Intro, or the Stuff Before the Book is Opened
We’re in the stretch now, with the last book in the Servant series! There were points when I thought it would never happen, and the road was long and bad, but here we are!
Servant: the Kindred is the third and last book in the Servant series by L.L. Foster, which is a pseudonym for romance novelist Lori Foster. It was published in 2009, and from my research, after this series and My Man Michael in the SBC Fighters series (which necessitated the name change of the series to simply the Fighters series), Foster did not publish any further paranormal romance novels (that I’ve been able to find).
The cover lists the author as “Lori Foster writing as L.L. Foster,” as it did for the second book. It doesn’t have the stepback cover that the first book had, but retains the foil-stamping of the title, author name, and the knife the heroine is holding. This time the foil-stamping is silver, because she doesn’t have the purple streaks in her hair from her sex worker protection gig anymore. The tagline for this book is “Hunger is eternal.”
As far as the blurbs go, they seem to be repeated from the first and second books. The Elizabeth Lowell blurb on the cover regarding the Eve Dallas books is from the first book and was repeated on the second. The Fresh Fiction quote about “A new twist on demon slaying” is from the cover of the second book. There are two blurbs on the back cover listed as “Praise for L.L. Foster,” rather than praise for any specific book in this series. The blurb from the Romance Readers Connection states, “L.L. Foster shows she has a true gift for writing dark fantasy…The Servant series will be addictive.” Not much of a prognosticator there, I must say.
There is a page of blurbs once the book is opened, but they’re all for Servant: the Awakening, with none of them seeming like they’ve read anything other than the author’s reputation. I hope this isn’t typical of criticism in the romance community.
On the front cover we have the usual gray-brown background (would it kill them to use a non-excretory color for once?) with uncharacteristically well-rendered background figures of two men, much better than the background figures of the last two books, even though the artists were the same for the entire series. One appears to the heroine’s left, directly under the Elizabeth Lowell blurb. He’s wearing dark undetailed clothing and seems to be in his twenties or thirties, from what I can see of the haircut and the scruffy three-day beard. The second man is presented from the knees up, hovering off-center to the heroine’s head with his arms stretched out like a swooping vampire. This guy’s wearing a black leather jacket and looks like he’s in his mid-twenties, with a spiky haircut and long thick sideburns. I don’t know if it’s the same guy from the bottom as this one looks clean-shaven.
And then we get our hero and heroine.
The basic character design for the heroine has remained consistent between covers: short stringy dark hair, the spaghetti-strap camisole top from the cover of the second book which now combines the color from the T-shirt of the first book (blue) and the slashes in that shirt over the abdomen to reveal more skin. That doesn’t seem necessary here, because the spaghetti-strap top already reveals her shoulders, a lot of upper chest, and all of her visible arm. She’s still wearing the brown leather dog collar with the gold diamonds from the cover of the first book.
For both of the other covers, her right arm was visible, but for this one they’ve switched it up and now her left arm is the only one we see. And the barbed wire tattoo that was previously on her right arm has now switched to her left. That’s a continuity error right up there with Sonny Landham’s eyepatch switching eyes in Firewalker. Maybe the argument could be made that she had barbed wire tattoos on both her forearms, but that will never be provable since the tattoo isn’t mentioned at all in the books and both arms are never on display at once on any of the covers.
What she’s wearing on the bottom isn’t clear but I think she’s wearing brown leather pants and a gold-studded belt with a large circular buckle that looks like brass, which matches her belt buckle on the cover of the first book. It’s also foil-stamped, but not as obviously as the knife.
The knife is the basic size and shape of the knife on the cover of the first book, but the designs on the blade are all but gone. The rendering of her hand grasping the knife’s hilt is off, with the knuckles other than the first and second being completely flat and the back of the hand having no detail at all.
Her face—well, this is the first cover where it’s obviously a painting, because the level of detail here has gone way down. It’s like she’s being shot with a movie camera with six inches of Vaseline on the lens. The makeup’s been toned down some, but she still has heavy black eyeliner all the way around both eyes, which has the effect of making the eye look smaller, blusher applied in a very odd fashion (starting directly under the eyes and extending in a triangle to the bottom of the cheek), and glossy tan lipstick which is the same color family as the lipstick from the second book cover, but several shades lighter. At least the artists managed to change the size of her breasts on the cover of the first book (about a 36C) to smaller breasts for this one that match what’s stated about her lack of curves in the actual text of the book.
For this book, since the serious sex started in the last one, the hero now joins her on the cover. This is a good depiction of a man who has to keep a rein on his rage pretty much constantly. His facial expression is that of someone who’s smelled something awful and is furious about it, judging from the position of his eyebrows, the flare of his nostrils, and the way he’s holding his mouth. The expression could also be read as threatening.
He’s a few inches taller than she is (as per Romantic Hero status), and has dark hair like hers, not the blond hair that’s attributed to him in the books. It looks a little like it’s cut short on the sides and longish on the top. He’s wearing a brownish short-sleeved V-neck T-shirt that almost matches the background color of the cover and emphasizes the thickness of his neck. His pants are dark and undetailed. The fingers of his left hand are brushing against the waistband of the heroine’s pants.
The centerpiece of our hero’s depiction is, of course, the HUGE MOTHERFUCKING GUN he wears in a black holster under his left arm. When I say huge, in relation to his body size as depicted on the cover, this gun is as long as his forearm. It’s got a brown wood butt and not much else is visible, other than some gold metal, but you sure can tell how big it is. It looks like a revolver, but I can’t be sure because it’s holstered and the angle is hiding most of the detail.
On the back cover is a round detail of the heroine’s face above the text. It seems smaller than the front cover depiction and is less detailed, if that’s even possible. The back cover copy goes like this.
When Gabrielle Cody became a paladin—God’s enforcer on earth, duty-bound to fight the battle against evil—she knew there would be sacrifices.
This statement goes against everything we’ve been told about her background. This makes it sound like she volunteered to be a paladin when she was old enough to understand the consequences of doing so. But we know that she was selected by God either at birth or in very early childhood and had no say in becoming a paladin due to the hideous pain which she said in the second book “raped her body,” giving her no chance to do anything but murder at God’s pleasure. This is people-murdering we’re talking about here, since they gave up on the demon references halfway through the first book and the villains of the second were garden-variety humans.
But lately, she’s not sure she can endure the life of a holy warrior.
From the other books, it seemed a lot like she had no choice, to the extent that God will not allow her to die (a bad choice that strips any stakes or suspense from the entire series).
Her relationship with Detective Luther Cross is under constant strain—even though his devotion to her is beyond measure.
If by devotion you mean a determination to make her submit to him and turn her into a proper demure female through the expedients of constant sexual harassment, assault, and manipulation with sexual pleasure, then I can’t argue with that.
And it’s going to get worse.
Thanks for the warning.
For there is a psychopath stalking the streets, feeding off of human blood, flesh, and souls.
Wait a minute, that sounds vampiric. So did the tagline on the front cover. Are we about to see something other than Frailty demons in this series? A little late for that. And it’s “feeding off,” not “feeding off of.”
He has gathered minions to do his bidding, and grows stronger with every victim he claims. Gaby must stop him before he slaughters another innocent.
OK, so one particular innocent? If she saves that one, then to hell with all the others?
And it’s interesting we’re getting a man as the final villain in the final book, rather than a woman in the first book (Dr. Chiles) and a trans man (Oren Paige) in the second. It seems like she’s had to work up to a male villain. And I’ll bet she won’t be allowed to kill him at the end, just like she wasn’t allowed to kill Dr. Chiles. I think the only reason she killed the second book’s villains is because she hadn’t been allowed to kill anyone in that entire book and she’s the slayer.
But her passion for Luther distracts her from the terrible connection she has with her quarry—and his own desire to devour Gaby.
Women, amirite? Nothing in their heads but romance and sex. Seriously, though, I’m placing a bet that the psychopath is either Father Acute-Interest-in-Teenagers, who didn’t really die of cancer the way she thought he did and watched him do (as the flashback in the first book told us), or Gaby’s biological father who’s never been mentioned before in this series but we know he has to exist. I wonder what retconning of her past will happen in this book because the author assumed nobody read the other two books.
And on with the last book in this series! However, I may do a little bonus extra and snark the excerpt from Back in Black that’s at the end of this book to see if her writing has the same flaws in the pure romances as it does in the urban fantasy. Please be assured, though, I will not snark the rest of that book. Satan will ice-skate down the streets of Pandemonium before I read one more word of Lori Foster’s writing after this.
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