Adult Review: Sons of Wrath Day! SOUL AVENGED

Soul Avenged by Keri Lake

Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy

My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Passion is blind in vengeance and love ...

Ayden’s suburban home was invaded by a pack of Lycans.

The brutal attack is the only memory she carries of her former life.

Now, one motive burns in her soul:

KILL THEM ALL.

The Sons of Wrath—a brood of vengeance-dealing warrior demons—band with Ayden to hunt the Lycans on Detroit’s most deadly feeding grounds.

Kane Walker should’ve been her easiest kill.

Unfortunately, the newly bitten Lycan has something she wants—clues that may finally lay her past to rest. To reach them, she must be willing to submit to the sensual pleasures awakened by his touch.

Time is running out.

In seven days, Kane will become what Ayden despises most. She can halt his transformation but the antidote requires the ultimate sacrifice. As the beast takes hold, Kane becomes more of a threat.

Ayden must choose between her lust for revenge, or surrender to her enemy and discover a horrible truth.

Sons of Wrath
Never gamble with vengeance

I will not lie. This was immediately added to my to be read list solely because of the cover. I’m a huge fan of the Underworld movies and the cover of Soul Avenged was dripping with promises of that world. I mean not only was the cover hot but the synopsis spoke of Lycans and what not. I just had to try it.

Even then I went in with a very open mind because I didn't want a copy cat Underworld story. I just wanted the feel of that world with a unique story. Folks, I was not disappointed. That is exactly what Keri Lake delivered, a unique tale with an Underworld feel to it.

We meet Ayden who is an Alexi soldier. Alexi’s are not born but created to fight Lycans. She defects from the Alexi clan in search of the one Lycan who attacked her, killed off her family and essentially ripped her world into shreds. In one of her hunts she runs into Kane, a newly bit human who is in the process of turning aka a hafling. Instead of killing him as she has been trained to do she saves him after he grabs her and his touch brings on memories that had long been wiped away. Wanting to retrieve her memories and hoping it will lead her to the Lycan who started it all for her, Ayden decides to take Kane back the Wrath mansion to get her memories back before finally killing Kane.

This is a very complicated world and although there is a lot going on it’s not too hard to go along with it and be carried through all the threads of the story. Some characters are easier to like than others but what I've noticed having read this book and the next is that I don’t think the author necessarily wants you to like certain characters. Some are just meant to be understood.

Which leads me to the attraction between Ayden and Kane. It takes a halfling about a week to turn and in that week Ayden and Kane spend a lot of time together. Ayden grated on my nerves every time she treated Kane like a piece of crap. There are reasons behind it but it still got to be too much for me to take at times.  Eventually she begins to remember that he is more human than Lycan and that perhaps she’s been too critical because of her experiences which Kane is more open to being understanding of.  Through that understanding they find a common bond and love. I might not have liked Ayden all the time or thought that something would even happened between her and Kane but I could totally understand it as their story developed.

I did think it was odd that this would be the start to a series called the Sons of Wrath because this was really about Ayden’s journey and she is not a son or daughter of Wrath and we get bits and pieces of the Sons but it was definitely a great start to the series.

If you are looking for a dark, action packed, hot, mysterious, unpredictable, unique and exciting urban fantasy then stop looking, you've just found one.