[Book review] Green-Eyed Demon by Jaye Wells

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With all the vampire novels out there, you’d think that everything that can be said about them has been said.  And that includes sparkles.  But Jaye Wells has thrown some new elements into an old and classic monster with her Sabina Kane books.  The newest one, Green-Eyed Demon, ramps up the action and raises the stakes for our heroine.

Sabina’s sister Maisie has been kidnapped by their treacherous grandmother Lavinia, ruler of the vampires.  Sabina is desperate to rescue her and vows vengeance on Lavinia at any cost.  But anger must be put aside in favor of cold hard logistics as the trail leads Sabina, Adam and Giguhl to New Orleans.

As Lavinia and her thugs torment Sabina and threaten everyone close to her, it becomes clear that there is far more at stake than just Maisie’s life.  Lavinia is working with the Caste of Nod, and they believe that Sabina is prophesied to bring about the uniting of all the dark races.  If that happens, the Caste can never achieve their goal of raising Lilith, wife of Cain and mother to monsters—and if she rises, chaos will rule the earth.

With this novel, the overarching story in this series really achieves new levels.  Characters clash, alliances are made and broken and remade, and everything is set against the background of Maisie’s kidnapping and the need to rescue her as quickly as possible.  There’s an urgency to this part of the tale that lends itself well to the setting and the characters within it.

Sabina is also given an opportunity for growth, although she doesn’t take to it easily.  Her struggles to understand how people can rally to her and care about her are poignant and realistic.  In the end, even though she has a stumble or two, she makes a lot of progress which should affect her character in future books.

By the end of the book, there are a few plot threads that have been tied up, but there are still things that will need resolving.  This novel ends, quite literally, with a bang, and it will be interesting to see where the author takes the story from here.  The war between mages and vampires isn’t something that seems to have been abandoned, so I expect to see more of that in the future.

Overall, I found this book to be the most enjoyable of the series thus far.  The characters have been established, new characters fit in well with the others, and the pacing has found its rhythm between faster-paced events and slower moments of exposition.  I didn’t want Green-Eyed Demon to end.

This book was provided by the publisher as an e-ARC through NetGalley.