Sherri L King's Horde Wars

II have been devouring Sherri L. King's series The Horde Wars over the last couple of days (I'm a bit obsessive when I find an interesting series). They're paranormal erotic romances available from EC.

Ms. King built a unique world and cast of characters with interesting paranormal elements all wrapped up in this series. The basic premise is that there is a secret war taking place that the humans are unaware of - the battle between the Daemon Horde (the bad guys) and the Shikar (aka the good guys). The Horde is made up of monster-like creatures who, throughout the series, begin to evolve into slightly more intelligent and powerful creatures - much to the horror of the Shikar who are the only thing standing between the Horde and the fragile humans. The Horde literally eats humans and crave psychic humans in particular.

The Shikars are warriors (well, the males are) who have special powers (power over elements like fire, knife-like objects springing from their bodies called foils, time/space travel, etc.). They are not humans and although they do 'dally' with human women, their sperm is actually poisonous to them but we later find out that some human women can be converted to Shikar after dying from the poison. I totally loved these heroes - their abilities depend on which caste they're from but they're all dangerous, kick-ass alpha males.

In all four books the heroes are powerful Shikar warriors (although the last book is about the leader who is The Elder and not your average warrior) and the heroines are human females with psychic powers that attract the attention of the Horde and thus the attention of the Shikar who want to protect (and recruit) them. I really loved all of the characters - the females were very strong and sassy and the males are dangerous but loving. The action was really well written and was a nice foil for the romance which is the focal point (of course) and bulk of the stories. The love scenes were hot, although there was a little tongue/anal action that had an "ick" factor for me personally but overall very exciting.

The only book I didn't like as much was the last one LORD OF THE DEEP. It just felt like there was too much going on outside the main characters in this book and I didn't really connect with them. Nor did I feel like they really connected with each other - the evolution of their relationship is very quick and jerky. Also, there are a lot of loose ends left dangling in both the storyline and the character development... like it never really feels like the heroine gets control of her power (and what exactly IS her power?) which is supposed to be a major issue in the book. This one just didn't work like the rest of them did.

There are also two related "Shikar" books (I haven't read them yet) titled: Caress of Flame & Ride the Lightening.

Sherri King's website is too 'techy' and hard to navigate IMO so for more info I recommend checking out Sherri L. King’s booklist at Ellora’s Cave.