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Review: The Wicked by Thea Harrison (Elder Races Novella #5)

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The Wicked by Thea Harrison // VBC ReviewThe Wicked (An Elder Races Novella #5)
Thea Harrison
Published: July 2, 2013 (Samhain)
Purchase at: Amazon
Review Source: Purchased

Reviewed by: Mary

Rating (out of 5): 4 stars

The Wicked: because librarians need love too.

Olivia is a librarian in Kentucky. Not necessarily the most exciting start to a book, but her best friend happens to be the Oracle, Grace.  She also specializes in magical texts, which lands her a job helping relocate Carling Severan’s super-wicked, magically dangerous library. To say that this is the most exciting thing to ever happen to Olivia is a bit of an understatement. She is ready for an adventure and feels like this is her one chance to do something exciting. She just doesn’t realize how exciting it will end up being.

Sebastian Hale owns the security firm Carling and Rune have hired to help the librarians crossover and retrieve Carling’s books. World-traveler, major-badass, and avian wyr Sebastian is rumored to be good enough to be a sentinel, but he likes the freedom and money that come with owning his own security firm.

When he meets Olivia, he feels the instant pull to her. When wyr mate with other races, it can be tricky, so he takes his time. In past books, the mating instinct was immediate and, in a few instances, somewhat crazed. In The Wicked, our male wyr recognizes that he could mate with a human (who would not have the same reaction to him) and makes the choice to pursue a relationship, despite the possible consequences. Throw in a curse to make things interesting and you’ve got a powerful, tortured, alpha male ready to win his mate.

My only complaint about this novella is the ‘conflict’ between the crew and Julius, who of course is trying to prevent Carling from collecting her books, seems a little forced. I would have rather seen some more conflict within the crew, because that was really where the magic of this book took place.

Without giving anything away, I’ll say that I was really surprised by some of the twists that took place when I wasn’t expecting them, but aren’t we always? I was likewise disappointed when it seemed like the action was building up to something good, and then just fizzled.

Some of my favorite characters from the Elder Races series play a role in this novella. Grace and Khalil are my favorite couple, outside of Dragos and Pia. It was so nice to see them settled into their life and enjoying their family. I was surprised at how much I really loved reading about Phaedra and the fact that I found myself rooting for her. I enjoyed seeing her grow and progress.

I love this entire series of novellas. In some series, the world that the author creates gets so big that you can’t always keep everything straight. These novellas allow for minor plot points to be wrapped up, characters to be revisited, and the world to be expanded without the main story line being complicated. Plus, we get an extra story between longer novels!

Having read all of the books and novellas in this series, I honestly can’t say this is my favorite. However, The Wicked is a great installment, with sexy new characters and new characters getting sexy! 

Sexual content: Graphic sex

5 Responses to “Review: The Wicked by Thea Harrison (Elder Races Novella #5)”

  1. Snapdragon says:

    I picked this up earlier and it is hiding in my reader…I’m going to have to turn the thing on and read the book now.

  2. Sara says:

    I enjoyed this novella also. I couldn’t figure out why the conflict with Julius was there either. I’m hoping that it’s a teaser for a potential Julius/Phaedra novel or novella.

  3. Holly says:

    I loved this book too. Gave it 4 stars as well. And can we just take a second and admire how pretty that cover is…sigh.

  4. The wicked says:

    Good blog! I have found here much useful information for yourself and would like to thank you for done by work.

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