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"For humans and vampires, the rules of survival are the same: never trust, never yield, and always – always – guard your heart.
The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself."
This is a 6 book series organized into 3 couplets. The first four books are complete.
I liked the main male character, Raihn. He's big and strong and hot and still nice, caring and funny.
Unfortunately, so much of the rest fell short. I had a hard time getting past the Hunger Games element of this story and that's a huge focus of the book. The world-building and character development just weren't enough. If I wasn't curious as to how the author was going to pull the two main characters out of the you-or-me predicament, I would have stopped reading. And I found the ending unwhelming.
The fight scenes or competitions packed a lot of energy and page space. They were tough, but I just didn't buy Oraya making it out alive. There was little buildup showing us her training, showing us how this small, puny human was so good at killing vampires. She's got attitude, and lots of help but few actual skills that make it believable for her to constantly best superior killers.
I feel the idea of the story was bigger than the execution and I ended feeling flat about it.
I give it 3 out of 5 Vampire Butterflies.
