were interesting characters, but the total amount of trauma that happens to people in this series is a little unbelievable.

I'm sure I'll pick up the next book in this series. But I hope it'll be more like the first three than this one.

Plot: 2 cupcakes

Characters: 3 cupcakes

Style: 3 cupcakes

Overall: 3 cupcakes

GARS Score: 0.6 (4/2/5/5) (What's a GARS Score?)
Score for the rest of the series: 1 (4/4/4/4)