Sanctuary by Ilona Andrews

Title: Sanctuary 

Author: Ilona Andrews

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Roman’s Chronicles # 1

Paperback, 152 pages 

Publication: July 30, 2024

Source: Personal Library
Buy|AMAZON|

It’s not easy serving the Chernobog, the God of Destruction, Darkness and Death…especially during the holidays; and especially when you’re out of eggnog and one of your pesky, freeloading mythic creatures has eaten your last cookie.

Roman would like nothing more than to be left alone, but when a wounded boy stumbles into his yard and begs for sanctuary, Roman takes him in. Now elite mercenaries are camped out on his property, combat mages are dousing the house with fire, and strange priests are unleashing arcane magic. They thought Roman was easy pickings, just a hermit in the woods, but they chose the wrong dark priest to annoy. For while Roman might be patient, he is the Black Volhv, filled with the love of his terrible god. For his adversaries, it's a fight to the death, but for him, it's just another day in the neighborhood.

MY THOUGHTS

I would like to preface this review by saying that I am one of Ilona Andrews biggest fan (says all of the BDH lol). I literally reread the Kate Daniels series every. single. year. It's my favorite comfort series. With that said, I like many others were counting down the days until Roman's novella was released. Roman has been one of main side characters in the Kate Daniels series and have grown to be one of the readers beloved side characters. But it saddens me to say, this novella was a letdown. 

Sanctuary is a fairly decent sized novella with approximately 150 pages but boy, did it feel like a dense read. There was barely any plot or character development. And before anyone says "This is a novella!"; I know! I've read plenty of novellas, some also by Andrews but this was just mediocre. Instead, readers were bombarded with info-dumping page after page...from beginning to end. I felt like I was getting a history lecture versus reading a story. Don't get me wrong I love history and mythology, but this was just not palatable, nor did it come across as interesting.  

There were a few good scenes but overall, I didn't connect to any of the characters. Oddly, Roman was more intriguing as a tertiary character in the Kate Daniel novels than here in his own story. Sanctuary was not enjoyable, and I felt like I had to push through to finish the novella. I am unlikely to continue with Roman's Chronicles. There may be a possible romance in future novellas, but from what I've seen of Andora...I just don't care. I wished the authors' put more focus on key novels than us getting anymore of Roman's novellas. I don't feel like this novella brought anything to the Kate Daniels world. To be honest, we could live without it.