Born of Fury (The League #8)

Shh! I'm being stupid and I have to concentrate for it.

Available at Amazon.com

Born of Fury
Sherrilyn Kenyon
The League, book eight
ebook, 624 pages
Published July 1st 2014 by Piatkus
ISBN 9781250042965


Hauk, one of the fiercest Andarion warriors ever born, is also one of the founding members of Sentella, an organisation that has declared war on the terrifying League that rules the Ichidian universe.

Sumi Antaxasis is the best assassin the League has ever trained and failure is not an option. When she is assigned Hauk as her target, Sumi is sure of her quick and easy success.

However, things are never that easy and Hauk is far more skilled than the League thought. As Sumi hunts him down she discovers something that could not only destroy Hauk but all of Sentella.

But she has her own enemies hunting her down and suddenly Sumi's only chance for survival is to place her trust in the man she was sent to kill but is he just playing a game that could send Sumi to her grave?

Welcome back to the League! ...and to the beginning of the Reaver Era. I put this book on hold after finishing book six last month, wanting this to be the first book with my new e-reader, the Kindle Voyage, and also, because  it's the last of my League collection until May... freaking May!

It's been eight years since the first book told Nykyrian's story. He has six kids now. And he's raising them all so well. And let's not forget Syn and Shahara's son.

"I was playing with Devyn when he was a baby, and I pretended to drop him. His dad snatched him from me, and his mother shot me for it."

Yeah, you don't mess with the Sentella or their kids.

Fain Hauk, elder brother of Dancer Hauk, was disowned by his family and clan when, at the age of eighteen, he chose to marry a human. The marriage lasted two years before he discovered her infidelity and the union ended, leaving Fain disinherited and loathed by all but Dancer. Now... so many years later, it appears the woman's sister, Sumi, will be the one to bring Dancer to his knees. Oh, the familial irony.

And yet, due to Andarion custom, Dancer is sworn to wed the widow of his late brother, Keris, who fell to his death during Dancer's Endurance challenge. He's been betrothed to the bitch since he was fifteen. Has never been with a woman. Never even kissed one due to the strict code of his people concerning adultery.

After the last book's jaw dropping conclusion in which three of the Sentella members, Nykyrian, Darling, and Caillen, dropped their masks and revealed their tightly concealed identities to the League, Kyr is left with one hell of an axe to grind against them as war has been declared. He forces Sumi, through threat of her daughter's life (a daughter that was ripped from her at the moment of her birth) to gather to necessary information to seek Dancer's life. That is, info that would tie him to the Sentella.

A mere two days of being with Dancer, amidst the Endurance challenge where he alone is there to protect his nephew Darice and Nykyrian's daughter, Thia, and Sumi realizes she can't go through with it. By the middle of the book, she and Dancer have fallen in love and are doomed to death for it.

After their return to Dancer's home planet, being that Sumi put not only his life but that of Darice's in danger, it is law that Darice's mother/Keris's widow be able to claim Sumi's life in forfeit. Which she does to the royal family. That which being head by Nykyrian's mother. To save Sumi, and right the wrong done by Nykyrian's mother when she seduced his father while he was still pledged to Nyk's mother,  Nykyrian's mother adopts Sumi as her own daughter (and Fain as her own son) and the two are suddenly royalty. And no one can claim right to end the life of a royal member.

From beginning to end, this story has one hell of a transition. A serious one eighty if ever there was one. The Sentella bands together at every chance, leaving a crazy amount of characters in play. So. Many. Children. And when Sumi's daughter, Kalea, and Nykyrian's son, Jayce, come together for the first time.. pure childhood sweetness.

FYI, according to Kenyon's website via the family tree, Jayce and Kalea end up together as adults. So, too, does Nykyrian's youngest daughter, Zarina eventually marry Darling's son, Cezar. And *that* is a story I want to read!

4 out of 5 stars.


Previously in FIRST GENERATION of the series: