Bound to Shadows (Riley Jensen, Guardian, Book 8)

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Product Reviews

(4 stars) - Yet another great addition to Keri Arthur's, Riley Jenson Guardian series.
Beheaded vampires are turning up and The Directorate suspects a serial killer is on the loose. Guardian for the Directorate, Riley Jenson, is assigned to the case and in the course of her investigation a second and possibly related case emerges. Human women are being found dead with no clue as to their cause of death. Riley must discover if the two cases are related and find the killer before tensions between the local population, both human and vampire boil over in outrage.

Fate seems to have it in for Riley and in the midst of the investigation Riley's fated soul-mate Kye Murphy comes back into her life further complicating her sometimes chaotic personal relationships. Kye is a ruthless mercenary and she wants nothing to do with him, however through her werewolf nature she is bonded to him and finds it nearly impossible to resist him sexually. She is in love with her vampire lover, Quinn, a millennium old vampire who loves her as well. Riley is dual-natured in that she is half vampire and half werewolf and she is torn between her heart (Quinn) and her soul (Kye).

"I might blame the wolf, but the wolf, like the vampire, wasn't the sum of me."

"And if there were two parts of me at war, then it wasn't the wolf and the vampire, but rather the heart the soul."

In Keri Arthur's world of paranormals, werewolves are highly sexual beings and she makes no apologies for it. They are what they are by nature and she manages to hold true to that. Being the romantic that I am, at times I've found Riley's nature and promiscuity difficult to reconcile since traditionally in the world of fictional romance, sex and love are mostly one in the same. However I find Riley Jenson's character remarkably likeable and at her core she is moral, decent, and true to her personal relationships. I've managed to move past my preconceived notions of what I expect an urban fantasy/romance heroine to be and embrace all that she is. I think if I lived in Australia, and lived in her fantasy world of paranormals, I'd want to be Riley's friend.

A paranormal murder mystery based in a well built urban fantasy world, Bound To Shadows (the eighth book in the series) is yet another great addition to Keri Arthur's, Riley Jenson Guardian series.

(1 stars) - Unsatisfactory, Inane and Blase
This book is unsatisfactory. I like the Riley Jensen series, but this book is awful. There is just no "there" there. It makes no sense for Riley to ignore the sudden appearance of a sex dreamer after she meets an owner of a bar who puts out series sex vibes. It makes no sense for her to ignore these dreams and NEVER mention it to anyone, especially after she realizes she is after someone who can sex drain someone through mirrors. How stupid is that?

It makes no sense for her to ignore the emotional aspect of her soul male Kye. She dislikes him because he kills. But everyone she knows is a killer. She is a killer. Her lover Quinn is a killer. Her brother is a killer. All her friends are killers. Thus, Kye should be her perfect match. The lack of explanation makes this book useless.

And the end is shockingly inane. Everyone she cares about warns her to shoot without hesitation, but what does she do? Hesitate continuously.

Unlike other heroines in action, paranormal romance, fantasy novels, Riley seems just inane. She never THINKS. She never grows. She shows no maturity or growth despite all the things that have happened to her and the ones she loves. She seems amazingly dumb over and over again. It is as if she has some weird amnesia and that nothing she experiences ever makes an impression on her. She gets people killed and that never seems to have any resonance.

Very, very unsatisfying. I got the book at Wal-Mart and saved some money, but I wish I had not wasted the time in reading it. Maybe this (my 1st review of a book EVER) will spare someone else the money and time.

Even worse than the character issues are the obvious holes in writing. We learn that the sex dreamer can only enter someone's home AFTER he has accessed it. But without such access to Riley's home, he is suddenly in her dreams. Ugh.

(2 stars) - Very Disappointed!!
There was so much potential with the storyline of having Riely's actual soul mate in the running for her heart. I found Kye to be the dangerous man Riely needs in her life to counter the tameness of Quinn. Arthur took Kye's posessive behavior and turned it into that of a psychotic and at the same time she turned Quinn into a very uninteresting character. Without the intrigue of who Riely will spend her life with, the series has lost something for me and I most likely will not be continuing with the series.

(2 stars) - Where's Riely
I have read the whole series and enjoy Riley very much. I like her humor, love of her pack and her relationship with Quinn,who I think is very hot and her kick-ass attude, which also wasn't present. Quinn wasn't in this book very much which was dissappointing.Kye was a waste in this book I was hopeing for some real struggles with-in Riley between her Vampire love and her wolf soul mate. It would have made great tension for a couple books. Instead Riely was winny ,not much action compared to the other books. I want the old Riley back.

(2 stars) - Standalone-good book, Part of the Series-not so good
I have to agree with the other reviewers. Gone is the kickass heroine with a warm sense of humor. In this installment of the series, we have a sex addicted whiny werewolf whose constant reasoning is, "I'm a werewolf. You wouldn't understand." She puts people in danger because of her inability to make decisions, withholds vital information because she "didn't want to alarm anybody unnecessarily", yet in other books she emphasizes that every little clue is important. Riley's character in this book is alarmingly annoying. The mystery plot does take a backseat to the Riley-Quinn-Kye triangle. Like others have said, the author makes Kye to be a cold-blooded killer, which should have made Riley's decision all too easy, yet there wasn't any justification as to why it was so hard other than they were soul mates. If the author had made Kye out to be a little warmer, the indecisiveness would have been more understandable. She knew killing a soulmate was survivable because of her friend Ben, yet she didn't want to face this fate, even when she knew lives would be saved. Riley was just depicted as cowardly in this book and even she admitted that. I really hope the final book in the series makes up for this one.

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