Book Review of Dance of the Gods

Dance of the Gods by Nora Roberts
Book Two of the Circle Trilogy
October 2006 from The Berkley Publishing Group/Penguin Group, USA
341 pages

It took a while for me to get to this; so sue me. Here's your review.

Nora picks up where she left off in BookOne, the group of vampire slayers is here in this reality. They're in Ireland. Glenna and Hoyt, Blair and Larkin, Cian and Moira, Lilith the evil vamp that needs to die, an army of bad vamps with a sorcerer helping out, and then moves the story to a kingdom of wary Geallians through the dance of the gods. It's a clever, yet dangerous, plot device that takes the reader from dangerous intel-gathering and offense-and-defense-attacks near Cian and Hoyt's home base to the enchanting land of Geall where the next stage of the war against evil is to be waged. The plot is to keep Lilith and her reality-hopping bad guys at bay while the vampire slayers figure out how to stop her from ruining all the worlds and realities of man.

It's a noble cause, and Blair is described over and over again with the qualities of an able heroine. Her friends are stalwart and likeable superheroes to have at her side, even if this Larkin guy is annoying in his I-don't-want-to-do-anything-except-drink-and-get-it-on-with-the-main-character. His ability to sneak out of kitchen duties was cute the first five or six times it was mentioned, and then I started to hold it against him.

My favorite character is Cian, the vampire. He's a good guy, so I think it's allowed, but I think my favorite character is supposed to be Blair, the chick. She’s the main character. And the gal with the attitude and superior, save-the-world skills. But she gets on my nerves, so I picked Cian to pay attention to instead.

I love the way Nora has him subtly shift position so he stays out of the shaft of sunlight in a room where the curtains are open. I love the way he gives Moira a wide berth because he's fascinated by her—a soon-to-be-queen-from-another-reality—yet doesn't want to get so close that he might be tempted to harm her (as in bite and drain her). In fact, their tension is the best part of the novel, even though I think Blair and Larkin's sexual tension was supposed to be the focus, it annoyed me more than it entertained me, but I ignored it to get to Cian and Moira's story, and I'm hoping that gets developed more in the sequel and I just haven’t bothered to buy that one yet.