Nick of Time

Title: Nick of Time
Author: T.A. Chase
Publisher: Amber Allure
Genre: M/M Paranormal Romance
Length: 178 pages
Rating: 3 stars out of 5

A guest review by Jenre

THE BLURB

Gryphon’s in trouble. Captured and tortured by humans, the ancient vampire is dying. The humans gave him enough blood to continue his torture, but not enough to heal or free himself. He’s on the brink of death when a meal is tossed into his cell.

Nick knows all about the monsters lurking in the dark corners of the world. Unfortunately for him, it’s the human ones who try to kill him. Broken and bloody, he’s thrown into a cell with a vampire. Knowing he’s dying, Nick offers his blood to the vampire, willing to sacrifice himself to save the tormented man.

Gryphon accepts Nick’s offer and the first drink of blood will bind them together through a life-changing adventure. The worlds of human and supernatural collide, catching Nick and Gryphon in the middle…

THE REVIEW

Nick of Time is the sequel to Allergies (reviewed by Wave HERE) but you don’t have to have read the previous book to understand this one. The opening is tense and attention-grabbing with Vampire Gryphon, chained to a wall and starved with blood having been captured by humans and tortured. Another human, Nick, is thrown into the cell, badly beaten, back broken with severe internal injuries. Nick knows he is dying and so offers himself to the Vampire, telling Gryphon to drain him so that Gryphon will have a chance to escape. Gryphon does take blood from Nick, but only enough to restore his powers so that he can teleport both himself and Nick to safety. Later, Gryphon takes Nick to a special cave where he prays to the gods for Nick to be healed. Nick is healed but in a way that no-one expected.

I have to admit I was a little confused as to what was happening at first. Once Gryphon and Nick escape then Gryphon is thrown into the middle of a Preter argument (Preters are paranormal creatures). Humans have been attacking both Lycans and Vampires and a special meeting has been called to discuss what is happening. As much of the world building must have been done in the previous book (which I haven’t read) it took me a few pages to get up to speed with the different species and who were friends and who were enemies. Once I’d figured that out, the paranormal aspect of the book is pretty easy to follow.

I liked the character of Nick. He’s a human who was unfortunate enough to be seduced by a man who wanted Nick to find information about Preters. When Nick got suspicious and refused to had over key pieces of research he was beaten and thrown to Gryphon. Despite this, Nick still has quite a trusting, naive nature and he freely admits that he falls in love easily. One of the best parts of the book was the way that Nick grew into his new powers, given to him by the gods at the cave. He starts the book being very nervous and unsure of himself, unwilling to speak out of turn or put himself forwards. By the end he had changed into a much more confident man. He still has some growing to do, but as there seems to be a sequel in the pipeline, there is space for that to happen.

The character of Gryphon was quite disappointing. His character falls into the trap of many vampire books in that he’s rather full of his own sense of importance and has a habit of gandiose speech making. He is many hundreds of years old but still lacks a maturity about him which you would have expected from someone who has lived a long time. He treats Nick like his own personal sex toy, constantly groping him, trying to kiss him and making suggestive comments to Nick or lusting after him in his thoughts, most of which happens at entirely inappropriate moments. At one point Gryphon compares himself to a teenager with a crush and I felt that was entirely true. I know this was supposed to represent the first feelings of love and lust but I just got impatient by the lack of self-control that Gryphon seemed to have over his dick. There are a number of sex scenes between Gryphon and Nick which happen in semi-public places where they can be overheard which I didn’t find at all sexy, just offputting. Even more so when the other characters mentioned the amount of noise they were making. Once again I wondered why a man who had lived for so long couldn’t behave with a little more discretion.

I also found some technical aspects caused the writing to drag. There’s a lot of info-dump which happens at the start of the book. I understood that it was necessary to fill in the reader with back story and worldbuilding, but the way this was done – with huge paragraphs of information given to the reader – was clunky and had the effect of pulling me out of the action. There was also an awful lot of telling rather than showing, which again pulled me out of the story because I was wondering why the author felt he had to tell me something which should have been obvious in the way the character behaved.

“Got it.” Nick pulled out a notebook and a pen. Flipping it open to a clear page, he started scribbling down what Gryphon had just said. “I don’t want to miss any of this.”
Gryphon shared an indulgent smile with Jess, getting the idea Nick was a bit of a geek, especially with things he was curious about.

I didn’t need to have that last half sentence as Nick’s words and actions are showing that he’s curious. we already know he’s a researcher and ‘a bit of a geek’ from what we’ve been told previously in the book. This ‘telling’ happened a lot throughout the book and made the story drag quite a bit as a result. There was also quite a lot of useless repeating of information. Gryphon tells the story of how he met Nick about three times in the book. By the second time I began to wonder why I was being told something which I read about in the first few pages of the novel.

Overall, despite my liking of Nick, this story didn’t really work for me. I’ve given it a grade of 3 because of Nick’s character and also because I liked the love/hate relationship between Jess, Nick’s Lycan friend and Pavel, Gryphon’s Vampire friend who will possibly be the focus for the next book. Nick of Time will appeal to fans of the author, especially those who have read and enjoyed Allergies.