
Nephilim are thought to have disappeared from the Earth at the time of the Great Flood, but in reality some of them escaped to another dimension. Unfortunately, the majority of the Nephilim women were killed in the flood and the ration of Nephilim men to women is now 500:1, meaning very few Nephilim men are able to love, to marry and to experience the joy of a family. In Calm Assurance: Orlosian Warriors Bk.1 we meet Asriel, a Nephilim warrior whose job it has been to travel to earth and render justice to those Angels who have forsaken the brotherhood to seek solace and love with a human woman. Author Dariel Raye takes us to a world where these “fallen” Nephilim warriors are stripped of their light and their immunity to earth’s diseases, which forces them to live as vampires, stuck in the darkness and requiring human blood to give them the antigens to survive on Earth. When Asriel is sent to Earth to be a “watcher” rather than a “seeker”, assigned to protect Malina, he instantly realises there is a soul-bond between them and understands that decisions will have to be made that will decide both hers and his future.
Calm Assurance: Orlosian Warriors Bk.1 is a clever attempt by author Dariel Raye to tell a vampire story from a totally different perspective and I admired it for that reason alone. The plot and the premise are fascinating and the two principal characters Asriel and Malina are complicated and intriguing. I thought the author handled the love scenes with care and consideration, making them hot, racy and exciting without crossing that line from erotic into smut. I loved the idea of a strong, independent and fiercely protective woman whose defences and walls she had built up over a lifetime totally crumbled once she was in the presence of her soul-mate. Equally, Asriel’s character who knew very early on that nothing was going to change the fact that Malina was the one destined for him and no matter what it cost him personally, he was going to protect and love her. If fantasy or paranormal romance is your thing and you fancy a different take on the vampire genre, I can highly recommend this story. It was a little too short, perhaps for my usual liking but the promise of more in this series, certainly kept me satisfied and I can only pay the author the compliment of remarking that I want to read more of this premise.
