Genre: paranormal Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay, Poly
Reviewer: Ulysess, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
Trajan has been given one command: kill Connor.
Connor has only one objective: stay alive.
David has a single desire: save them both.
When Connor crosses Trajan’s maker, the results are deadly. Trajan is instructed to kill his lover, and it’s impossible for a vampire to disobey the one who made him.
Impossible.
The lovers are on the run, relying on their unique skills to survive. Connor has the authority of the Elites and David possesses the power of an alpha wolf. And Trajan? He’s got his vampire heritage…if he can learn how to use it.
But he needs to figure things out quickly, or his life – and Connor’s – will be forfeit.
**Redeemed is book 3 in the Soulmates series and it works best if you’ve read at least one of the earlier books.
The Review
You know, I don’t think it’s over yet.
“It amuses me that you have such powerful friends but shy away from your own power.”
I noted this wry comment from an old vampire well into the complex and emotional third installment of the Soulmates series. It had never dawned on me that Trajan Gall, himself a 150-year-old vampire with a dark back story, would somehow feel that he was NOT powerful. Who would have thought that Trajan had inadequacy issues?
Liv Rancourt has filled this third volume of her wonderful series with many little gems like this—illuminating moments that add a certainly clarity to the often confused goings-on. After all, Trajan is the powerful one, right? There’s the feckless little blond werewolf David, who, although an alpha, doesn’t seem to take himself seriously. Then there’s Connor, the big silent redhead, prone to keeping secrets and feeling himself unworthy of his two lovers. Connor’s backstory is even more complicated than Trajan’s, but he’s never quite told the two men he loves exactly who he is (possibly because he only partly knows).
The main reason I find Rancourt’s heroes so appealing is that they are vulnerable in spite of their powers, each of them damaged by mistreatment at the hands of people who should have cared for them. Of course, the first book was all about David’s traumatic separation from his enormously powerful wolfpack. This book gives him a chance to discover exactly what sort of an alpha he is. Connor’s fraught connection to the Securitas Elites—sort of the supernatural FBI—comes into even higher relief in this book. His fear of disloyalty fights with his fear of losing the two people who mean the most to him. To top it all off, Trajan finds himself with a target on his back, placed there by his creator. This gives the author a chance to delve behind the protective emotional walls Trajan has built over the last century or so.
By the violent and exciting end of this book, we see all three men in a different light. We know them better, and we understand not only how good they are, but also how much they feel for each other. Rancourt not only manages the excitement and danger really well, but the tenderness of human emotion fairly thrums beneath all the action.
David and Connor and Trajan all build alliances within their respective—affinity groups?—in the course of this story. That also brings their personalities into high definition, and we begin to really appreciate them in a way we hadn’t quite before.
I really do hope there’s another book coming, because I’m not ready to give these guys up yet.
Five Stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
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