Throne in the Dark – Villains & Virtues #1 by A.K. Caggiano
His dark destiny awaits, and nothing will stand in his way. Except her.
Dark lord
Demon spawn
Prophesied realm destroyer
With a demon for a father, Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne’s destiny could be nothing but nefarious, and with the completion of his most vicious spell, Damien is on the cusp of fulfilling the evil inevitability all of his dark machinations have led to.
And then, her.
Bubbly
Obnoxious
Blonde
Harboring secrets of her own, a tiny yet troublesome thief calling herself Amma completely upsets Damien’s malevolent plans when she mistakenly gets chained to his side through magic, forcing him to drag her across the realm. Killing her would fix things, of course, but the nauseatingly sweet Amma proves herself useful on Damien’s unholy crusade and then proves herself the source of something even more sinister: feelings.
Will Damien be forced to abandon his villainous birthright to help the tender thorn in his side? Or will he manage to overcome the virtue Amma insists on inspiring and instead cut it out at the heart?
So, this one is a semifinalist for us, not for it’s average team score, which is high, but not as high as some of the others, but because it is one of our judges very favourite book from our batch. So for that it got bumped up the tiny bit it needed to get into our semifinalist range.
It is one of the books that did split our judges, with some utterly loving it, and others not clicking with it, which just proves how incredibly subjective reading is. But enough rambling – let’s cut to the chase!
Julia: I knew early on that I’m not the target audience for this. I struggled a bit to get into the world, and especially the characters who couldn’t be any more different. It’s a comedy in a way, so the over the top feel of opposites attract was intentional, but it felt a bit too tropey and jarring at first.
But then… Slowly, and without me noticing it, this story started to actually draw me in. Where I found myself lightly rolling my eyes at first, I suddenly found myself snorting. Instead of being annoyed, I was giggling? What happened?
I’ve no idea how, where, or when, but this cosy dark romantic comedy definitely won me over somewhere along the way. Instead of naive and too virtuous, I suddenly found the female MC endearing. Instead of the walking trope of a brooding, mysterious, but hot guy, I really enjoyed the snark and humour of the male MC.
The few sexy (not too graphic) scenes were funny, but actually sexy, which is something I never thought I’d say. It’s a comedy, but managed to pull that off better than most “spicy” books I’ve tried over the years, and usually bounce off hard. Pardon the unintentional pun. To manage that while still being entertaining and making me giggle is a first!
“Shh,” he hissed, leaning closer, but her struggle persisted, and she scuffed a foot against the wall. Strange, scaring her was apparently not the way to get what he wanted despite that it usually worked on others. He couldn’t shout either,that would bring the werewolves right to them. Well, that was him, out of ideas. Except, of course, something even more disgraceful.
Damien wrapped his free arm around her back and yanked her away from the wall so she could no longer kick it. Pulling her up against him, he dipped his head beside her ear. “I will not allow anything to happen to you,” he said, leveling something like comfort into his voice, “but you must be quiet now. Please.”
The mix of cute, fun, humourous, with some dark humour, blood, and casual mention of murder made for a great mix, a bit similar to Kingfisher’s books, Liches get Stitches, Hills of Heather and Bone, so if you enjoy cosy-dark, and don’t mind a bit of a silly romance, this is great fun! In fact, I still have three more books left to read, but so far this one is, against all odds and expectations, my favourite out of our batch of 30.
Really? All of you believe this nonsense?” Damien mumbled, casting a glance at his cohorts then back to the ghost he had spattered with blood. “Out with it—what are you really?”
“You heard the girl!” The voice came raspy this time, so unlike it had been asecond before. “We are the spirits of the slain, felled here in the Gloomweald thousands upon thousands of years ago.”
“Well, then no wonder you came to greet us; this seems a bloody boring eternity to endure.” Damien’s grip on Amma relaxed. “That banishment spell hadno effect on you. You’re of this plane.”
“No, we’re ghosts,” another watery voice called from the crowd behind.
“Yes. Boo!” cried another.
Adawia: I had no idea what to expect with Throne in the Dark, and still what I got was unexpected lol. It’s like a fun, silly, rollicking adventure anime with dark comedy and romance, in novel form. It has just the right amount and kind of absurd to be thoroughly entertaining. Admittedly, I wasn’t quite sure if I’d enjoy this read when we first met ‘dad’ – I thought maybe it was a little too much – but I continued and ended up having a great time with this book.
At first, we think this story is going to be a quest – a demon on a mission to free his dad from an evil king. Turns out this book is more about the journey than the destination. A number of side-quests, obstacles, and interferences pop up along the way and it becomes clear this quest is an overarcing thread to be written over multiple books. Meanwhile we get an engrossing tale of some very evil villains, some not-so-evil villains, and a handful of confused nice guys, all more or less vying to either save the world or rule it.
A well-written story with good pacing and flow. There are a few moments of extended internal monologue, but the prose is nice enough that it goes by fairly quickly and doesn’t hinder enjoyment.
Throne in the Dark is both fun and funny, and I plan to hopefully continue this series after SPFBO.
Patrick: I wanted to like this one. The setting is original, there’s humour, and the characters are good. But repetitive sentence structure and very many excessively long sentences one after another meant I kept finding myself skimming rather than reading, and I stopped reading it.
Kerry: I approached this book with some hesitation as I am not usually one for romance and often books that purport that they are comedies fail to make me even smile. Surprisingly though, I had so much fun with Throne in the Dark. The romance was only a wee bud and instead of Enemies to Lovers the MCs instead became ‘Frenemies’ (which I liked) and I often found myself giggling and on occasion I snorted with laughter. The comedic lines always came after a moment of tension or a darkish paragraph so it worked well.
“My life’s work,” said Damien, lips curling at the corners and thin, black brows narrowing. “It is finally complete.” He was twenty- seven.”
“Eternal Crud?”“The cult’s been around a long time, so they’re really scrounging the bottom of the epithet barrel, I will admit.”
The author has really played up the tropes of a rom-com but not over done them. Prose and pacing were well done and I loved the interaction between all the characters. I read this in one afternoon as I was enjoying this too much to put down.
I also have the next 2 books in the series downloaded for when I need a fun and darkish comedy to read.
