Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance
Length: Novel
Finn and Diego are happy living a quiet life in Montana, but when Diego leaves town to promote his new book, things get a little rocky. While Diego is gone, Finn rescues a girl from the river and takes the unconscious girl home to help save her. But when Diego comes home early to find Finn wrapped around a female in their bed, he loses it. Unwilling to listen to Finn’s explanation, Diego storms into the woods surrounding their house and Finn chases after him. Emotions out of control, Diego causes a lightning storm that goes terribly wrong.
When Diego wakes up and finds himself in a strange world, he discovers that his magic has ripped a hole in the Veil between his world and the fae world. And that Finn is nowhere to be found. Stranded in a world that he doesn’t understand, Diego soon learns that the fae of this world know him—at least, they know the man he was in his former lives. And his past is very different than he ever expected. After a challenge is issued, Diego steps up to fight for the fae when their champion is struck ill by a mysterious sickness. But first he has to learn to control his powers.
After Diego’s tantrum, Finn finds himself trapped on the other side of the Veil as well, only with a different race: the Fomorians. The king of the race blames Finn for the loss of his son and Finn’s life is only spared when he shows the king that he did not murder the prince. Regardless, the king wants revenge. That means opening the Veil to the Otherworld, but it can’t be done without the fae queen lifting the curse. When she refuses, the king issues challenge and orders Finn to stand in the stead of his champion who has fallen ill.
The ensuing battle, both substitute champions masked in armor, is fought brutally until Finn realizes the man his opposite is Diego, but he realizes too late and is injured badly. After Diego chastises both sides for their selfishness and idiocy, he stays with his lover until they are both able to apologize for the event that led them to their current situation.
But then more fae and Fomorians fall ill and Diego and Finn take it upon themselves to find a way to heal their world. When it is discovered that both races need both the fae world and the Otherworld (Diego’s world), the group—Diego, the fae queen, the Fomorian king, and Finn—bands together to make a doorway to the Otherworld.
Healed and in their own version of paradise, Diego and Finn and their friends from across the Veil spend time at their cabin in Montana, but unexpected dangers await them. Dangers that threaten not only Diego and Finn’s future, but the future of the other side of the Veil. Finn’s insecurities are expanded when he, his friends, and Diego all fall victim to an unimaginable evil that he is unable to save his love from. But Diego will stop at nothing to save the life of his friends and the love of his life.
Diego is the second book in Angel Martinez’s Endangered Fae series.
So, if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I liked the first book in this series okay, but I just couldn’t get into it. This book was much easier to read in the beginning. I really liked the new world and what the author did with it—the two distinctive races at war with one another over perceived wrongs and the secrets that lingered between them. It’s a good world, but then it gets weird. I’ll get to that in a moment. Just know that the first part of this book is what really drew me into the story.
The separation of worlds is very distinct and catching. I love the fae world—a world of magic and mystery. It’s very clean and almost ancient in my mind. The author did a great job of making the Veil come to life visually. I really enjoyed the description and contrast to the real world. Then there is the distinction of races. The fae are exactly what you would think—pixies, elves, shifters. Now, the Fomorians—they’re a different thing altogether. The Fomorians hold an almost human/animal form—bipedal with the body of a human and the head of their animal (cat, boar, wolf, otter, etc.) It’s all quite interesting and very creative.
In this story, we find Finn and Diego living a happy life in the wilds of Montana. We don’t see much of their relationship before the Veil incident, but from what I gather they are in pretty much the same place they were when we left them in the previous book. Which is strange to me because this book starts a year or two after that one ends. So all of Finn’s insecurities and self-deprecation have not only continued, but gotten worse. How in the world did Diego handle that for so long? I’m disappointed that there’s such a lack of growth in Finn’s character.
Okay, I mentioned that I’d get to the weirdness. Here it is. There’s a military factor in this story that was so out of left field. Like a Men in Black/Area 51 sort of thing. It’s so sudden and unexpected that it completely drew me out of the story for a while. Then the way the story ends. I couldn’t help but be disappointed. I’m not at all happy with the second part of this story. And to add to that, the resolution between the military aspect and the fae is very brief—like a brief mention in a paragraph in the last chapter.
So, yes, I really liked the way this story began. It was promising—tense, emotional, and exciting. But then it was just odd and disappointing. I had hoped for more from this series, but I’m just not getting it.
