Dark/Carpathian #1
“You’re proposing to me with a carload of assassins approaching?”
Raven Whitney
It has been years since I last read this book, and it has not aged as well as I remembered. However, it is still a great introduction to the world of the Carpathians, their struggles against infertility, and this world’s version of vampires.
The most remarkable contrast between this book and later books in the series is how hopeless the Carpathians are. This dying species is terrified and hopeful as Raven inserts herself into Mikhail’s life and their world. This tone carries forward into Dark Desire but, by Dark Gold, there is a marked difference in the Carpathian’s outlook.
Mikhail is the first Carpathian to rediscover his emotions through a human lifemate, but that excuse doesn’t forgive his psychic sexual assault on Raven early on. Interestingly, as he gets better as a character, I like Raven less and less.
This is primarily because she apparently lacks any self-preservation instincts despite having hunted down four serial killers with her telepathic abilities. Of course, this is written off as her being the light to Mikhail’s darkness, but empathy and kindness don’t exclude common sense.
I loved Father Hummer and truly enjoyed his interactions with Mikhail and Raven. It is an underused aspect of the genre to show a reconciliation between religion and vampire-like species. While infrequent, this does occur again later in the series, with Dark Destiny coming immediately to mind.
This book sets the groundwork for the thirty-plus books that follow and is worth reading from that aspect. Raven and Mikhail are not among my favorite couples, but they are the start, and he is the Prince, which means this is not the last that we see of them.
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