TWISTED is book seven in the Eternal Guardians series, a paranormal romance series featuring seven warriors descended from the greatest heroes in all of ancient Greece. The Eternal Guardians protect the mortal realm from threats of the Underworld. Nick is the leader of the half-breeds, those who are half human and half Argolean. Nick himself is a half-breed, sired by Krónos, the most malicious of all the gods, and Atalanta, a human Arcadian princess. Nick fled Argolea to escape his true mate, Isadora, who is married to his twin brother Demetrius. Upon fleeing, Nick was captured by the evil Zagreus, son of Hades, and as TWISTED opens, he is being tortured by his captor and his captor's girl-toy, Cynna. Nick's will must be broken for him to come into his god powers, and Zagreus needs to steal Nick's god powers to best his own father, Hades. Confused yet? Yeah, so was I.

Cynna's family was killed by Argolean soldiers, and she joined Zagreus in order to obtain revenge against the Argoleans. But the price demanded by Zagreus is slowly killing her soul. Cynna decide to leave, and helps Nick escape Zagreus' dungeon. She is wounded in their escape, however, too severely to keep going by herself. Cynna tells Nick to leave her and save himself, but he takes Cynna with him. He ends up taking her to a location and a people that she hates and fears. I didn't care for Cynna much. While I understood her desire for revenge against those who killed her parents and her whole village, I didn't feel like she was redeemed over the course of the book. She repeatedly tried to escape Nick and the Argonauts, and I found myself wishing that she would succeed. She was not a sympathetic character to me.

The romantic tension derives from the question if love can overcome Nick's inherent darkness and Cynna's lust for revenge. The overriding theme of the book is duty clashing with destiny. All of the duties weighing the characters down were rather depressing. I've always felt Greek mythology was about a bunch of selfish and immature jerks screwing up the lives of everyone around them simply because they could. The Greek tales never have happy characters because everyone's busy fighting, and so this story did feel true to Greek mythology in that respect. The Eternal Guardians series is a paranormal world built on the base of classic Greek mythology. Familiarity with Greek mythology helps with the background characters, especially in keeping track of who's who- I found myself needing to stop reading to Google different gods and goddesses because there are so many names strewn throughout the story. However, if you're a reader who doesn't worry about details, even a mythology neophyte will enjoy this PNR take on the Olympian mythos. TWISTED is my least favorite of the set thus far, but I've been a long term fan of this series, and I will definitely read the next, to find out what happens to my favorite Argoleans.