***Stolen Summaries***Key to Conflict:
Meet Gillian Key-a paramortal psychologist who can treat the mental distress of nonhumans. And she's a Marine Special Forces operative who can get physical with them when the situation calls for it.
Gillian's two worlds collide when she travels to the Carpathian Mountains in Romania to counsel a dangerously attractive local master vampire-and becomes embroiled in a brewing turf war with the legendary Dracula.
Key to Conspiracy:
In northern Russia after a devastating earthquake, paramortal psychologist and Marine Special Forces operative Gillian Key helps break up a ring of child traffickers preying on newly orphaned children. But away from Count Aleksei Rachlav, the irresistible vampire she left behind, Gillian is vulnerable to the Dark Prince himself—Dracula—who would like nothing more than to use her as a pawn in his escalating war with Rachlav.
amazon
***Rant***
I made the mistake of buying Gryphon's first two books...mostly because the covers looked kinda cool.
They definitely smack of Laurell K. Hamilton (the later, crappier books)--which doesn't surprise me, as Gryphon has a quote from LKH on her books: "a unique idea in the paranormal genre." Yeah...the same quote on both books! That definitely says something. Something not good.
The Big Screamin' Comparisons to LKH's books:
-Almost every guy wants her.
-She has relationship/commitment hang-ups.
-Everybody is gorgeous (God, can I just have ONE average-looking vampire/elf/werewolf/were-whatever! And no, a half-scarred/half-gorgeous one doesn't count).
-She goes quickly from kick-ass to vulnerable. In a bipolar way.
-The secondary characters are also annoying, whiny, and sex-minded.
-The writing is sucky and jerky (yes, those are technical terms).
The main character is annoying, unprofessional...and quite frankly sucks as both a soldier (A commander?! Seriously?!) and a psychologist. Seems she doesn't know shit-all about either.
This is a "kitchen-sink" book. Gryphon throws in bits and pieces from her "research" (which I suspect was a 30 minute FOX docu-drama on some war) and from other paranormal romances that she's read in the past.
This is bad bad bad fan fiction.
Could this be one of LKH's secret aliases? I wonder...I just stumbled onto another review on another website. According to the scuttlebutt, Gryphon and LKH have a prior relationship.
"By BevQB: As I understand it, Talia Gryphon is a friend of LKH’s PA, Darla Cook, and that LKH was, to some extent, Talia’s mentor. I really don’t know the extent of the mentoring. I know Talia was supposed to accompany LKH to the RT Con in Daytona but couldn’t at the last minute because of work related issues (her PA had an accident at the last minute and also couldn’t accompany her)."
source
LKH has NO business in mentoring someone-she needs to focus on improving her own work.
***Judgement***
No thanks, Gryphon! I'm not buying the third and have plans to trade the books/give them to my dog to chew on.
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