Book Review Styxx by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Two stars! Two stars! I have to give it two stars. Styxx by Sherrilyn Kenyon didn’t start at two stars, like all books, it started it at four and found itself being dragged down by the immense word count and a thin idea. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Dark-Hunter series, at least until No Mercy. No Mercy hurt, but Sundown and the Guardian killed me and I stopped reading the continuation of the series due to it. The only reason why I picked up Styxx was because some review said it was as good as Acheron. Acheron, in my opinion only ranked at three stars and heralded the fall of this series. But I enjoyed the early life of that book, so I figured, why not and bought it.

For the first half of the book, I truly enjoyed the read. Styxx’s life was just as hard as Acheron’s- neglect, beatings, rape -the only difference in the two was that Styxx was more stoic about it. I love stoic characters. Continuing on, he meets the love of his life who happens to be a half-Egyptian and Atlantian goddess.

Slight spoiler, she is the daughter of Set and that makes her Seth’s half sister. She is also black, a fact Ms. Kenyon added to the story, possibly due to the flack she got for making Seth a ginger in the Guardian. I don’t care about skin color.

I have an issue with her making a certain gay character straight in her other series, but that’s just due to a pitifully weak reason and the fact what  happened in the end ruined the continuity of the series.

Following that, Styxx’s story proceeds to go downhill as it goes through the motions of ‘adding more back story’ pulled from earlier books- Night Pleasures, Acheron, etc. After that boring dreg, the pace picks up to a rate it becomes like a piece of ice floating in a stream of water. The ice is the plot, the water is what is.

Overall, Styxx started out really well, I actually stayed up to read it, but fell hard towards the end. The series is still a read for me; I’m just going to skip all characters that aren’t Artemis, Noir, Azuara, Jaden and his friend whose name I can’t recall.