Warriors. Lovers. Enemies. Legends. Their union became pivotal in Irin history, but to understand Damien and Sari's ending, you must go back to their beginning. Four hundred years ago, a young singer and a hardened warrior met and loved each other, but their life was torn apart by violence.
Love. Desire. Grief. Betrayal.
No matter how much pain and anger stain their lives, bonds in the Irin race cannot be abandoned. Damien and Sari will never truly leave each other, because those who are destined cannot be ignored.The Staff and the Blade is a four part stand-alone book of approximately 480 pages. It is the fourth book in the Irin Chronicles.
DREAMS: Damien of Bohemia was a legend content to live in obscurity. Weary from a century of human and Irin bloodshed, he took shelter among those who would not question his silence or the martial spells he wore over his body. Until an earth singer of raw power and no delicacy came to the village where he hid. Sari of Vestfold wasn't intrigued by the mysterious warrior or his moody silences. And she wasn't interested in listening for the whisper of his soul. Even when those whispers promised a connection that could tie them for eternity.
GHOSTS: A new posting in Paris during Napoleon’s reign leads Sari and Damien back to familiar faces and the Council politics Damien has tried so hard to avoid. But the Irin world has changed in the two hundred years since their mating. The singers have become more isolated. The scribes are more martial. And the Grigori flood growing cities and lay in wait. When Sari’s sister envisions the future, she sees emptiness, chaos, and a darkness that threatens to overtake their world.
MEMORIES: Hidden from Irin society, the Irina have learned to take their revenge on the Grigori. They answer to no one. They ask for no mercy. And forgiveness? That’s the last thing on anyone’s mind. Two hundred years after the Rending, Damien and Sari are thrown together to face a new threat, a girl who might be key to the healing of the Irin race. If they can survive the anger and grief that has separated them for two hundred years.
VISIONS: The Irin and Irina are together again. Society is being rebuilt. But what do you do when the foundation of your world has crumbled? Where do you go when all the boundaries have been redrawn? For Damien and Sari, charting a new path into the future means confronting the demons of the past. They’ve forgiven each other, but can they forgive themselves?
Comment: In the recent years I've read what was supposed to be a trilogy written by this author but which has evolved into a series. The original three books centered in a specific couple's journey to love but now there are a few more stories out featuring secondary characters readers met while the original three were on going.
This is the story of Sari and Damien, two characters who are mated but when we originally meet them in the other books, their relationship is a strained one because they are often apart due to their respective duties to the Irin race. Why they are apart isn't always obvious besides some conflicts in their past and in this book we finally are able to discover why.
Just as a little reminder, in this series the Irin race is the outcome of angel descents who protect themselves and humans from the Grigori, other descendants from Fallen angels (thus mostly evil).
As the above blurbs describe, this story is divided into four parts. In each one, we get to see a little bit of the relationship between Sari and Damien and how they have come to the point in which they are when we first met them: apart and not happy despite their bond.
I must say that the author has created a very detailed world in which her characters live. However, I must also say, generally speaking, there is quite a good highlight on how bad the villains are and how necessary it is to battle them. This might be very worthy and of course the biggest conflicts in the books come from this situation but I think that - at least to me - if there was less focus on the bad guys and more on the relationships between characters and their own world/lives, the stories could be even better.
I confess some parts within this book felt a little boring because I wanted to see what happens and not have as many pages detailing what happened.
In part, I guess I could say the problem for me was the way this story was told. Yes, it was interesting to know things from Sari and Damien's past but this is precisely why I usually dislike or simply endure lovers reunited plots: too much time spent on how they used to be and not enough on how they should be now.
The four parts in this book are basically this:
- in the first we get to see how the couple met and fell in love. This is certainly cute but when we first know about this couple on book #1 of the series, we already know that. This could have been a novella for fans.
- in the second part we know why they decided to live separate lives and how that is connected to the most difficult moment of their race's existence. While this was important to learn, a simple conversation would have given the reader the same information and it could have still been dramatic without us having to have read it.
- in the third part we follow some happenings from the first three books but now from Sari and Damien's POV. Again, it's interesting and I did like how we get to see some things but it didn't add that much to what was supposed to be the solution for Sari and Damien's issues.
- In the final part we finally get to see them dealing with their problems. But this is only a small part of the whole book and it felt a little like cheating because it didn't have many pages.
I understand the author wanted to offer the readers the opportunity to see how two people could have gone from sweet love to an almost cold life of duty. However, there's a lot of pages regarding situations that, despite their severity, should have been dealt with much sooner too. In fact, these characters belong to a long lived race so they had plenty of time to talk, to agree on a different way of living, especially after so many decades!
Yes, life isn't easy for anyone and realistically speaking, things aren't easy ever but this is fiction... and then, in the last part, the one with less pages (if I recall correctly from my edition) they finally decide to just be together and be in love as everyone would have expected. This is no surprise since this is a romance story. I mean... the solution wouldn't have been difficult to achieve.
Again, I understand the tactic of allowing readers to savor the development of a romantic love story but for me too much was spent in the past and not enough on the present which is where the story is suppose to happen.
Grade: 6/10
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