I’ve started to think of C as the kiss of death. It’s like the “It’s not you – it’s me” line preceding breakups – now you start thinking, “Oh god, now what’s wrong?” And the truth is, in both these cases (C-grades and relationships gone to pot) there may not be anything actually terribly wrong. Except, of course, it’s not right.

There’s nothing wrong, for instance, with Ms. Eden’s premise of a Valkyrie-esque angel losing his wings because he decided not to take Nicole St. James’ life. I’m not sick of angels yet, and plus, Keenan’s a (minor spoiler ahead) virgin. I’m good with that.

And there’s nothing wrong, either, with innocent schoolteacher Nicole turning into a vampy, lusty, skimpy-clothing-wearing vampire, then running for her life from humans who want to skewer her. (Although I will take exception to the whole innocent schoolteacher trope – really, authors? Really?)

Actually, the only thing really wrong with this whole scenario is that I’ve degraded to adding extra paragraph breaks just to make my review longer. No, that wasn’t just for stylistic effect – I’m really struggling to find something to write about.

I mean, what can I say, really? Angel of Darkness isn’t bad. The world-building isn’t clunky. The prose isn’t purple. The heroine’s not stupid. The hero’s not uber-alpha. And the villains aren’t cackling specimans of evilosity.

But on the flip side, I can also say that while the heroine’s not stupid, she’s just not interesting enough. The world-building isn’t original enough. While there are some interesting villains, I certainly don’t care enough to read their books. Et cetera, et cetera.

Not bad, no. But not nearly good enough. Damned with faint praise, indeed.