Unearthed romance novel has everything: Vikings, vampires, ISIS, time travel, a chef
Sandra Hill is an insanely prolific author whose supernatural romance novels have landed her on The New York Times bestseller list. The flagship of her fleet is perhaps the Deadly Angels series, which follows a series of sexy vangels—Viking vampire angels—through adventures as lusty as they are dangerous.
Most of them seem like pretty standard fare: muscly Viking man journeys to the future (or the past), then adventures with a human woman who “thrums with sensual energy.” Perhaps Hill got bored when writing the series’ seventh entry, The Angel Wore Fangs, because, as pointed out by author Harry Connolly, this thing’s got a plot that just won’t quit. It’s the supernatural romance genre’s Finnegans Wake.
It begins with a 1,000-year-old Viking vampire angel named Cnut Sigurdsson. Normally, Cnut would slay a few Lucipires (demon vampires, natch) and swish his cascading locks across an ample bosom or two, but The Angel Wore Fangs ups the ante dramatically by pitting our hero against motherfucking ISIS. That’d be enough for a five-book series for most authors, but Hill isn’t finished. Cnut is hired by a chef named Andrea Stewart who wants him to save her sister from a cult that‘s recruiting terrorists at a Montana dude ranch. While there, Cnut becomes a cowboy.
Let’s do a quick catalog before moving on:
- 1,000-year-old Viking vampire angel
- A hunk named “Cnut Sigurdsson”
- Demon vampires
- Motherfucking ISIS
- Chef Andrea Stewart
- Montana dude ranch cult terrorist recruitment
- Cnut is a cowboy now
Apparently, ISIS and the Lucipires have joined forces because they’re now stalking the ranch “in demonoid form.” So, with no other options, Cnut “teletransports” himself and Andrea to 10th-century Norselands, because there’s no writer’s block that a little time travel can’t cure. Unfortunately, Cnut’s time-traveling abilities only work one way—or something—so now he and Andrea must figure out how to get back to the future to save her sister from demonoid ISIS terrorists on a Montana dude ranch. Here’s hoping they still made time for mead, bone-in meat, and fireside coitus.
Unfortunately, it looks like Hill dialed down the ambition with the series’ next book, Good Vampires Go To Heaven, which turns the vangel Zeb into a double agent for St. Michael The Archangel. Even The Godfather fell off, eventually.