Micah, in particular, charms with his playfulness. Both characters are virgins, and their joint experimentation is delightful and authentic. I believed that he’d be attracted to Liliana for her personality and her ability to see him as a full person, including the lost child, and not just as a titillating dark figure. Watching her defrost him by unlocking his memories (especially through food) is enjoyable. Micah first falls for Liliana because of her fearless eye contact. Micah and Liliana’s relationship is compelling and rich, especially for such a short format. I loved that Singh takes the best elements of Beauty and the Beast, like the isolation, the curse, and the gradual blossoming of trust and attraction transcending looks, and leaves out what feels dated or rarely works (salvation by beautiful innocence, a sweet heroine out of her weight class with a grim and tortured hero). As a child under his compulsion and subject to ghastly punishments, she didn’t limit herself to using her own blood.

Micah, as mentioned, deals with pure evil Liliana, like her father, has blood magic. In other ways, it’s Beast and Beast, since Liliana and Micah have very dark powers. In some ways, Lord of the Abyss is Beast and the Beauty, since Liliana is incredibly ugly – Micah is gorgeous, or at least he is in the parts that aren’t covered with magical black armor. Now, Liliana, the daugher of the Blood Sorcerer, has come to the Abyss to help Micah recover his memories and return to Elden in time to help his siblings defeat the Sorcerer.įrom the clock ticking to midnight to the dark enchanted castle, Singh clearly draws on Beauty and the Beast tropes for this story, but she goes beyond the formula. The fourth and youngest of the Elden royals, Micah, was cast into the Abyss, where he became the Lord responsible for ensuring that the most evil souls go there and stay there. Before dying, the queen cast a spell to transport her four children out the palace in order to save their lives, but the Sorcerer interfered and affected the spell. Twenty years ago, the kingdom of Elden fell to the vile Blood Sorcerer. A marvelous stand-alone Beauty-and-the-Beast fantasy (or maybe Beast-and-the-Beauty, or perhaps just Beast-and-Beast?) by an author who really knows her way around the supernatural? Yes, yes, yes!

Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh