2012 First Book: Archangel's Blade

After my last minute charge to finish all the challenges I signed up for in 2011, I turned today to a library book that had drifted overdue in that scramble.  The fourth book in Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter series, Archangel's Blade crosses the line back over from urban fantasy to paranormal romance, which I gather is Singh's usual nesting ground.  Previous books have followed guild hunter Eleni through her transformation into an archangel, complete with wings and a relationship with the top male archangel around.  I found those interesting as they stuck with Eleni for three books, exploring both her problems with her metamorphosis and the world with angels who can turn humans into ageless vampires, but only do so under strict legal contracts enforced by tough leather-wearing hunters like Eleni and Honor.

Honor, the new lead in this story, is recovering from a horrible kidnapping and torture fest that dragged on for months and has not yet regained her sexy edge.  Luckily Dmitri, the razor-sharp second-in-command to Eleni's mate, understands that it's time to stop coddling her and instead shock her into facing the world again, mostly by succumbing to his irresistible man-wiles.  Oh yeah, and hunting down all the vampires involved in her abuse and with a little side-line in capturing a serial killer distantly related to the evil lord who made Dmitri a vampire while destroying his family.  See -- she's helping him while he helps her, so they are partners. This combination of sex and violence helps Heal Honor's Wounds, but doesn't tell me a lot more about this society and also doesn't really give me interesting characters to care about, instead offering me a rather bland relationship and rather stock violent bad guys to horribly conquer.  There will probably be more Guild Hunter books, but I'll only read them if they jump out at me from the library New and Interesting Shelves, which I'm not even going to look at for the next four months anyway.

I did notice that the first book I've read has an alphabetical title (A_B_), tempting me to read a C next, but unfortunately library due dates determine my next few choices, so I can't read the alphabet this year.  It's a thought, though...