The Nymph King by Gena Showalter

The Nymph King is the third book in the Atlantis series by Gena Showalter. This story encompasses the tale of Valerian, the king of the Nymphs, and the third species to be addressed in the series.

Unable to resist the call of beautiful surface women, Valerian and five of his warriors use the forbidden portal to leave Atlantis and travel to the surface. Once there they round up every beautiful woman in sight—including Shaye Holling—and return to Atlantis with them. Shaye, embittered by her mother's foul treatment and many husbands throughout her young life, is resistant to love, despite the fact that she is Valerian's soul mate, as each Nymph has only one. Shaye must allow herself to love, or risk being taken from Valerian forever.

First I would like to say that the world of Atlantis is shockingly original and intriguing. The races all living together in a drowned city with only a few portals to the surface is so peculiar that it inspires the mind. All the characters are wonderfully vibrant and have their own distinct personalities. With romance series the author always runs the risk of creating characters too similar to each other. While the physical appearance of most of the males is the same (muscular and devastatingly handsome), they have very different personalities. Similarly with the women, Ms. Showalter manages to have each one embody a different kind of beauty. I very much respect that in an established romance author.

On to the characters…

I'm not going to lie, Shaye did get annoying. Of all of Gena's characters, Shaye is by far the most stubborn of all of them so far. While at first I can respect her resistance, at some point it just gets ridiculous. The first sixty pages focus solely on the time it takes to get Shaye into Atlantis, and I daresay it was highly amusing. Yet after that the majority of the book is heated conversations between Shaye and Valerian, all about Shaye rejecting him. By the end I rekindled my respect for her, but in the middle it was buried deeper than Atlantis itself.

Valerian was wonderful. Perhaps a tad bit more aggressive than the other men in Gena's stories, he is still the perfect guy. He doesn't give up on Shaye, even when she's being so annoying that even I would have slapped her. He protects her even to the point of almost dying, and gives her times to realize she loves him. He looks to please her, and does several incredibly sweet things throughout the book. I love his protectiveness, and his repentance over his previously tempestuous ways.

The sub plot of this stories I will admit I did not like very much. I've noticed in Gena's writing that she adds these when she realizes that, a) the story will be too short without them, b) there aren't enough sex scenes between the main couple or c) the plot is lagging. While the main plot of this story was fun, not much actually happened. Hence the sub plot, which honestly I ended up skipping most of those chapters because they were rather boring.

All in all I really enjoyed this book, and I do like the series. No plot is perfect, but as far as originality and entertainment go, this is a fantastic series. There is one more book left for me to read and I am excited to get around to it.

Four Stars

Yours Truly,

Rosalie

The Nymph King on Goodreads