The Dark King

The Dark King
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: ARC Courtesy of NetGalley

As we dive into the second installment of the Fae trilogy, darkness is descending over Roanoke Island. If memory serves, we left off with Devilyn crossing over to the world of the Dark Fae to become their King. His job is to fulfill the prophecy that states he will unite Dark and Light Fae once and for all. Except since crossing over to the Dark Fae...he's been a little different. Those closest to him, those who love him, worry that he will never be the same again, that every trace of Light he once had is gone and that most importantly, he cannot be trusted.

Caroline, the final heir of the Light Fae and so on, abandoned by her true love (see above), has to get on with things without the protection of her one true love (or memory of him). She has to evade those in the Dark court who want to destroy her and she has to embrace her own strength to do so. Turns out Caroline has a nifty little talent...she can use Light to change a Fate itself.

Caroline and Devilyn have some insane chemistry as readers of the first book will recall, and they have that whole destiny thing but unless they can get the will to overcome the The Darkness and The Fates...destiny might not be so inevitable.

So, I loved Fae, NetGalley has so many awesome books, but when they're a series you're left scouring the new additions pages to find the next in the series, and I honestly did a double take when I spotted this. I was so excited to read the next book, ordinarily I'd have re-read the first book, but I didn't have time to do so, so I was working off of what I could vaguely remember, luckily C.J is good at refreshing your memory!

I gladly leaped back in to the magical world the author weaves with such skill. I mean with the ending of Fae, I couldn't read this installment fast enough. The first book hooked because of the whole Lost Colony thing, with me being such a history geek I couldn't resist, but I carried on reading because of the characters and the plot. The Dark King hooked me right from the beginning and I couldn't stop reading!

The Dark King is every bit as fast paced, action packed and hard to put down as the previous installment. Lots of sequels fail to measure up to the first book, but The Dark King more than  matches up, if not exceeds entirely, the first book! It was the perfect sequel.

I was excited to see how the characters would react to the end of Fae, and I must say, I really enjoyed the character growth from certain characters. I love watching characters grow and change, don't worry though guys, Devilyn's love for Caroline is still going strong, that doesn't change one bit! The character growth, for me, made the characters even more likeable. I loved watching how Caroline accepted her fate/heritage this time round, and had a totally different attitude about it, as a result. Titania...well her character growth is truly astounding, she's totally different from Fae, and I'm growing to like her quite a bit! I was also super excited to discover new characters in the book!

The new characters where written with as much care and detail as our characters from the first book, each with plenty of depth and brought to life on the page quite realistically. Did I mention one of the new characters is a boy who's after Caroline? No? Well, all I'll say about that is that it was very well written, usually that sort of thing can irritate me if it's not done correctly, but it's like Abedi gets inside my head and knows what I want to see! Don't worry though, I wouldn't class it as a love triangle! This new development was interesting, added some drama, and gave Devilyn a kick up the ass, I'd say.
There is, however, more than one character that I could quite happily hit in the face. With a brick. It's a testament to Abedi's writing that I actually got so angry just from reading about fictional people, but there you go. Abedi can really get you emotionally involved in the book, which is always a good thing!

I really had missed this world. Everything is written so vividly you can picture it all clearly like a movie playing in your head, and the characters are all written so well you get quite emotionally attached to them. The Dark King was no different, and there where moments where I really wanted to smack Devilyn for the whole "pushing her away" thing. But I wouldn't really because at the same time you get such insight in to the characters you kinda just wanna hug him as well. I enjoyed seeing more of the friendship between Caroline and Teddy, it's expertly written and brings a smile to your face to read scenes with them. The banter between them reminds me of myself and a couple of my friends every know and again, not going to lie!

I was pleased to see Odin, among others, still present. In the first book, the thing I really loved was the mythology of the Fae and the Norse mythology element all mixed together, and I was pleased it was still present, and not totally shoved to the side in favour of action and such, like a lot of authors do. I just can't get enough of it!

To the plot then! I don't want to say too much because I don't want to give it away. We have a lot of different threads coming together, and really building up to what I'm hoping is going to be a spectacular conclusion. There's a lot of the whole pushing Caroline away and trying to get her to hate him type thing for the first half, and the last half (which involves a camping trip), was where the action really took off. That doesn't mean the book wasn't fast paced from the off, and doesn't grip you from the beginning because as I said, I was hooked the whole way through.

Now, I read so many YA paranormal romances, I've experienced this feeling so many times, mostly with Gena Showalter (Alice Through the Zombie Glass), Sarah Rees Brennan (Unspoken etc) and Cassie Clare (ANY Mortal Instruments book), and yes I'm putting Abedi with them. Whenever things get all happy and things get fixed and it's all going swimmingly, no matter how many pages are left, I get suspicious. Really suspicious. Because I know somethings going to happen. Something's going to go wrong and everything's going to go wrong. Abedi gets to join these three prestigious authors because as I said, I'm always suspicious and rightly so. The cliffhanger literally came out of nowhere and I just sat there for a while like "what the hell just happened?!"

I'm not going to lie, I read fast, and I whizzed through this in a couple of hours because I just couldn't put it down. It was so fast paced, I couldn't find a place in the book for me to end it, so I settled down with some green tea and popcorn and sat gripped by the book from start to finish. More than once with everything going on between Caroline and Devilyn I may or may not have muttered "OH COME ON" more than once! For me their relationship was written so perfectly in the first book, it took time, and I like how the relationship continued to be written realistically and enjoyably, the author knew where the boundaries where between enjoyable and dragging something out.

The Dark King continues the standards set down in Fae. The world is a familiar one, and every bit as magical as it was the first time round, with everything painted clearly for you with a few words. The characters growth, in some cases, makes you love them more, and watching the characters so obviously grow is satisfying. The mythology is still going strong, and the threads of the plot are twining together to create something truly amazing.

The Dark King has everything you could want, romance, action, magic and much, much more. Gripping you from the start, you find yourself frantically turning pages to get to the end, unable to guess or predict any of the plot twists, you find yourself gasping, and unable to put the book down for ANYTHING. The Dark king really will make you quite emotional, such is the way the book pulls you in. Fast paced, full of action, and a perfectly written romance The Dark King is a strong installment in the trilogy.

As always the only thing I didn't like was the cliffhanger at the end, because I just can't cope with them and the waiting for the next book in the series, and the needing to know what happened so incredibly badly!