Ker and KWeb have decided to help me out with the ABC challenge I’m doing on Goodreads this year by making sure I had a book that started with V by giving me Vas. Well, I guess they gave it to everyone, but I’m totally going to pretend that they were thinking only of me when they hit publish. Don’t harsh my mellow, OK?
Vas is the 3rd book in the V Games series, and features, oddly enough, Vas. The featured men in each of the books is from one of the First Families of the Russian mafiya. This one focuses on the scion of the Volkov family. Well, he’s sort of a member of the Volkovs. His old man is Volkov senior, but his mother was a maid in the household and Vas didn’t know who his father was until he was much older. He did spend time around Diana (Ven) and Irina (Vlad), his two half-sisters, growing up, and now that they are all adults, they are all close, especially Diana and Vas, because of the way he helped her.
Old man Volkov has pretty much claimed Vas, since he wants to have a male heir. Even though he raised Diana and Irina to be strong, powerful women and told them that they would be able to make their own choices in life, he fucked them over, and went with Vas instead.
Vas was an underground fighter, and now he has a serious reputation in the underground circles. No one wants to take him on. He now helps to train fighters for the V Games from different families. He also goes to visit his sisters regularly, especially Irina. Why does he visit Irina a lot? Well, that’s because Darya is there. Darya is a slave that Vasiliev the elder has. There’s just something about her that draws Vas to her. And it’s not even that she spends pretty much all her time naked. He’s obsessed with her, and he wants to get her out of there somehow. However, all of his plans to get her out and make her safe become suddenly irrelevant when it turns out that she’s Vlad’s sister.
Darya was raised in a religious orphanage and then spent time in a convent before the devil man came and took her away and gave her to Vasiliev, who she calls Molokh, a demon. When it comes out that she’s Vlad’s sister (probably), he swears that he will keep her safe from his terrible, monstrous father. When Vas tells Vas that he wants access to Darya, Vlad says sure, but he will have to train a fighter for him, Alyona Voskoboynikov, a young woman who is a member of the lesser of the First Families.
So, Vas, Darya, and Alyona all go off to Moscow so that Vas can train Alyona in a safe(ish) place, and so that Darya will be safe from Molokh. And thus we go into the story.
I have to admit that I didn’t like Vas when we first met him in Vlad. I thought that he was kinda creepy, but by Ven, he had really grown on me, and by his own book, I was so excited to see it come out. I was really excited to see what Ker and K would do with him. I was also looking forward to see what would come out of the actions of the last book and what would happen to Vika. I have to say, I’m perfectly happy with the resolution of both things. I don’t like Vika, I never really have, she’s scheming, grasping, narcissistic, and thinks she’s really smarter than she actually is. She wants to think that she’s Machiavelli, when in fact she’s more like Machia, no velli, at least I think so. I like Darya. I like her a whole lot. And I’ll forever be loyal to Diana, who is Queen, but I think that Darya may actually be the strongest of all the women in this series. She goes through hell, yanked from a safe(ish) place in the convent to being a sex slave who is abused, and yet, she never loses herself. If you ask me, that makes her pretty damn strong. I think that she and Vas are going to be a serious power couple in their world, plus with the connections they have to Vlad and Ven, I think the next generation of First Families is going to rule the world.
I don’t think this one is quite as dark as the other books are, Vas and Darya’s love story is a little sweeter. However, not quite as dark and a little sweeter doesn’t mean light and super sweet.
I have to say, I didn’t quite expect what happened to Vika, but I do think that it will work well. Vas is a pretty good guy for being who he is.
I can’t wait to see what happens with our Moscow brothers. I think that they are going to be interesting, and I think that I’m pretty happy that they never laid a hand on Darya, because that would’ve been more than a little bit weird. I do like the guys though. I think they are pretty fantastic, and I’m glad that we are going to still see them.
OK, that’s all I have to say about this one. Go check it out, and make sure that you read the other two books in the series, otherwise you won’t get this one. Happy reading!
In Between the Pages 