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  • A Touch of Darkness

  • Hades & Persephone Series, Book 1
  • De : Scarlett St. Clair
  • Lu par : Meg Sylvan
  • Durée : 11 h et 6 min
  • 4,4 out of 5 stars (14 notations)

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Couverture de A Touch of Darkness

A Touch of Darkness

De : Scarlett St. Clair
Lu par : Meg Sylvan
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    Description

    Persephone is the Goddess of Spring by title only. The truth is, since she was a little girl, flowers have shriveled at her touch. After moving to New Athens, she hopes to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist.  

    Hades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world and his favorite bets are rumored to be impossible.  

    After a chance encounter with Hades, Persephone finds herself in a contract with the God of the Dead and the terms are impossible: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever.  

    The bet does more than expose Persephone's failure as a goddess, however. As she struggles to sow the seeds of her freedom, love for the God of the Dead grows - and it's forbidden.  

    Contains mature themes.
    ©2019 Scarlett St. Clair (P)2020 Tantor
    Fantasy Romance
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    Ce que les auditeurs disent de A Touch of Darkness

    Moyenne des évaluations utilisateurs. Seuls les utilisateurs ayant écouté le titre peuvent laisser une évaluation.
    Global
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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    Interprétation
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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    Histoire
    • 4 out of 5 stars
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    Commentaires - Veuillez sélectionner les onglets ci-dessous pour changer la provenance des commentaires.

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    • Global
      1 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      1 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      1 out of 5 stars
    Image de profile pour Mary

    Painfully boring

    Not gonna lie, I picked it up because the idea of a ✨spicy✨ book set in a modern rendition of Greek Myths / the Hades and Persephone relationship intrigued the hell out of me but the set up was both rushed and tedious, the writing isn't that compelling, the spice was minimal (and not helped by the performer's breathy moans, talk about awkward), the plot was non-existent, the characters lacked chemistry which isn't great for what is supposed to be an edgy romance novel.
    I struggled to power through, wouldn't recommend it to anyone and I might try to get a refund.

    1 personne a trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      4 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      3 out of 5 stars
    Image de profile pour Client d'Amazon

    Nice book

    The love story is cute but the plot & storyline are a bit childish! Overall a pleasant book to listen to, I would recommand it.

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    • Global
      1 out of 5 stars
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      3 out of 5 stars
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      1 out of 5 stars
    Image de profile pour S.J. Gokey-Hartsfield
    • S.J. Gokey-Hartsfield
    • 18/08/2020

    Some people really will romanticize anything, huh?

    I was excited to read "A Touch of Darkness" based on the synopsis I was given. A modern retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth? Great!

    Then I started the audiobook and it all went downhill from there. The only way to properly address my feelings about this book is to organize things in a list, so here we go:

    1. Persephone as a heroine.

    Persephone barely functions as a protagonist, let alone a heroine. Her motivations are all over the place: does she want adventure, a life outside her mother's grasp? Does she want passion and/or love (two things that are alternately conflated and differentiated, as the situation dictates)? Does she want to trust Hades and challenge her preconceived notions of him? Or does she want those notions confirmed, despite his words and actions?

    She seems ready to believe the worst of Hades at all times, no matter what he does. She tells him he should send struggling mortals to rehab? He does so, and she accuses him of doing it to "make fun of" her. If she's so eager to get out from under her mother's thumb, and her mother hates and mistrusts Hades, you'd think Persephone would take any and every opportunity to see the best in him, specifically to spite her mother.

    She also just plain doesn't listen when Hades speaks (when he bothers to explain himself at all, see below). He'll tell her, "I don't have full control over my contracts and have to consult with the Fates", and she'll continue to berate him for his "unfair" contracts that "ask the impossible".

    Lastly, she spends a lot of time thinking Independent Woman thoughts, but all of those seem to fly out the window the second she gets in the presence of Hades and his magical dick.

    2. Persephone as a goddess.

    Persephone is, nominally, the goddess of spring. If she was, as the story implies, born 20-some actual years ago, how has spring happened before her birth? Since she can't make her powers manifest, how does spring happen at all? Who gave her the title of "goddess of spring", if a) none of the other gods knew about her (as is implied) and b) she shows no gift for anything springtime-related?

    3. Hades as a hero.

    So Hades has a reputation as a cold, heartless, ruthless tyrant who challenges mortals to games of cards in order to trick them into "impossible" contracts. (His terms include things like challenging alcoholics to give up drinking. You might recognize that as something that's certainly difficult, but not impossible.)

    Anyway, Persephone buys into this reputation and often accuses him of this and worse, and Hades hardly ever stands up for himself. At worst he stays silent, and at best he'll say something along the lines of, "It's not like that," but doesn't follow up with an explanation. He allows Persephone to continue thinking ill of him, then gets irritated when she thinks ill of him. If he truly didn't care about anyone's opinion this would make sense, but he tells Persephone more than once that HER opinion matters. He just doesn't seem willing to do much to change it.

    The only time he makes an effort to alter her perception of him is when he starts a rehab charity for mortals, at Persephone's suggestion, but--as mentioned--she only takes that as an offense.

    4. Lack of logic.

    I don't just mean that characters make illogical choices (although there's plenty of that, too). I mean that conversations/sequences of events don't seem to follow any sort of logical pattern. For instance:

    "No, Lady Persephone. Trust me, when we fuck, you'll remember."

    WHEN? "Your arrogance is alarming."

    His eyes flashed. "Is that a challenge?"

    A challenge to what? If Persephone had followed the statement about arrogance with something like, "We will NEVER have sex," his response might make sense. It would be disgusting, but it would make sense. But exchanges like this happen all the time. It's like the author wrote from sentence to sentence, picking what she wanted to say in any given moment, regardless of what had just been said/done or what was about to be said/done.

    5. A tired dynamic.

    Can we move past the dynamic of "virginal college-aged woman" and "brooding worldly billionaire", please? It was uncomfortable in Fifty Shades of Grey and it was uncomfortable here. Persephone is in her 20s, and we're supposed to believe that not only is she a virgin, she's never even masturbated. Is she okay?

    It's also time to retire a dynamic where one party (usually the woman) says something that implies she isn't interested, and the other party (usually the man) "sees past" her protests to what she "really wants" and informs her of her own desires. It's gross and problematic. It gets a SLIGHT pass in this story, since Hades is literally a god and can literally see into people's souls, but it's still pretty skeevy.

    Not to mention that if Persephone is college-aged and Hades is millennia old, the age difference is far beyond anything even Twilight could throw at us.

    6. Implementation of mythology.

    It was really difficult to get a handle on the way in which mythological characters were employed in this story. Which gods had been around since antiquity, like Hades, and which were new, like Persephone? Was the Adonis we meet bound to be the same mortal that Aphrodite falls for in the myth, or was he a modern man with the same name? Was Sibyl the Oracle of Delphi, or was she a modern woman who just happened to also be an oracle? Was Orpheus the guy with the lyre we know, or just a bereft widower denied the opportunity to exchange his soul for his wife’s?

    It seemed that the author cherry-picked images/names/themes from mythology without taking the time to construct a cohesive universe with them.

    7. Lack of proofreading.

    Look, I’m not here to rag on self-publication as an industry. I think it’s a great way for new authors to get their work out to an audience, especially an audience that might be smaller than a publisher wants to bet on. My problem isn’t that St. Clair “independently published” this book.

    My issue is that she clearly didn’t employ ANY sort of editor in the process. I can’t speak on the textual version, but even the audiobook was rife with awkward word choice and sentence structure, not to mention moments like this:

    "Oh no," Persephone said.
    Hades raised a brow. "What?"
    "I know that look."
    He raised a curious brow. "What look?"

    Freelance editors are readily available online. Employ them.

    8. The terms of bets and contracts.

    Early in the story, Hades offers to teach Persephone to play poker. They wager questions: whoever wins a hand gets to ask the other a question, which must be answered. However, once they’ve finished, Hades is able to mark Persephone, indicating that she is now under contract with him. The terms of that contract are decided after the fact. This makes zero sense. If questions and answers were the wagers, how can she then owe him a contract fulfilled? How can you possibly be beholden to a contract without its terms being defined first?

    9. The audiobook narrator.

    This is something that Scarlett St. Clair can't be blamed for, but bears mentioning: the narrator of this audiobook has three major flaws, as far as I'm concerned. A) Her male voices all sound the same: gravelly and molasses-slow. Hades sounds like Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. B) She over-enunciates almost everything. C) She gets into the sex scenes. Like. REALLY gets into the sex scenes.

    I’m sure there’s a lot more to talk about but this review is already 1300 words and I’m so tired.

    226 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      3 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      3 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      3 out of 5 stars
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    • Guienivere
    • 23/02/2021

    Tiktok told me 5/5 but no, its a 3.25/5

    After rading SJM & The Bargainer series this was ok. I liked it but it seemed like something id read before unfortunately. Smutty but I pictured my boyfriend instead of Hades so, ya know. I didn't like Persephone as a journalist and some of the dialog was tough to believe but all in all 3.25/ 5

    26 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      2 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      2 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      2 out of 5 stars
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    • madeleine blackman
    • 08/04/2021

    Possibly some spoilers

    Technically haven’t finished this yet, but a few thoughts right out the gate. 1) the narrator really can’t do a male voice and it’s really awkward; 2) the whole second half of this story is just a series of sex scenes

    20 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      3 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      3 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      3 out of 5 stars
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    • Michelle Kattarina Huntsman
    • 22/12/2020

    It was ok, to similar to L.O.S for me though .

    I don’t like to compare but and I know most of this is base on the mythology of this two gods/goddess but a lot of the story had a lot of similarities to the comic book found in WEBTOON / coming to Nexflix soon (Lore Of Olympus by Rachel smythe ), it just had huge similarities. And I’m aware of the myth and authors will put there spin on the myth of there choosing on gods and goddesses but when both sound so much alike I don’t know if that’s my cup of tea . Don’t get me wrong I like touch of darkness and will continue to read on but I’m stinking with lore of Olympus this one for me . P.s not hatting on this book.

    13 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      2 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      2 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      1 out of 5 stars
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    • Audrey Dalum
    • 30/03/2021

    Eh.... it may be for some people

    I don't want to be mean about this book, but honestly it wasn't for me. The characters seemed underdeveloped and mostly 2 dimensional, while also being inconsistent. If sentences along the line of "wanted him to fill the emptiness inside her" and almost exclusively referring to male genitalia as "his arousal" and female genitalia as "her core" are for you then you would probably like the sex scenes in this book if that type of phrasing makes you cringe, I recommend reading a different book.

    11 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      3 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      2 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      3 out of 5 stars
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    • Terrie Stickney
    • 14/12/2021

    It’s okay if you want smut

    I started listening to this because I read Lore Olympus on WebToon and people on the group I’m in were suggesting this. I love Greek Mythology and specifically love Hades and Persephone. The story itself is okay but it honestly just seems like a Modernized Greek Mythology version of 50 Shade of Gray.

    And don’t get me started on how the narrator sounds when she reads the sex scenes. I half expected her to have an orgasm after she read one and I’m just thinking “ma’am I’m trying to listen to the book, not you pleasure yourself.”

    8 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      1 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      1 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      1 out of 5 stars
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    • Hannah Morgan
    • 19/12/2021

    Gag

    I was so excited for this book. The MOMENT I Heard- the narrator’s voice I knew it was going to be a long, hard road. Narrator is just noooooot good.

    Story makes no sense, full of major loopholes. Tropes are boring. Creepy right billionaire “preys” on virginal college woman. Blah. This book could have been AMAZING and it was NOT, save your credit and don’t get this one!!

    6 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      1 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      1 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      1 out of 5 stars
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    • Sarah Donaher
    • 19/10/2021

    don't waste your time

    this came highly recommend to me because I liked ACOTAR and I was highly disappointed

    reads more like a fanfiction or an early first draft
    predictable plot, flat characters, boring dialogue

    if you're absolutely determined to purchase at least get the real book. the narrator is difficult to listen to. sharp whistles on every s, horrible male voices.

    worst audiobook I've ever listened to for sure

    6 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      1 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      3 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      1 out of 5 stars
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    • Fox
    • 15/09/2021

    wow. just wow

    I've been looking for a fiction book about the gods for a long time so when I found this I jumped at it without really looking into it and I regret it. I used to like Kenons Dark Hunter series but the romanticized sex bs got in the way. This book is worse in that theres no other story but that. not fights, no powers, no godly anything really. just love struggles and over the top sex. excuse me, "overly passionate love making" THATS IT. nothing else.

    5 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      5 out of 5 stars
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    • Lottie
    • 02/07/2020

    Romantic book.

    This is a deliciously romantic book, it’s about Hades and Persephone, theirs a back and forth, funny parts, and beautifully illustrated underworld.

    5 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

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    • Global
      2 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
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      2 out of 5 stars
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    • Sabrina
    • 06/06/2021

    Zeit verschwendet

    Die Geschichte ist ziemlich langweilig und vorhersehbar. Es ist ziemlich wenig Witz und Spannung in der Geschichte. Die Sprecherin ist allerdings hervorragend

    2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      4 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      3 out of 5 stars
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    • Laura
    • 05/12/2021

    plot<sex

    well it's easy, if youre not looking for plot, slow burning romance or adventure its a great book.
    Personally I think its a nice and hot spicy read/listen. But we're not given paticulary many reasons why Persephone is so into Hades except for his good looks. It all happens quite fast... in the end the story gets a bit more interesting. Just know what you're in for and you won't be disapointed since the Audio is phenomenal.
    I'm not going to listen to the next one however since it is a very boring and flat story.

    1 personne a trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      2 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      3 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      1 out of 5 stars
    Image de profile pour Ulrike Biedenbänder
    • Ulrike Biedenbänder
    • 22/02/2021

    50 Shades of Grey mit „göttlichen“ Protagonisten - bleak!

    Die Idee die Geschichte um Hades und Persephone aufzugreifen war gut und ich bin voller Vorfreude in das Buch eingestiegen, weil ich Neuinterpretationen der griechischen Mythen (Circe, Song of Achilles etc.) liebe. Dieses Buch und auch der Nachfolger haben mich enttäuscht. Die Entwicklung der Geschichte und die Darstellung der Charaktere erinnern sehr an die 50 Shades Reihe. Die Charaktere tragen nur rein zufällig Namen aus der griechischen Götterwelt. Hier und da wird alibihalber mal eine bekannte Geschichte von Ovid etc. verwoben. Sorry, aber das ist zu spärlich. Ebenso unausgegoren ist die sprachliche Rafinesse. Plumpe Sexszenen mit sich immer wiederholenden Darstellungen beherrschen die Geschichte - redundant, plump und unsexy. Die Sprecherin bemüht sich redlich, tut einem Leid aber eigentlich nur sehr leid.

    1 personne a trouvé cela utile

    • Global
      4 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      4 out of 5 stars
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    • SharkMako
    • 31/07/2022

    recommended by TikTok

    habe bei TikTok gute Bewertung gelesen
    Story war ok, der Haupt Chara hat mich sehr aufgeregt wie naiv sie war, aber das war ja klar
    die Sprecherin war super, die männliche stimme war gewöhnungsbedürftig und die romantische Szenarien haben sich angehört wie ein Hentai. werde wahrscheinlich keine weiteren Bücher mehr hören von diesem Genre mehr hören

    • Global
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      4 out of 5 stars
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    • Vanessa Victoria Juritsch
    • 29/07/2022

    Love the story!

    It's like an alternate universe to the webtoon 'Lore Olympus' or vice versa. Though I can't say which one of the two stories was published first I love both. In this book there are a lot of steamy scenes and Persephone is far less naive. The voice telling this tale is enthralling and manages to deliver the different characters' emotions and character perfectly!

    [Potential Spoiler]










    Yeah let's take a swin in the Styx... good idea...

    The only thing I thought of as weird is how they kind of brushed over Adonis' 'misbehaviour' and didn't really get into how Lexa felt after the club scene. But otherwise great storytelling!

    • Global
      4 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      4 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      3 out of 5 stars
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    • Amazon Customer
    • 15/09/2021

    Enjoyable (for non-journalists and non-gardeners)

    There is very little understanding of how journalism and gardening actually work, but it is otherwise an enjoyable re-telling of the ancient Greek myth. Considering to buy the sequel!

    • Global
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      5 out of 5 stars
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    • Hikami D. Jazz
    • 23/08/2021

    Extra great narration

    The narration is super good. Voices sound unique and Meg Sylvan doesn't shy away to raise her voice and our her emotions into it when breathing live into the lines.

    • Global
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      5 out of 5 stars
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    • Kristina
    • 18/06/2021

    Wow

    i loved it. My Favorit book on here so far.Can't wait for the last book.

    • Global
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Interprétation
      5 out of 5 stars
    • Histoire
      5 out of 5 stars
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    • Melanie B.
    • 08/04/2021

    amazing

    the narrator is doing an amazing job. the story is very well written, has an awesome character development and steamy scenes ;-)