Rules of Darkness by Tia Fanning

Title: Rules of Darkness (Rules #1)
Author: Tia Fanning
Format: Paperback, 140 pages
Pub. Date: November 1st 2007
Source: Ramblings From This Chick blog

★★

Two stars.

Katia has been bound to Stoyan since she was born. He trained for a decade simply to protect her. Katia has terrible, wonderful gifts that encourage things that go bump in the night to go after her. It is because of these gifts that she must live by a strict set of rules. After her relative's death, she feels the need to run away from everything- including her husband to be. Only he's been watching, and waiting, but she really just wants to leave her life behind.

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Sigh. I am tired of weak female characters.

-Katia, in theory, should be a kick ass heroine. But all she does is run. She runs away from her village, she runs away from the spirit that enters her house. She runs away from the man that she loves, despite the fact that she acknowledges her love for him. She runs from the visions. She's a runner not a fighter, and I don't have time to read about characters like that.

-On that note, she makes stupid decisions. She knows that breaking the rules will hurt her. So what does she do? Break the rules. If I were Stoyan, I would have just stopped protecting her and left her to the spirits and werewolves.

-Someone is always protecting her, despite her gifts. Let her kick some ass. -When was this story supposed to take place? She was raised in a village where she was born in a home and could be sold off to a boy at birth. And yet, she runs away to a place with laptops and cars. This jump is never really explained, other than she's now in America.

-Stoyan is a male character that I can not stand. I like rough, dominant males. However, he's just anger inducing. He walks into her life all of a sudden and tries to boss her around. I don't care if that's the rule of the village or not. I wouldn't want him telling me what to do either. He spanks her at one point for acting like a child. It wasn't sexy, or cute. It is the sign of an abusive ass. That's saying something, coming from me, because I normally side with the abusive asses.

+All that said, it was relatively well written. Things were well described and vivid.

I'm sure somebody likes this, but it isn't me, so I have no recommendation to make.

Thank you to Ramblings From This Chick for my copy.