TBR Challenge Review: No Mercy by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Format: Hardcover (also available in mm paperback, ebook)
Pub Date: September 2010
Publisher: St. Martins Press
Length: 343 pages
FTC: Purchased myself

Once again, I'm squeaking in under the wire on the TBR Challenge post. This month's theme is series catchup...a book from a series you're behind in.  With the publication of Retribution, I was 2 books behind in the Dark-Hunter series. The last book I read, Bad Moon Rising, was so awful that I refused to buy another Kenyon book in hardcover. And since my library's romance selection sucks...well, it's been a year since No Mercy came out and I'm just now getting to it via a remaindered copy I picked up on clearance.

The good news? No Mercy doesn't suck nearly as hard as Bad Moon Rising did. It's a complete book (which BMR wasn't), the characters don't have a personality change mid-book (which BMR did), and the dialogue is far less sappy and more snarky. Which is something I had forgotten about the Dark Hunter series and really enjoyed while reading No Mercy.

Bad Moon Rising by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Bad Moon Rising by Kenyon was so disappointing. The biggest flaw for me was the lack of continuity in the narrative and the immense amount of back story that wasn't explained.

Anyone new to the series would be completely lost. As it was, I struggled to remember what happened to which character when. And given that this book takes place concurrently with several other books in the series, it gets quite confusing.

Things I enjoyed:

I was very happy to see another were-hunter book. I'm not a fan of her Dream Hunter books, so this was a welcome change.

I was happy that a secondary character in so many other books was finally granted his own story.

I liked the inclusion of another level of hunting: Thorn, specifically.

The physical relationship between Aimee and Fang was terrific. They don't truly hook up until the very end--something that's unusual these days for most romances.

Things I hated:

The time jumps without any clue on the chapter pages that time was passing

The deep back story that was needed to understand the plot.

I didn't find Aimee's sudden penchant for Daimon hunting to be believable. Nor was the fact that no one seemed to notice?

Overall, it was tolerable (barely), but I couldn't help feeling that this one could have benefited from another hundred pages. It felt too choppy and too pared down.