Archangel's Consort by Nalini Singh

Target Audience: Adults (and I mean adults!)
Genre: Paranormal Romance


Wow, well first things first, this book is hot! I mean the first two were pretty hot but this one is off the scale. If your a fan of your explicit love scenes and some seriously romantic moments then you will definitely love this book.  Thats not to say the plot takes a back seat either, because i was completely addicted to the story in every sense and the relationship between Raphael and Elena is just as amazing as ever, but as usual, there is no shortage of Angel's, Vampires and Humans trying to make there lives more difficult.
In summary, Archangel's Consort continues roughly from the end of Archangel's Kiss, in which Raphael and Elena head back to New York. Elena is more confident in her immortality by this point but they still have some learning to do about one another.  There   arrival home however doesn't go to plan and before long there are unexplained vampire attacks, bizarre weather patterns and rage among many of the Cadre. The signs of which all point towards an ancient waking, namely Caliane, Raphael's mother.

The plot in this novel had me completely drawn in and turning the pages very quickly, and reading well into the night because i didn't want to put it down. The events that happen do occur rapidly and there is no let-up in the action, yet the explanations behind them unfolded at a perfectly steady pace so that at no point did i feel confused. Yet despite the fact i found myself surprised by certain happenings, they weren't logically out of place or random in any sense.
I think the only exception was the slight revelation towards the end about Elena's family, there was no hint of it at all from previous books and because of that i thought, now where did that come from? But really, it's a minor thing, and hardly a major issue, and it didn't really annoy me, it just seemed a bit random.

Throughout the novel, it is the Mothers of various characters that are the source of suffering, love and anguish  in many different ways. There's a lot revealed about Elena's reaction to her mother's death, and then there's the relationship between Gwendolyn and her children (Amy and Evelyn).  On the archangel side of it, we are introduced to the Hummingbird (Illium's mother) and finally there's the uprising of Caliane who is Raphael's mother and who went insane and nearly destroyed her son before going into an ancient sleep.
To say that there are a lot of family issues being thrown around is an understatement, and i still hate Jefferey Deveraux, he is a class A pain in the ass and I can't stand how he treats his family (Ok, rant over!).
On the plus side, Elena gets to form better relationships with other parts of her family which i thought was brilliant, as it didn't seem fair that she had to be stuck on the outside all the time, so it was nice to see her with her sisters and Gwendolyn.

Now as for the romance, as you can guess by the beginning of my review, it was amazing! Wow, and the sex scenes were amazing and there's one in particular that makes me wish I had wings ;-)
As well as the physical side, the romantic side is just as beautiful and both Raphael and Elena's reactions to one another are sometimes funny, sometimes aggressive and usually very passionate as both are just as stubborn as each other.
Having said that, their conflicts were amazing and it made a change to see Raphael giving some ground in this book, and Elena also learning how to compromise in certain things. This in itself was brilliant because it shows them go from strength to strength and adapt to each other. I just love those two! Can't put it better than that really.

To sum up i can't say enough how much I loved Archangel's Consort. The ending wasn't at all what I was expecting, although I will say I was right about one thing that wasn't immediately obvious, but I'm not going to say what because that would spoil it for fellow readers.
There are some immense action packed fights, some intrigue and mystery, some truly evil and twisted characters and some majorly hot love scenes that will leave you stunned. Or maybe that's just me?
Awesome!!!!