I never heard of Larissa Ione until I agreed to read this book, and wow! I must have been living under a rock to miss this author. What a great imagination Ione has and she really brings a sense of “normalcy” to these paranormal characters.

To start off, I would not recommend reading this book without reading at least the previous one in the series. Immortal Rider is really where the story starts and at least half of that book is the back story for this one. Thanatos is the fourth of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and he and his three siblings are cursed with the power to start Armageddon. With the breaking of their Seals, they will turn into the ultimate evil and start the end of days. Each sibling’s Seal is broken through a very specific action. Thanatos believes that his Seal will break when he loses his virginity. But Regan, an Aegis Guardian seduced him in the last book and his Seal remains intact. This leaves the remaining good Horsemen to find out what will really break his Seal.

When Regan seduced Thanatos, she became pregnant. It is soon clear that it is the innocence of Thanatos’s son that is his true vulnerability, not his own innocence. With Regan about to give birth, Thanatos and his siblings begin a race against time, evil, and their turned sibling, Reseph, in order to save his son and the world. But demons, angels, traitors, and Thanatos’s secrets are working against them. In order to save his son, Thanatos must share the secrets that he has protected for five thousand years. And even then it becomes a decision to condemn a race of vampires or risk his son. Poor Thanatos is pretty torn.

Against all this, there is a very tender love story at the heart of Lethal Rider. Regan and Thanatos got off to a pretty bad start (what with her ultimate betrayal and all), but as the story progresses, the reader is treated to two very lost and lonely souls finding a home with each other. Both Thanatos and Regan have yearned for family and companionship all their lives and what they find together is pretty endearing. They find that they are kindred souls. There is a bit of everything in this one. There is love, laughter, passion, and connection. Even if you don’t like paranormal romances, I think that this story would really appeal because it is a very timeless concept and it really pulled me in.

Through the story there are many secondary characters, mostly from Ione’s other series – The Demonica series. But I never felt left out for not knowing who they were. They weren’t thrown in as cameos, but were a real part of this world. They enhanced the plot and the story and they made me feel immersed in the world. Ione’s imagination is impressive. The demon species, each with specific talents and gifts, the vampires and their different species, all of this could have become an information overload for someone not familiar with the first series, but it was written so well, I never felt that.

This is a series and an author that was never on my radar and is now taking a spot front and center. I can’t wait for the next in the series and I strongly recommend this book and this series.