Amaranth of the Wild Things Book

AOTWT is a quick, enjoyable and at times emotional read. The writing style was at first a bit "off putting" and another reviewer described it best as "stilted"; but it worked with the story which read like a fairy tale for grown ups.

Once upon a time there was an orphan boy named Jaiden, who was unwanted and unloved. Since there was no family to claim him, when he was 15 he was sent to The Rezzegard to be trained as a mercenary and assassin. Jaiden resisted and tried to hold on to his humanity, even when the only goodness he saw was a field of amaranth flowers which represented to him "the last shred of delicate hope in an ugly, ugly world". But eventually the Rezzegard succeeded in torturing the humanity out of Jaiden and the assassin Jaide was born - it only took the forced killing of 3 men, 2 women and 1 child to shake him free of his troubling conscience.

12 years later Jaide takes a contract to kidnap a Princess and deliver her to her execution. The Princes Amara, named after his beloved mythical flower that kept him "deep beneath the layers of stone, human"; got under his skin and slowly thawed his heart, stirred his soul and brought to light the humanity he thought had been forever destroyed.

AOTWT is a sweet, moving love story. Rated PG for 1 not particularly descriptive sex scene. No cuss words. All in all, completely inoffensive. Jaide is technically an anti-hero; but not the morally ambiguous type I prefer. He is a tortured, damaged, broken hero. He truly loathes himself, what he has done and what he has become. He is a virgin in case anyone is interested. He has never experienced any type of human kindness, affection or touch, he does not like to be touched and shies away from human companionship and interaction.

My catalog of pet peeves consists of the following:
1. For the first half of the story Jaide "glowered" constantly. Throughout the story Amara "giggled". There are so many different and varied words in the English language it drives me crazy when an author feels the need to pick a handful of favorites to use repeatedly. Also any adult who giggles should be slapped...hard...until they stop forever.

2. I was slightly annoyed by Amara who spent 80% of the story behaving as if she trusted Jaide when she had no reason to, and at one point seemed to embody the quintessential TSTL heroine when she forgo an opportunity to escape knowing full well he was still intending to deliver her to death. Then when events transpired that actually should have made her think she could trust him, or at least hear him out; she couldn't wait to throw him under the proverbial bus.

Still AOTWT is an interesting and different story.