Review: Goddess with a Blade (Goddess With A Blade Series Book 1) by Lauren Dane

Goddess with a Blade by Lauren Dane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really love the main female character in this book, Rowan Summerthwaite. Rowan is a woman who has given her life up to the service of others. She is the vessel for the goddess Brigid, and as such serves during rituals and blessings. Raised from infancy by the First vampire she was taught with ruthless efficiency to be a perfect weapon and servant. Then she found out that her foster father had her parents killed. She was just a teenager and ran to Brigid’s Motherhouse for safety and became a hunter of vampires for revenge and in service once more the unaware human population.

I loved the world-building in this book. There is a careful treaty between vampires and hunters, where punishments are laid out on both sides and tribunals govern over disputes of actions taken by both parties. Hunters like Rowan are the blades that execute the vampires that go rogue. I love the idea of checks and balances between humanity and vampires.

Rowan covers Las Vegas and is returning after an absence of 8 months, during which she was being questioned by a series of tribunals and committees after killing the previous Scion of Las Vegas. She has returned to a new Scion who has taken a very deadly broom to the vampires left to him. He has got a ruthless grip on business for the Vampire Nation. The new Scion, Clive, is 500 years old and was born a vampire. He’s British and very proper, Rowan is not and when they meet sparks fly. Those sparks inevitably lead to them bumping uglies, despite themselves.

There is a series of brutal murders taking place in Las Vegas that have been brought to Rowan’s attention. Young women, junkies, are being murdered in a vicious manner and very obviously by a vampire. It’s up to Rowan to discover the murderer before vampires become exposed to the world, which breaks the Treaty.

This is a really enjoyable book with lots of wonderfully detailed world-building. There are also some really interesting characters that have depth and realism. This is a great first book in a series and introduces the world and the characters really well. I’ll definitely be reading the rest of this series.

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