A powerful hand grabbed him by his shirt and lifted him back onto the dock. Ash’s limp body was thrown roughly to the ground, the key snatched from his hand. A moment later Ash was again airborne and moving rapidly down the docks, watching the white demon fly over the water towards him.

A weak rasp escaped Ash’s throat.

“Kill me.”

A shrill laugh echoed off the stones of the small alleyway they had ducked into.

“The most exquisite death is a long life full of powerless regret, Ashley of House Xavier.”

Todd Maternowski. Exmortus: Temples Diabolic (Kindle Locations 2304-2308). Unknown.

I’ve heard it said that you can never run away from your past. The things we do stick with us for the rest of our lives, even when we try to hide and create a new life for ourselves. When Ash left his life behind him, he was still very young, but his transgressions were not forgotten and in the midst of his new life being destroyed by men and gods alike, an old enemy has found him and is determined to teach him exactly what it means to suffer.

 Exmortus: Temples Diabolic is the second book in Todd Maternowski’s Towers of Dawn series, and it picks up right where the first book left off and the frenetic pace continues on with all of the brutality I’ve come to expect from this series. The gritty, brutal, ugly reality of Ash’s life is shared with enough detail to make some readers flinch from the pages, but it is that very discomfort that gives the story, and the writing, its power. The author does an incredible job describing Ash’s pain and the tortured decisions of a youth still holding onto the hope of something more than pain and death.

Like the first book, the characters are well defined, unique and a perfect fit for the dark, violent setting that Exmortus takes place in. When the end of the book arrived it felt like a natural place to break, but I couldn’t help but want more.

You can buy the book in Kindle or Paperback here: Exmortus Amazon.

Visit the Author’s website:  www.towersofdawn.com

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