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Trystan once had a bright future ahead and plans to get married. Instead, his desire for human women became his downfall, and he became an assassin for a man named Abraham in a war with the vampires and werewolves.
Once, Trystan lived with his mother and brother in a dirt-poor home in the swamplands of Florida. It was the perfect home for who they were: weresnakes of the poisonous viper variety called cottonmouths. Then the state of Florida kicked them off the land, and they moved closer to the city—closer to humans.
Years passed, and though his mother tried to warn him about humans, Trystan felt pity for them—especially the women who found themselves at the mercy of men who paid them for sex. He began to take on jobs to hunt down women and bring them back—with their purity intact—to the men, or families, who paid him handsomely for this service. But he gets sucked into Abraham’s war with the vampires and werewolves, and his life falls apart even more.
Trystan becomes known as Lash, a ruthless enforcer. But, deep down, he’s just a weresnake looking for happiness—something he’ll never been able to find with human women.
Trystan/Lash is a highly unlikable character. His bitterness and anger toward humans—especially human women—makes him reckless and ruthless. Still, it fits with what he is: a snake. He has his moments of goodness, which save him from being too much of a jerk, but there are times when you just won’t like him at all. Mostly, though, he’s lost and lonely—and he goes about trying to fix that in all the wrong ways. And, in a way, he’s oddly humanlike in the way he hates humans.
Lash is a unique supernatural tale, in that the weres are snakes. However, I found the whole thing kind of icky—maybe because I just don’t like snakes. They’re creepy and evil, yet the author does a good job keeping the creepiness and evil at a low volume. Trystan/Lash isn’t a very good person/snake by any stretch of the imagination, but he has his redeeming qualities, making the novel easier to read.
The main character’s extreme hatred for humans and the author’s overuse of the word hiss both get a little old after a while—but, other than that, Lash is a decent paranormal read. And if you like snakes, then this is the perfect read for you.
