Tag: Destroyer

“Shatter the Earth” Cassandra Palmer 10 Karen Chance

Yeah. I scratched something that had imbedded itself near my hairline, and a couple bits of rubble fell out and hit the white tiled floor, making little clattering sounds. The attendant didn’t say anything, so I didn’t, either. I guessed we were both going to agree that hadn’t happened.


It was funny how you couldn’t tell now, I thought, staring. Like you couldn’t tell if a lot of the bodies around Vlad’s city of the dead were male or female, after a while. They just turned into corpses, blackened and split open, with ropes of trailing entrails festooned with maggots and dripping with unknown liquids. Mothers, fathers, lovers, friends; they were all the same in death, rotting under a cheerful blue sky . ..


Somebody had told me that war was a lot of serious tedium interspersed with moments of sheer terror, however. Which I thought described my job perfectly.


…liberated my new cat. Who looked in disbelief at my bed, which was round and so oversized that they needed a new designation for it. Orgy-sized maybe, because it could have fit ten, maybe twelve in a pinch.


You got it, I gritted out, after half a freaking hour. I had been awake for going on a day, under less than ideal conditions. My body ached, my brain was fried, and my eyes actually burned. I was going to sleep right now, damn it! Only I didn’t. I tossed and turned and tried every conceivable position. I plumped my pillow, changed it out for a different one, and then pounded that one into submission, too, before giving up and going back to the first one again. I put on a sleep mask. I took off a sleep mask, because I had black out curtains that my vamp bodyguards almost always kept closed even when they weren’t in here. I didn’t need a sleep mask, goddamnit! The problem was, I didn’t know what I needed.


Somebody had told me that warm milk helped insomnia. It sounded nasty, but I was willing to give it a try. Right now, I was willing to try anything. Of course, that required that I play the fun and exciting game of Hunt the Milk, which was no mean feat. The penthouse’s kitchen had been designed to feed a horde, with three fridges—two regular ones and a shorty under the counter—a standalone freezer, two wine coolers, another wine cooler that was used only for beer, and God knew what else. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find half of it! And what I could find, I often didn’t want


Tami, my friend and self-appointed life manager, and I had sat around one night shortly after we moved in playing “guess the item” with a couple drawers full of weird, one-use-only gadgets. We’d managed to correctly identify an avocado slicer, a carrot peeler, a pair of herb scissors, a strawberry stem remover (okay, we cheated with Google on that one) and a vertical egg cooker. Plus some stuff that even the search engine of the gods hadn’t been able to help us out with.  Tami’s go-to greeting for visitors to the kitchen these days was to drag them over to the mystery item drawer and try to make them identify something.


I didn’t have an answer for her. It was one of a whole host of things I didn’t know, because this job didn’t get easier as you went along, like I’d expected. It actually seemed to be getting harder, which was a problem since I was already giving a hundred and fifty percent. Literally. I turned around and went back to bed.


Only you can’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “Everybody wants a piece of you, all the time, but you can’t give it to them. They’ll take and take, until there’s nothing left. That’s how people are—”


I seriously contemplating just sleeping where I lay. The bed had one of those down-filled mattresses that grabs your ass like it’s trying to get handsy, and then draws you down into enveloping softness. 


I groaned and put a hand to my head, where it felt like I had the mother of all hangovers. And the grandmother and great-grandmother as well, I thought, trying to take stock.

Now, if you please.” Damn it, Gertie! I thought. But I stomped over anyway. “What?” “Pear?” She offered me one. I looked at it blankly. It was fat and yellow, with a blushing bottom. It was a nice pear. It also made no sense at all. “What?” “Yes, I have an apple,” Gertie said, and jerked me inside. “What are you doing?” I demanded, because this was bizarre, even for her. But she just shushed me and turned me toward the crack in the door. It was still open maybe a quarter of the way, giving us a sliver of a view, although why we needed one, I didn’t know. I needed to get back—“Watch,” Gertie said, and ate pear. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I watched anyway. Don’t argue with teacher, I thought. Only I didn’t know what I was supposed to be watching. The little girls were the easiest to see, still facing their wall. Or most of them were. One was playing with a doll she’d smuggled out, hidden in a fold of her dress, and another had squatted down to examine a fat green caterpillar. But most of the rest were dutifully reciting something, I didn’t know what, because it was in some other language. “A test,” Gertie said, her voice low. “For what?” “To see if they can age a flower.” I looked back at her. “How? They don’t have access to the Pythian power yet.” “No, they don’t,” she agreed. “The question is, can any of them get its attention?”


Or a fight, I thought, catching sight of the rest of the courtyard. “I told you I needed to get out there!” I said to Gertie, as my acolyte faced off with her own mother. I started forward, but Gertie pulled me back, and she was surprisingly strong for an old woman


Why London had what was essentially a petri dish of plague running through the city was beyond me, but it wasn’t my main concern


He’d come back for me, all right, but to capture not to kill. He’d started grafting souls onto his body, like adding apps onto a phone, and I was supposed to be his next upgrade. There to add to his power, but with none of my own, and no say in what mine was used for. Or any way to stop the process or even to die and make the torture end.


Throughout history, the number three has been fundamental to how we understand the world. The space we inhabit is measured in length, width, and height. Time is measured in past, present, and future.” He paused, and I just sat there, expectant. Until I realized that he was smiling slightly. “What?” I asked. “What are you waiting for?” “For the rest—” I stopped, realizing that I had unconsciously been waiting—for another example. I frowned. “The third instance would be body, mind, and spirit,” he continued, “which is how we understand ourselves. But the fact that you knew—instinctively—that there was a third example indicates how our minds classify things…People have always seen the world in threes. Look at religion: Christianity is fundamentally based on the Trinity—the father, son and holy spirit. The magi gave Christ three gifts, the devil tempted him three times, and he rose from the dead after three days. Even the Christian universe is traditionally seen as having three expressions: the upper world of heaven, the middle world of Earth, and the underworld of hell…The Greeks were also particularly fond of the number: there were three Fates, three Graces, three Gorgons and three Furies. There were three brothers who ruled over three realms: Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. Artemis…is often seen as a triple goddess, a unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the underworld… the rest of the world’s religions follow a similar pattern: the Sumerian Goddess Inanna is remembered for having spent three days and nights in the underworld. There are three main gods in Hinduism: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. Yggdrasil, the sacred tree of life in the Norse religion, has three roots under which are three sacred wells——not to mention how often the number shows up in the world’s imagery. The triskelion, a three-legged spiral, can be found on items dating back more than six thousand years. The Borromean rings are a centuries-old symbol of unity made up of three interlacing circles. The Valknut rune of Odin——consisting of three interlocking triangles, stood for his power. Even the old superstition of not walking underneath a ladder stems from an ancient Egyptian belief that one should not “break a triangle’. The geometry of the number three was seen as being complete and perfect, and therefore not to be disturbed—”


“When shall we three meet again?” he quoted. “In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.”

Shannon Mayer’s Destroyer A Review

I have to be honest, I got tricked into liking Shannon Mayer’s works.  I decided to give her elemental series since it seemed to be up my alley and my enjoyment of it back doored me into the Rylee series.  And the overlaps were confusing to say the least since the Rylee books continued with books after the series had officially ended.  And with the ever changing loyalties, powers and interests—it did end up being up my Alley.

Destroyer was a huge surprise though as it ended the series with the subtlety of a wile e Coyote anvil dropping on it.  It seemed, going in that we were going to see Larkspur become trained (finally with an official teacher!) and perhaps a reunion with Ash as she prepped for the battle with the false goddess.  Instead, as so often happens with Larkspur, she got hit upside the head with disaster after disaster and we find out that some of Lark’s allies are created by the false goddess and some of her enemies have been playing an incredibly long game and are actually friends.  We even get a shock on the level of Darth Vader revealing himself as Luke’s father…

And Lark lives up to her moniker of the Destroyer.

Overall, it was a strong and compelling story that truly ends the Rylee and Lark series’ for good.

Can’t wait to read the new series Mayer is starting!

I look forward to discussing all of this with fellow fans at my site bestbooklover.net and at the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BestBooklovernet-336745780072074/

If you want to help support this website, donations are accepted at paypal.me/Bestbooklover/






Destroyer (The Elemental Series) (Volume 7) Book Cover




Destroyer (The Elemental Series) (Volume 7)




The Elemental Series





Shannon Mayer





Paranormal




CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (May 30, 2017)




330 pages



“What a fantastic start to a new fantasy series! I love a strong female lead and we were delivered that in spades with Larkspur . . . This story is fast paced and exciting right from the start. I can't wait to see what comes next!”
-Boundless Book Reviews

From HiJinks Ink Publishing and Shannon Mayer comes The USA Today Bestselling ELEMENTAL SERIES beginning with RECURVE (Book 1). With over 1.4 million books sold, Shannon Mayer proves, once again, she can dominate her genre right out of the gate.

“My name is Larkspur, and I am an Elemental.”

My people use the power of the earth to sustain life and defy our enemies. I should be at my father's side as a royal princess. But as a half-breed, bastard child, that isn't going to happen.

Taken away by the last Spirit Walker, I am mean to train with him so that I can finally stop the false mother goddess and her plans to rule both humans and elementals. I am meant to train so that I can meet her on even ground, but training takes time.

Time is not something we have. The world is coming apart at the seams as the humans rain down destruction upon their own kind and the supernatural world. The false mother goddess is hunting down the most powerful elementals to take the last of their power, and through it all, the secrets of who I truly am begin to spill upward.

I must find the strength to stop the mother goddess, and to save our world, but which aspect of my heart will hold me up and what will it cost me in the end?

Blood of the earth. . . .
Child of Spirit. . . .
Bastard Princess . . .
Ender . . .
Protector . . .

Destroyer.

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Quote from Shannon Mayer’s Destroyer

“I turned to him, surprised by the rush of relief I felt seeing him. After all Raven had done, that I could want to trust him again should have surprised me. But that was the reality of family. You always hoped those who’d done you wrong would come back around. Maybe that was the case with Raven. Maybe we could find a friendship now.” Destroyer, Shannon Mayer






Destroyer (The Elemental Series) (Volume 7) Book Cover




Destroyer (The Elemental Series) (Volume 7)




The Elemental Series





Shannon Mayer





Paranormal Romance




CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (May 30, 2017)




(May 30, 2017)




e book




328

From HiJinks Ink Publishing and Shannon Mayer comes The USA Today Bestselling ELEMENTAL SERIES beginning with RECURVE (Book 1). With over 1.4 million books sold, Shannon Mayer proves, once again, she can dominate her genre right out of the gate.

“My name is Larkspur, and I am an Elemental.”

My people use the power of the earth to sustain life and defy our enemies. I should be at my father's side as a royal princess. But as a half-breed, bastard child, that isn't going to happen.

Taken away by the last Spirit Walker, I am mean to train with him so that I can finally stop the false mother goddess and her plans to rule both humans and elementals. I am meant to train so that I can meet her on even ground, but training takes time.

Time is not something we have. The world is coming apart at the seams as the humans rain down destruction upon their own kind and the supernatural world. The false mother goddess is hunting down the most powerful elementals to take the last of their power, and through it all, the secrets of who I truly am begin to spill upward.

I must find the strength to stop the mother goddess, and to save our world, but which aspect of my heart will hold me up and what will it cost me in the end?

Blood of the earth. . . .
Child of Spirit. . . .
Bastard Princess . . .
Ender . . .
Protector . . .

Destroyer.

[Top]