Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt
Review by Issa S. (Issa-345)
This book was hard to rate. To start out, I loved Thief of Shadows. Winter Makepeace is my favorite historical hero of all time so I knew this one would not live up to the prior one but I was surprised by how far it fell.
Godric St. John, one of several Ghosts of St. Giles, is blackmailed into marrying Margaret (Megs) who is pregnant with her dead lover’s child. She loses the baby and lives in the country for two years. She decides to return to London, with a number of female family members, to seduce her husband because she wants a baby.
Not enamored by Megs and her entourage he rebuffs his wife’s seduction and continues his ghostly duties. He has yet to get over the loss of his late wife Clara and is committed to his work as the Ghost.
Neither Godric nor Megs was fleshed out well. Megs has little personality to recommend her and her push to force Godric to give her a child off putting. Godric is dull. We learn why he became the Ghost, but the passion we felt with Winter Makepeace is sorely missing.
Megs learns Godric is the Ghost the same way Isabel found out in the previous book so no fresh ideas there. And by the end of this one, everyone seems to know Godric is the Ghost. Here I thought the secrecy regarding the Ghost was important.
Godric and Megs’s love story never really grabbed me and in the end I didn’t care if they had their HEA or not.
However, I rated the book a little higher for two things. I liked the set up for the next book and am very hopeful for that one. I’m also intrigued with the story of the dragoon captain Trevillion. I hope Hoyt expands what she’s doing with him and makes it better than an simple, obvious conclusion.
This is not a bad book, I still enjoyed reading it but it is one of the weaker books of the series.
