Stone Guardian

Title: Stone Guardian

Series: Entwined Realms - book 1

Author: Danielle Monsch

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance

Number of Pages: 266

Publication Date: 2013

Publisher: Romantic Geek

Summary: Gryphons flying past skyscrapers? Wizards battling it out in coffeehouses? Women riding motor cycles with large swords strapped to their backs? All normal sights since the Great Collision happened twenty-six years ago.

Well, not normal for everyone. Larissa Miller may have been born after the Great Collision, but as a history teacher who lives in the human-only city, she has never come into contact with any other race or species. That is, until one day she walks out of her apartment only to be attacked by a mob of Zombies, but then is saved by a Gargoyle.
Leader of the Gargoyles, Terak has been watching over the human woman for months because of a cryptic prophecy. Gargoyles trust no one outside their Clan, but something about this woman stirs every protective instinct within him. When he realizes the danger to her is real, he refuses to allow her to explore this new world without him at her side.
In the course of their investigation Terak becomes entranced by his little human. But when he discovers why Necromancers want her and the great reward that awaits him if he betrays her, he must choose between the welfare of his Clan and not only Larissa’s life, but the fate of this new Realm as well.

It's not very often you stumble across a book where the main character is a gargoyle, so naturally this is what drew me in the most. However, I felt that this idea of gargoyles was sort of glossed over, despite their importance. In the entire book we only get three or so scenes, which show only a small portion, of what the gargoyles are like as a society and the rest of the book is spent saying that all the stories made up about gargoyles are grotesquely false, yet no real answers were given as to who they 'really' were.

The romance in this book was well done, especially from the point of view of Terak. Terak as a character in general was well done and very believable. We first meet Terak as a strong independent character who will do anything for his clan. As the book progresses we see Terak become more and more open to fighting for what he personally believes in and watch as he struggles to balance he wants with his responsibilities. He does a lot of growing as a character and it was enjoyable to read from his perspective.

Larissa in comparison as a character was not as well developed. I found at times she was weakly written, her reactions a little unbelievable at times and was far to quick to trust and love Terak. While it was interesting reading from Larissa's point of view as it was her story. I feel that the story would have been more compelling if it was told more from Terak perspective.

The world created for his story was perhaps the thing I loved the most. In the book, our world has collided with another realm that contains magic. As a result you get a mix of normal human lives with those of magical creatures and societies. I loved the way that the vampires in this book were not your typical vampires but were a mix of vampire and necromancer magic (which fits considering they are the living dead) and they didn't sparkle. Hopefully in later books we will see more of the other paranormal races.

This is only the first book in a series and there is heaps of room for this world to grow and develop with multi perspectives through this first book it has set itself up to contain a vast foray of characters and story lines with each promising to be more impressive than the last.