Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Cronin’s Key III
SERIES: Cronin’s Key #3
AUTHOR: N.R. Walker
PUBLISHER: Blueheart Press
LENGTH: 193 pages
BLURB:
History isn’t always what it seems…
Twelve months after his change, Alec MacAidan is still getting used to his many vampire talents. While most vampires would give anything to have more than one supernatural power, Alec craves nothing more than peace and time alone with Cronin. But when Alec meets entities from outside this realm, he’s left powerless in their presence.
Zoan are half-lycan, half-dragon creatures that have slipped through time and reality, seemingly undetected by man and vampire. Or have they? They bear an uncanny resemblance to gargoyles, leaving Alec’s view on all things weird to get a whole lot weirder.
This new quest leads Alec, Cronin, and their band of friends to Paris, Rome, and Moscow, where they learn that gargoyles aren’t simply statues on walls. In the underground pits beneath churches all over the world, Alec discovers the Key’s true destiny. Facing the Zoan might take every talent he has. And he may need help from the dead to get them all out alive.
REVIEW:
This will be a little hard to say… I didn’t love this book. I’m sorry! It’s N.R. Walker and I usually love her books but this one wasn’t my favorite I’m sad to say.
So this third book in the series continues Alec and Cronin’s story, and is pretty much the same plot as the last two. I LOVED the first book, it was original and fun, I liked the second book, but it was really similar to the first book, just with different bad guys, and this one was ok. It also has the same plot, but different bad guys.
Here’s a brief spoilerish recap: Cronin is an old vampire, he’s been waiting for his fated lover, Alec, a human born to save the world. They finally meet, have some lovely drama and a big adventure fighting Egyptian mummy vampires, and do in fact save the world. That’s the first book. Then they face a terracotta army in the second book, save the world again, and Alec finally getting to turn in to a vampire with some bad-ass super powers. We think they’ll get to live happily ever after, literally forever, but now in this book we have a new set of enemies. Some sort of lycan/gargoyle things planning on world domination/destruction.
It wasn’t a bad plot by any means, but it was exactly the same as the last two books. Bad guys posture and attack, good guys hop around the world doing very Dan Brown-like research, and have a big confrontation. Lot’s of traveling, lots of details about places, lots of characters, lots more hoping around the world, and some good sex.
What I liked about it was the fantastic characters. I love Cronin and Alec, Eiji and Jodis, Kennard, Kole, Eleanor, Jacques, Adelmo and Jorge. I loved seeing them all again as a big pack, all working together to save one another, and everyone else. What I didn’t like is pretty obvious by now, the repetitive plot. I think if this was a novel on its own, not the third in a series of similar books, I would have liked it more. As its own story it was good. But, I’ve read it before, twice!
If you read the first two, you need to read this one to get the ending. Which was very good, exactly what we needed to see, and very sweet. If you haven’t read the others, you should! They are very good, especially the first one. But be warned about the similar plots. Some people won’t have a problem with that, lots of authors follow a pattern that works for them, I get that.
I still love N.R. Walker and I’ll happily read all of her books in the future!
RATING: 
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