This was so disappointing 🙁
I listened to this book as it was an Audible Daily Deal, and the narrator was one of my least favorite so far. The accents employed just made me cringe, and I just generally disagreed with the tone that a lot of the dialogue should have contained throughout the book. I think if I had read this myself, I may have been a little more forgiving in my review, but honestly, the story itself was also pretty weak.
Throughout the book, I couldn’t help but want to compare Chronin’s Key to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. This just felt like an R-Rated version, but gay. The personalities felt somewhat similar, including the background characters, and Walker even included a similar trait for his vampires, special abilities individualized for each vampire based on strengths from their human lives. The abilities outlined were interesting, but not very well explained. One of the vampires has ice abilities, but no explanation as to how, or why.
The storyline fell short for me as well. There was zero character development, with the exception of Alec, who is initially resistant to the idea of being fated to Chronin, but then almost immediately fully commits to everything. Alec’s personality was rather obnoxious, and a little too know-it-all for my taste, especially in regards to vampiric matters, despite being introduced to the culture rather recently. The big fight scene at the end had a lot of potential and had been built up rather well, but the events moved so quickly that I became lost and couldn’t quite figure out what happened or why.
Lastly, the m/m romance. As I mentioned before, Alec’s quick flip on his opinion of Chronin was a bit of a turn off, and would have been much more enjoyable with a few more squabbles and feuding. Make them hate each other first! It just could have been built up more. The sex scenes were graphic in a way that made me uncomfortable because of how literal the words and dialogue were. It just felt like really bad phone sex.
2 stars because there was honestly a ton of potential here, it just fell really really short.