Squee from the Keeper Shelf: Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter Series

Content warnings for the series: Some pretty graphic violence, some questionable consent around bodily autonomy (but not by the characters we’re supposed to like). We’re dealing with immortal beings here who break ennui by doing ever more extreme things, both sexual and physical, so do be prepared for that. Don’t worry, the characters we’re supposed to like break free from this ennui through love and become ever more humane.

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I’m not a huge fan of the term ‘binge-reading’. I prefer to think of it as covering myself in a cocoon of books within which I repair, rebuild and recover.

I build that cocoon out of a very specific kind of book – one that bears no resemblance to my current reality.

Dukes? None of those in my life.

Vampires and angels? None of those either.

I’m looking for intense emotions that will help me process my own but also give me a sense of my own power and agency.

Elena is a Guild Hunter. She can smell vampires and uses this sense to track down vampires who have tried to escape their contracts. When a human wants to be made into a vampire by an angel, they sign a contract with that angel saying they’ll work for that angel for 100 years. Vampires are inherently filled with bloodlust and need to be tightly controlled until they can control their impulses themselves.

The world is structured in a hierarchy from most powerful (archangels) to least powerful (humans). It goes: archangel, angel, vampire, human. Raphael is the archangel of New York/North America. There are nine other archangels, each holding a large piece of territory around the world.

In Angels’ Blood, Elena is tasked with the secret project of tracking an archangel with bloodlust. Raphael is who she has to work with. Sparks fly! Raphael has grown distant from humanity after so many years of life. Elena has an incredibly traumatic past but is very much connected to her humanity, plus she’s no push over. Raphael and Elena are the primary couple and they get a few books that center their relationship.

While Elena and Raphael have a few books focused on their relationship, for the other couples in this series, it’s the standard ‘one couple’s HEA per book’. Initially I wasn’t that interested in the other couples because Elena and Raphael had me in a chokehold, but how wrong I was not to be excited about the other couples. The stories are diverse and diverting and thrilling.

Beneath Raphael in the pecking order are his Seven. Seven powerful vampires and angels. Each of them gets their own book and their own one true love. There are also books focused on other archangels.

I read Angels’ Blood ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) many years ago and I’ve reread it multiple times since then. It’s a great romance novel, there’s no doubt about that. But the first few times I read it that’s all I focused on: two beings falling in love. So the rest of the series didn’t interest me at the time as I wasn’t particularly curious about what comes after the HEA. More fool me because there is such treasure in this series and I denied myself for so long! I’m about to start book 15.

Moreover, I didn’t appreciate the first few times I read Angels’ Blood how a relationship in a romance novel could evolve after the “I love yous” have been said. As a standalone, book one is great, but it pales into insignificance when you see how rich, deep and abiding the bond is between Elena and Raphael once you’re a few books into the series.

There are family ties in this series but they tend to be emotionally complex affairs. Both Elena and Raphael have complicated relationships with their families. Some of these complexities are only explored much later in the series, so it’s a semi-permanent state of affairs that bio family stuff is fraught.

Far steadier is the love and devotion of found families. Between Raphael and his Seven. Between Elena and the other Guild Hunters. The sense of loyalty, fidelity and unconditional love wrap me up in warmth. Such unshakeable trust. Even removing the state of our current world from the equation, we’ve all been bruised by a lack of loyalty by those we’ve trusted in our own lives. Well, here is a fantasy in which promises are kept and love is true, to quote Shakespeare, even until the edge of doom.

When I first read that sonnet, that phrasing seemed extreme but in this tumultuous set of novels, that’s very much the vibe. Elena and Raphael are in great peril several times, but survive what seems insurmountable odds. Why? The answer lies in the magic of their bond, the love that unites them. That is what always saves them: their love for each other.

Without going into too much detail, this resonates deeply with me because the connection I have with my partner feels like magic sometimes: it makes us both stronger and happier as though we are greater than the sum of our parts. And it yet requires effort to maintain. Reading about a couple with a bond that has powerful magic of its own felt so good to me.

Despite all the love and fidelity, this is a bloodthirsty series. The violence doesn’t particularly bother me because it is so over the top that it kind of passes me by. But I know for some the violence is a dealbreaker.

The series ends with the publication of book 18 in 2026. I’m trying to tell myself to savour the series, to read slowly, but as I navigate my current life’s challenges, I turn again and again to the comfort of a world in which good wins, in which good people have immense power, in which hardships can be endured.