The Seelie King by Heather Killough-Walden (Book 5 in The Kings Series)

4 Stars

Selene is the heroine in this book and we met her in the previous book.  She is the best friend of The Goblin Queen and we knew she was special from that book.  The Seelie King, Avery is keeping his eye on her as it is suspected she is part fae and that is too much of a coincidence for him to ignore with the queens being exposed.  He doesn’t go straight to her though because he is worried she is part of a trap. 

This book takes place mostly in England.  Selene (like all the queens) is very sensitive.  She is sensitive to environmental toxins and bad attitudes and the injustices of humanity.  Like all the queens and kings at this juncture, she is in danger and Avery must make his move to protect her and in doing so he almost doesn’t survive. 

The storyline with Ramses and his brother continues.  I’m not as interested in that as I am in the individual stories.  Every time the author takes me out of the story between the two main characters in each book it takes me out of the world completely.

I am really looking forward to the Unseelie Kings story.  His lady fair is Selene’s twin sister and it sounds like her story is going on almost simultaneously with this one. Can’t wait!

The Vampire King by Heather Killough-Walden (The Kings Series #1)

I have almost read everything that Heather Killough-Walden has written and if I haven't read it then it is in my TBR pile. This book is a spin off series on the Big Bad Wolf series. You don't have to read the Big Bad Wolf series first, but I would recommend it because you will have a better understanding of some of the side characters and their motivations.

Summary:
The vampire king is Roman D'Angelo and he has been the king for over 3,000 years. There are 12 other kings (we haven't met them all so I don't exactly know what they are kings of). The foe is revealed early on as Charles Ward who is a vampire but was good friends with the warlock king (whom Roman helped to eliminate in the last book of the Big Bad Wolf series). Roman meets Evie and wants her for his queen. I believe that the other books in the series about the kings will be about them finding their queens. They must have all been queen-less this whole time.

Thoughts:
I didn't like that the book started out with an excerpt from the ending and then went back 3 weeks. Once I had already read that part it was almost frustrating to go to the beginning at that point, but I was drawn in quickly and was interested to read how Evie and Roman get along.

The other part that I found a little frustrating was that it seemed like Evie went straight from trying to run away from Roman to being his queen. There wasn't any time in there spent their blossoming relationship. I can see that with the timeline that there wasn't any time in which to do that, but should have been an "ah ha" moment for Evie when she should have realized that she loved him.

Overall, it was very entertaining. We got to meet the Phantom King who is the star of the next book. We met the new warlock king. We briefly met Ramses and it is hard to tell if he is a full blown bad guy or is functioning under a misunderstanding. There is so much going on in this story line it would be impossible to discuss all the side characters (so I guess you must read the Big Bad wolf series first!). I am looking forward to The Phantom King.