Gwen’s review of The Storm (The Sons of Destiny, Book 6) by Jean Johnson
Paranormal fantasy romance released by Berkley Trade 2 Sep 08

What an interesting little world Johnson has created here! This was the first Sons of Destiny book I’ve read. I know. Lash me with a wet noodle, but it was! I have several of the others and I promise to dig them out of my TBR boxes and read them. I hesitated because I didn’t want to be sucked into another large series, with no hope of finding my way out again. I feared for naught, however. The Storm read fine on its own, sans series, so presumably the others will as well. No emotional baggage no horribly tense cliff hangers to overcome in previous/following books. YAY!

The summary below does an admirable job of capturing the major plot points, so I’ll keep this brief and will skip to what I liked and didn’t like about the book. (I’ve always thought of this series as the “series with the headless abdomen covers” – is that bad?)

Johnson’s writing style is very prose-heavy, and dialog-light. There are very few authors I like that can write well in this fashion. Isabel Allende and Lilith Saintcrow are a couple that do it well; there are many who do not. Johnson does a good job with it. We still get the feeling of the plot moving forward, and of a lot of action happening, even without character dialog to push it along. If you like a lot of dialog, don’t let what I’ve said scare you away. I didn’t really notice the lack of it until I was midway thru and realized what was happening.

Johnson has crafted a very complex world for the Sons of Destiny series. It’s very fantasy-heavy, with mages and magic, politics and war, intrigue and love, destiny and prophecy. There’s a very satisfying mix of broad plot strokes, world details, and personal plot-lines. Again, I haven’t read any of the previous SoD books, yet still had little trouble picking up the threads in The Storm. It all meshes nicely into a very readable, romantic fantasy without a lot of info dumping.

I could have wanted a little more steam between the main characters. However, notwithstanding an early groping scene, it was nice to see the H/H’s friendship develop properly before they started boinking each other. As a result, I ended up really liking the hero, Rydan, and heroine, Rora. The secondary characters are also nicely developed and properly used; there was no feeling that a character was extraneous to this book for purposes of future book use. The villain was a little underdeveloped – such so that by the time he made a showing, I didn’t care about his demise or success.

I like this book and recommend it to any fans of fantasy romance or of Johnson’s writing in general. I was able to lose myself in her world for a short while, and that was nice to do while recovering from a head cold.

Grade: B+

Summary:

Eight brothers, born in four sets of twins, two years apart to the day-they fulfill the Curse of Eight Prophecy. Though no longer trapped in exile, their growing family faces new problems. The sixthborn son must find a way to trust his Destined bride…

First, his most heavily guarded refuge is breached. And now, the worst of all crimes against Rydan of Nightfall: Rora, a pesky, privacy-invading foreigner, likes him and won’t leave him alone! Rydan knows he’s as appealing as a rosebush stripped of its blooms, so why does she persist? Any normal maiden should be seeking less thorny company than his.

But Rora isn’t normal. She alone sees the secret of what torments Rydan. And only she can persuade him to put it right before it destroys him. But Rora has her own secret as well-one of such vast power that other mages have killed in order to possess it. It once drove Rora and her sisters into exile, and, in the wrong hands, its power could annihilate their world. In the right hands, it could change her and Rydan’s fate forever.

Read an excerpt.

Other books in this series: