Review: Bind the Soul - Annette Marie
Series: Steel and Stone #2
My rating: {★★★★☆}
YA Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Published January 9th 2015 by Dark Owl Fantasy Inc.
Source: Purchased
The most important rule for an Apprentice Consul is simple: Don't get involved with daemons. Well, Piper is planning to break that rule — big time.
After a near-deadly scandal with the Sahar Stone, she has the chance to return to the only life she's ever wanted. All she has to do to keep her Apprenticeship is forget about Ash and Lyre. Ash might be enigmatic and notoriously lethal, and Lyre might be as sinfully irresistible as he is irritating, but they’re not bad for a couple of daemons.
There's just one problem: Ash is missing.
Really, she shouldn't risk her future for him. He lied. He betrayed her. But he also saved her life, damn it. Wherever he is, he's in trouble, and if she doesn't save his sorry butt, who will? But with every dangerous secret she unravels, each one darker than the last, she slips deeper into Ash's world — a world with no escape for either of them.
The first time I read this book I remember I devoured it all in one sitting and the second time really didn't take that much longer - I just had far less reading time available (big sads).
Bind the Soul is the second book in the Steel and Stone universe and continues almost exactly where the first book left off - Ash is missing and they believe that he has gone back to Samael in the Underworld. Why on Earth anyone would want to go back to the cruel Hades overlord - only Ash knows, and Piper and Lyre are determined to find out.
This one ratcheted up the intensity and I struggled to stop reading for any reason. Who needs sleep? Who needs to function during daytime hours? Who needs to cook dinner? Apparently none of these is me.
Once again we have Piper - our young, sassy, resilient haemon who also happens to be completely magicless, but this does not make her defenseless by any means - Annette Marie excels at showing us that our heroines don't have to have magical powers to kick ass.
Lyre's character seemed to take a bit of a backseat here to Ash as we learned more about the backstory of my favourite draconian, but I still love that incubus with all my heart. Both of these daemons are particularly swoonworthy and in this book we get to see Ash with all his vulnerabilities on display which actually just makes him that much more appealing.
The forbidden romance aspect is definitely one of my favourites and wow, does Annette Marie write it well. I totally ship all the ships she writes.
There wasn't as many laugh out loud moments that I experienced in the first book, but Bind the Soul took us to a grittier part of the overall plot arc and I appreciated that the stakes were raised so much.
She swallowed, her mouth dry as dust. “I don’t want to die.” His expression didn’t soften. “Death is easy. Living is difficult.”An exhilarating and solid second book in a really wonderful series I
←Chase the Dark (Steel&Stone #1)
