The Demoness of Waking Dreams by Stephanie Chong
Series: The Company of Angels #2
Published by Mira Books
Published on: August 28, 2012
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
Source: Borrowed
Amazon | Book Depo
Even ANGELS can be tough… Ex-cop Brendan Clarkson is an angel with an edge. His tough exterior is the perfect camouflage for his job-hunting down the most dangerous criminals on earth. Brendan’s a self-reliant and demanding lone wolf, constantly on the brink of clashing with his superiors at the Company of Angels.
Brendan is the perfect angel to track and capture demoness Luciana Rossetti. Luciana’s cool, green-eyed beauty masks her true nature: inside, she’s a dangerous and malevolent killer. Yet, she sees what most people don’t-that beneath the layers of Brendan’s rugged shell beats the heart of a passionate lover.
They are perfectly matched. Yin and yang. Angel and demon. Man and woman. But only one of them can win the battle of wills, of strength and of desire.
The Demoness of Waking Dreams, for all the stereotyping that title opens us up to (you know he said, demoness said games) throws a refreshing pail of grey over the protagonist, her “captor/savior”, and their respective minions/superiors that matches quite nicely with this very musty but very atmospheric Venice.
The pacing lets up on occasion for some very interesting and long-winded backstories. (Most of the time though, one can look forward to colorful chase sequences and a multitude of equally colorful backdrops).
The characters at the heart of this – Luciana and Brandon – cultivate a believable amount of intimacy although so deeply angel and so deeply demoness (still lots of grey, still lots of grey).
The title perhaps deserves the most kudos for being so daring in its perhaps too descriptive yet very exotic sprawl (It may very well just have to do with the deployment of demoness, which with its double s-ending plays quite nicely with the continued deployment of piazza and the baroness in its interior).
The symbolism, involving dragons, poison, and feathers, is laid on with a light hand, as well as the dispersal of Italian vocabulary, Venetian history, Biblical stories, and, surprisingly, glass-blowing. What one has to love is the amount of details that are built up around a rather fanciful tale, leaving one with the feeling that, in addition, to reading a book, one has taken a trip.
The passion plays at times awkward, which is oddly enjoyable, but mostly, and this is equally enjoyable, on-point.
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| Recommended: | For those liking the sound of Venice |
| Like this, like that: | The Wings of the Dove by Henry James and the Demon Bound series by Maggie Shayne |
This one was a DNF for me. I just couldn’t get into the story.
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@Jennifer TheBookNympho I was so sold on the title I don’t think blank pages wouldn’t have still received a five. The story that developed was just a major plus.
huh, I wasn’t impressed with the first book in this series so I wasn’t going to read this one… I think it comes down to a matter of how you like your PNR 🙂
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