Sophia Armitage does not consider herself attractive. Even her late husband treated her more as a companion than a lover when she accompanied him to war. But Sophia hopes to enjoy a Season in London as her niece makes her social debut—until, that is, her hopes are dashed when she is faced with a threat she can reveal to no one. Then she meets Sir Nathaniel Gascoigne, an old army friend, and falls in love with him even as she must discourage his growing passion for her. Nathaniel can sense Sophia's unhappiness and fear, but does not understand that his attempts to protect and help her can only bring about her downfall...

• Irresistible (Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse series Book 3)

by Mary Balogh

Sophia Armitage does not consider herself attractive. Even her late husband treated her more as a companion than a lover when she accompanied him to war. But Sophia hopes to enjoy a Season in London as her niece makes her social debut—until, that is, her hopes are dashed when she is faced with a threat she can reveal to no one. Then she meets Sir Nathaniel Gascoigne, an old army friend, and falls in love with him even as she must discourage his growing passion for her. Nathaniel can sense Sophia's unhappiness and fear, but does not understand that his attempts to protect and help her can only bring about her downfall...

“Poor Humanity, crazed with fear, was fleeing in all directions on hearing the thundering pace of the Plague, War, Hunger and Death.” ― Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

“Amazing inventions, colossal failures, and countless wars. We watched it behind the scenes. Watched the monkeys from beyond the glass. We were intrigued, Hell was amused, and Heaven was losing patience.
Finally, the monkeys threw too much s^^t on the windows. They sparked a third World War, one that the Big Boss upstairs knew would obliterate the world.
So he sent us instead. We were much more effective. We were much more eager.” – Avery, The Rider Pestilence

It’s all great fun, clearing the world’s population for the “Next Coming”. But when the Coming doesn’t Come, what are the Four Horsemen to do with the rest of their human-ish lives? Stuck in the hell of their own creation, life decays to warding off the Plagued, those left over from Avery’s clever little specialty, and the Soulless, those left after trading their souls to the devil to live (and how is that working out for you?) This whole “life as a nearly-full-human is a pain in the proverbial backside. Especially when Simon’s specialty dried up all the water and poisoned all the food. S^cks when you got stuck the aforementioned human-ish body when you were dropped onto an unsuspecting world to do your worst. And then there are the demons.

"After killing every human on the planet– or so we thought– our job became kill the demons and the Soulless. The Second Coming didn’t belong to those power-hungry freeloaders."

"They showed up out of the blue within the first week, right around the time Simon started starving people. They had probably showed up earlier, but I didn’t think they would be an issue. It wasn’t like we had to worry about Lucifer or Azazel or Abbadon. From what the Bosses Upstairs told us, Hell’s Biggest Bada$$es were constantly at war."

OK, so that whole “The Second Coming apparently isn’t coming” thing is a total downer. As Avery puts it, “Simon will probably die of starvation, Kade will burn himself out, and Logan will be the last man on earth before he commits suicide.” Kade is the specialist in all things warrior, so he amuses himself with killing off the leftovers for fun. Logan? Well, he really didn’t do all that much. Just carried out his orders. But he really, truly, hated his job. Logan’s job, you see, required the personal touch – not simply throwing out plagues and rotting food. He saw them all. Touched them all. Unlike his brothers, who got a huge kick out of playing with their toys, killing from a distance. Well, until it was over, and there was no flourish of trumpets, white carriages from the sky and blessed lights.

Well. That $ucked.

What didn’t $uck? There were actual living, breathing people still alive on earth. Not many, and mostly starving, but they were there. And Avery would be damned (har har) if he allowed the demons to take their souls. That whole ‘guilt’ thing is hard on the soul – especially if you are the one responsible for the death of a whole world. Of course, it could have been the little boy eating his parents alive that really twisted the knife. So, when seven people in a beat-up old school bus appear one day, survivors of the Tribulations, Avery is thrilled. If the a$$holes Upstairs couldn’t be bothered with a Second Coming, maybe the Horsemen might pick up the slack?

“Running like this makes me feel like an animal. We’re stuck in a world of monsters we can barely fight, and can only kill if we’re extremely lucky. If we don’t stop and find a place to restart and remember what we are, then we’re no better than the creatures trying to eat us.” Yep. That whole 'burning yourself out while burning out the world till you are nearly human thing' isn't all that much fun.

Path of the Horseman is a truly amazing book. This is, and yet isn’t, a dystopian book. It is more than that. It brings up questions of redemption and hope, of horrors and fresh beginnings. Of what it is like to know that you are the last few on the face of the earth, and only those who destroyed the world may be able to save you. It is a thoughtful book – it took me quite a while to read it, as I kept putting it down and actually taking time to think about what I had read. It wasn’t a book, like so many, that I devour in one gulp. Instead, I truly considered everything – not only about the book itself, but what it meant to me, as a human. It was marvelous.

I received Path of the Horseman from the publisher in exchange for a realistic review. All thoughts are my own. I highly encourage you to pick it up if you are in the market for a serious, thoughtful book filled with ideas that are incredibly pertinent to today. Global warming, unending wars, religious hatred, the list goes on and on. . .

"If he’d learned anything at all about females… mostly from Harvester… it was that it was easy to say the wrong thing, and more often than not, saying nothing at all was the right thing."

Wow, I love Larissa Ione, I really do. I think that there exists nothing that she wrote that I wouldn't like. She has a knack for the paranormal romance / fantasy and she does wonders with it.

So, Reaver... What's been happening so far?

As you recall, Harvester was dragged to Sheoul to be eternally tortured by her dear father Satan for betraying him. It appears she isn't an evil bitch (as much as it seemed at least) rather an angel that has fallen on her own wish so she could become a True Fallen and infiltrate Sheoul to work towards becoming an evil Watcher one day to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. She did everything she had to do only so she could keep on eye on the Horsemen.

You see, Harvester made a promise to herself long time ago when Reaver's children were born. She promised that she will always watch over them, one way or the other, despite everything and everyone. Harvester was in love with Reaver/Yenrieth for a long time and even though he slept with a succubus Lilith, she couldn't let her feelings go.

She made good on her promise. The only thing that was missing were her memories of Yenrieth. Everyone's memories of Yenrieth were erased. No one knew who the father of the Horsemen was or how he looked like. That's why Harvester failed to recognize Reaver as her long lost love who betrayed her.

Harvester was tortured in Sheoul with such hatred and evil that she lost all hope. She knew the angels wouldn't dare send anyone to fetch her even though they knew she was a spy for Heaven. If angels got involved, Satan would have an excuse to attack Heaven. And with Lucifer's birth approaching, he was stronger than ever. No, she knew she was alone.

Until one man came to rescue her. Reaver. He took her from Satan's torture chamber and escaped with her in his arms. He risked his life and his wings for her. She couldn't comprehend why. Why would he go to all that trouble to rescue an enemy? And why did he had to drag her emotions back from a thousands of years of dormant state?

With Satan's armies close on their trail, Harvester's power non-existent, Reaver's power depleted and only two men left as a backup, things were looking grim and not just because they were in Sheoul. And if that wasn't enough, back on the surface, Limos just lost her baby in a vicious attack from their Heavenly Watcher.

Will Reaver manage to save Harvester from Sheoul and if he does, will the Heaven take his life? What will happen with Limos after the loss of her beloved child?

With so much going on on all sides, it's hard to take it all in. First things first then. Let's start with our main couple, Reaver / Harvester.

They are one steamy couple if I may say so. They were even before this book but now... damn. The electricity around them would turn mere human into dust.

Reaver recently found out that he was the Horsemen's father. I mean, he had four children, fully grown with families of their own. That must have been a real shocker. And then he discovers that Harvester was involved with him, with Yenrieth when they were still young. And Harvester never fell from Heaven, she deliberately left. She endured thousands of years of evil, malevolence, hatred, violence and torture so she could keep his children as safe as possible until he returns. If he was a normal human, I suspect he would have a heart attack halfway through that bombshell.

“As you’ve pointed out before, I tend to bend rules.”
“Bend? You wouldn’t be bending a rule. You’d be breaking it over the ass of an archangel.”

Harvester, an innocent angel whose heart was broken by the love of her life Yenrieth. But that didn't stop her from keeping her promise and taking care of his children in one way she knew how, becoming their evil Watcher. She had to kill that young, naive angel she once was and disguise herself as well as distance herself from everyone she ever knew. She became a different person. Regardless, she still cared in her own way. Even though she was tainted with evil now, which resided in her as well as on her, she fulfilled her duty which was known only to her and a handful of archangels. She was erased from all the records and she was left alone with a broken heart and a broken soul in the center of evil.

"All she’d ever wanted was to be good, so it was ironic that in order to do good, she’d had to become bad. She’d had to make everyone she cared about hate her. She’d had to lose everything, from her self-respect to her wings to her dreams of having friends and a family with Yenrieth, the only person she’d ever loved.The only thing she had left was knowledge, and that was something she would hang onto until her last breath.Life as she’d known it was over, but she could still do good. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut while enduring an eternity of torture."

Two misguided, broken souls with no memory of one another, found the right way which leads into each other's path after thousands of years of separation. If that isn't one hell of a romance, I don't know what is. They were separated because of young, stubborn actions. Which has lead them to misery, a long time of misery and regret. But Good will always prevail and so they were given another chance. If they really cared for one another, they will be together but if they take only one small wrong step, they are doomed for eternity.

As Reaver and Harvester travel through the horrors of Sheoul and Limos winding up in the Underground General, Revenant, the Horsemen's new evil Watcher, has set his eyes upon a beautiful False Angel, as it seems, that goes by the name Blaspheme and works for the UG. He has so kindly offered her to suck his dick in the middle of the hospital thinking she wouldn't be able to resist. But imagine his surprise when she responded in such a way that was equal to her putting a bullet between his eyes. I bet that will be the next instalment in the Series. And damn, I can't wait. With his arrogant attitude and her hiding something as well as hating his guts, this outta be fabulous :D

The angels as well as the archangels. They piss me off. They really do. Those self-righteous pricks that get off on their ego and the idea that they are the only ones that can follow the path of good. Pompous, arrogant asses. At least from the demons you know it's coming, it's in their nature but those holy idiots are too much to handle sometimes. Even Reaver has something to say about it:

"Well, Reaver couldn’t dispute that. Most angels he knew were all serious and dour. The ones who weren’t were sweet and happy and… floaty. Like Mary Poppins on an acid trip and a pot of coffee. Reaver didn’t know which was worse."

I love the constant humor that envelops the entire book. It's giving the story a spirit and it's making it easy to follow. We are eager to read one more page and then one more and so on. The author is well versed in making small side scenes which are meant to perk the book up and give it a fluent flow. That includes constant bickering between Reaver and Harvester which will never change, I'm sure.

You,” he growled, “are the most stubborn, difficult, infuriating person I have ever dealt with.”
“Aw.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “You say the sweetest things.”

"Wood splinters showered them, raining down hard enough to give a vampire nightmares."

The reason I didn't give it 5 stars.

The books about Eidolon and his brothers (Daemonica) were slightly better. They were more engrossing and more sexy. It isn't by much but the difference is there. And since I love Wraith so much, I just couldn't give this one a full five stars.

There is also the deal with Reaver's wings. They keep taking them and giving them back. I know he is special. But if that isn't done for centuries and now we have it every few pages towards the end, it kinda loses its value and meaning. It doesn't seem so special and rare anymore. That is the only bad thing I can say about this book. Which says a lot.

All in all, the book is awesome. I recommend it to be read as a sequel because as a stand alone (which is not) it won't make such an impact and some things won't make as much sense.

Even though I keep saying how I prefer the Daemonica Series, I really have no objections towards the Lords of Deliverance Series. Perhaps it is based on personal preference and one's individual interests. I would read both of them at all times if I could.

Read it. Now. Go. Don't come back until you're finished ;)