Crimson City Series Review

The Crimson City series. What can I say about this amazing series? This was the series that not only introduced me to the genre of paranormal romance, but it also helped me bounce back from a pretty bad break up. Cliche, I know. But it happened! More on that in the latter portions of this review. Crimson City series was originally a 6 volume collaborative series that offered the reader the chance to view the same literary world through 5 different eyes. The series starts off with the introduction of Crimson City and the main themes that will pop up through the rest of other books in the first volume, Crimson City, by Liz Maverick. 

Original cover art work (love!)

Crimson City is set in the not-so-distant-future, in a world were humans, vampires, werewolves, and demons are fully known to the other species. There is a certain heirarchy the the species, with vamps on top, then humans, then werewolves, and finally demons. Demons don't normally live in our world but in a paralell plane, but from time to time a demon finds a magical dimensional doorway that allows them to access our world. Crimson City is the tongue-n-cheek nickname of Los Angeles, given because of the high volume of paranormal species and the violence that comes from the varied groups living together. We are introduced to Fleur Dumont, the youngest of three vampire siblings who form the governing body to the most powerful vampire family in Crimson City. After tragedy strikes the Dumont family, Fleur is left to pick up the pieces and figure out who is targeting her family and other vampires. Along the way she meets a lost, and perhaps kindred soul, in Dain Reston; a cop who has unknown skeletons in his closet and is searching for the memories of a previous life that seems more foreign to him than the vampires and wolves around him. Together, the pair fight through intrigue and political chess to figure out who was behind the Dumont hit, all the while dancing on the knife's edge of passion and desire neither had known before. 

The next in the series is A Taste of Crimson, by Marjorie M. Liu. We step away from the glitter and prestige of the vampire world and delve into Keeli Maddox's world of werewolves, full moons, and living in abandoned subway tunnels. Being third on the totem pole of species, the werewolves live mostly underground in Los Angeles' long forgotten subway system. Other packs live in the least desirable parts of the city above ground, but the Maddox clan, one of the most powerful in the city, resides in the subway. Keeli is next in line of her pack and is struggling to find her place in the realm of powering and governing. Nearly escaping a strange encounter with an even stranger creature, Keeli meets Michael, a vampire enforcer who is entrusted with the task of hunting down a rogue vampire. The pair continue to bump into each other after both spotting this strange creature---a pale, bald, floating humanoid that seems to be drawing them further and further down the rabbit hole. While trying to determine this creature's origin, Keeli and Michael are also drawn into the middle of boiling race tensions between the vampires and Keeli's pack. The key to settling the race war seems to lie with the mystery being, only if Keeli and Michael can get to him before it's too late.

The love scenes in this one are HOT!

The third (and may I be so bold as to say my favorite of the original series) is Through A Crimson Veil by Patti O'Shea. Now we are introduced to the misunderstood demons. By now, the events from the first two books meld together and begin to show the main theme of the books: there's an upheaval in the balances that tie the human and demon worlds together, and somewhere in Crimson City is the one thing that can save the world from crumbling into pieces. Mika, a half-demon, is on the hunt for that item and she believes she has finally found it. But it's in the possession of a demon hunter. A fellow half-demon who despises the demon side of his lineage enough to be hired out to kill them. He has a power artifact that may hold the key to saving Crimson City and the world as we know it. Only if Mika can get close enough to the distrusting Conor to show him the beauty in his demon side, as well as the power he has kept in his magically fortified house. As Mika and Conor get closer to reaching an understanding, other dark forces who want Conor's artifact to permanently open a door between the demon realm and the earthly plane, come knocking on his ruin-sealed doors. On top of this, Mika and Conor are brought together by a strong bond that is neigh impossible to ignore, a love and combining of two souls that has the power to keep the dark forces at bay and to bring some resemblance of stability to the veil between worlds.

The fourth tome is A Darker Crimson, by Carolyn Jewel. Not only do we see more demons, but now we get a glimpse into their world, known as the plane of Orcus. Claudia Donovan, a human cop, has to find a way into the demon world to save her daughter. She was kidnapped by a demon named Lath that claims they are eternally bonded and meant to be together... and that if she comes to the demon plane to be with him, he'll give back her daughter. Not knowing how to get to the demon plane on her own, Claudia seeks the help of Tiberiu, a vampire who has his own secrets. Unsure of who to trust, Lath or Tiberiu, Claudia accepts his help to cross the veil between worlds to track down her daughter. The world of Orcus is all at once beauty and power, deceit and pain. At its best, the glamour of Olympus and the magical science of Atlantis, then in the next heartbeat it looks more like the spice world in Dune with deadly beasts and expansive deserts. Claudia has to put her trust in Tiberiu in order for her and her daughter to survive, but now being this close to Lath is causing the strange bond between them to blur the truth and his silver-laced words together, making it hard for her to remember why she came to this confusing world in the first place. Only Tiberiu's calm guidance and strong heart can bring Claudia back from the brink.

Number five is Seduced by Crimson by Jade Lee. This tale takes a more Eastern flare, with a Buddhist/Taoist vibe. With more demons slipping through the broken seal between earth and Orcus, the fabric of the cosmos is at stake. Enter the daughters of the Phoenix Tear, young girls with special connections to the very energies of the earth, whose special powers just might be able to calm the savaged magic that holds the demon and human worlds together. The Druids, another group who is attuned to the magical energies of the earth, send out one of their most powerful to track down the last known Phoenix Tear: Xiao Fei. Though he is a powerful Druid... Patrick is anything but prepared when he actually finds the last Phoenix Tear. In a move that proves to damage his cause rather than promote it, Patrick and Xiao Fei need to hunt down another energy source that will help heal the rift between the two worlds. Of course, there are demons and other dark forces out and about who try to keep the pair from obtaining their goal, and also who want to see the last Phoenix Tear dead. Patrick and Xiao Fei are have a tight deadline to find another similar energy to match the Phoenix Tear to perform the ritual that will hopefully restore the energies of the earth. Although, the power that they seek, is closer than the two of them realize. 

The last in the original six volumes is Crimson Rogue,  by Liz Maverick. She gets to bookend the series because I believe this was her brain child. In this installment, the fate of the world is finally decided. We met Cyd, Dain Reston's old police partner, and she is a little worse for wear. She had always been self-destructive, but now her paths are taking her down darker and darker roads. No longer in the Crimson City Police Department, Cyd wanders the underbelly of Crimson City in search of... something. Something to calm the demons that howl in her brain, silence the memories of the hell she had escaped (which she had entered in Book 1) and make life a little more bearable. And that something finds her in a seedy bar, and his name is Finn. He is about as damaged as she is, a man with no past in search of a future, a metallic man known as a mech. A failed experiment of the government's to try and combat the supernatural species, a fusion of machine and flesh, which leaves the man a hollow shell. Cyd and Finn go in search for answers for their respective problems, which turns out to bring them closer together. Cyd's hellish time in Orcus changed her somehow... making her not quite human... but maybe something more. Together, the two lost souls find that they have the ultimate power to finally seal the rifts between Orcus and Earth, and bring balance to the earth, as well as their tormented hearts. (This book has the most heart-wrenching love scene I've ever read, I got a little misty eyed after I read it!)

So the world is saved now (not really a spoiler, it's kinda of obvious), so now we can have fun exploring more of the world of Crimson City. About a year or two after this series wrapped (Crimson City first run publication July 2005---which I have!), Liz Maverick brought out an anthology featuring 4 of the original authors (Maverick, Lee, O'Shea, and Jewel) to pen four more stories about the City, called Shards of Crimson. Here we see how others in the city lived during the events of the main books, a sort of "how the other half lived"; how others picked up the pieces after the smoke cleared. Some of the original characters pop up in one or two of the novellas (short stories?), which is kind of fun---like a "where are they now?" feature. It's a must have if you read the whole series and thoroughly enjoyed it (which I certainly did---more on that later). 

Then, in 2010, Liz Maverick published Crimson & Steam, number 7 in the series. The series had been long read and sitting nicely my shelf, my fangirl love of the series had finally simmered... when this news flashes across my Twitter and Facebook feeds. WHAT!? *le squee!* It picks up after the events in her short story in Shards of Crimson. So you have to read it now! Sadly... I have yet to read it... *hangs head* I've been crazy busy the last two years (I went and got engaged and married in the last two years, and that doesn't leave a lot of time to read, and I have a huge backlog of Must Read Books). But I will read it and post a review of it when I do. When it was first coming out, Ms. Maverick did an ARC giveaway, and I was one of the lucky few who got an ARC in digital format. Sadly, I can't read on the computer screen that long, so I was only able to get about 3 chapters in before I had to give up (I'm sorry, Liz!). I felt so bad, I went out and bought a paperback copy so that I could give the story the proper attention it deserves. Ugh, just writing this is filling me with reviewer's guilt. 


Okay, on to how this magical series helped heal my broken heart. Here's the story: It was the summer of 2005, and my then boyfriend and I were cruising through his local B. Dalton's (back when they existed!), when I saw Crimson City on the NEW IN PAPERBACK shelves. There was something about the girl in leather pants, perched on a gargoyle high above a futuristic city that caught my eye... I don't know why. It spoke to me. I sadly didn't buy it that day because I either had no money, or not enough money for the movie we were going to do see. Fast forward seven months and it's January... and I'd recently been dumped by said boyfriend---on my birthday no less---and I was an emotional wreck (Truly, there's a file in a psychiatrist's office as proof). In hopes to cheer myself up, I went to the Mall of America early spring 2006 and walked into the huge discount bookstore (that's no longer there), when I saw Crimson City again on the shelf... along with two others in the series... Something snaps in my brain and, even though the memory of the book fans the embers of a love gone horribly wrong, I go out and buy all six books in one shot at my local Barnes & Noble. I spend the rest of Spring 2006 reading these books in rapid succession, and the incredible rush of the stories, the white-hot passion of their love, the intricate worlds and characters drew me in and made me forget old whats-his-name, and helped me get back to emotional normalcy, as well as help form the pieces of what would eventually become an idea for a grand fantasy series of my own (Relic Chosen series that I've been working on for 8 years!)


So thank you, Patti O'Shea, Liz Maverick, Carolyn Jewel, Marjorie M. Liu, and Jade Lee. Your amazing stories of magic, vampires, werewolves, demons, their exciting adventures and fights, and even more exciting love stories helped me in more ways than you'll ever know. You helped to heal my heart and bring me back from the brink of darkness to finally realizing my calling, to write stories of magic, love, trials, and triumphs that are hopefully deserving of their predecessors. I tip my Thesaurus to you, you Literary Mavens. 


If you haven't noticed, I love this series. It means more to me than most series/books on my shelves. But, that doesn't mean it doesn't get a rating on my scale. Individually and as a series overall, from 1 (literary hari kari) to 10 (literary orgasmic bliss):


Crimson City: 8
A Taste of Crimson: 8.5
Through a Crimson Veil: 9
A Darker Crimson: 7.5
Seduced by Crimson: 7.5
Crimson Rogue: 9
Shards of Crimson: 7
Crimson & Steam: N/A


Series Overall: 8.07


_________________________________________________________________________________
A Parting Note: If you get the chance, hunt down the original covers of the first six (7 if you count the anthology). I know the ebook versions (and most likely new editions of the print) are coming out with new covers that just show off a lot of skin of attractive people (which is cliche in the romance genre), but the original covers offer so much more about the story: that there's action, adventure, mystery, a meaty plot than just a tumble or two between the sheets. Yes, romance and sex are a part of the story, but that shouldn't be the only reason you pick up the book. For an example of the newer covers, go to Patti O'Shea's website and look to the left so see the new cover of her contribution shows two hot, trim bodies, the man standing behind the woman, and their hands are in the process of pulling up her shirt. Eh. 


While the original cover shows Mika and Conor rushing down a dark alley. Ooh... why are they running down an alley? Are they running from someone or chasing after someone? What's so important at the end of the alley, or so deadly at the mouth? There's all these questions posed by that and all the other covers... The guy pulling up the hot chick's shirt just tells me they're attracted to each other and that eventually, if not real soon, they are going to have sexy times. The cool story-driven cover was lost on Crimson & Steam, because apparently showing a half naked man (or woman) on a romance book will ensure it to be purchased. But if that's what the publishers so naively think, then how did the first run of the series become New York Times Bestsellers? All the people on the covers are clothed. 


Sorry... got on a tangent there. Stop reading me rant and go buy these books, dammit!