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. ( )

Carpathians are immortal warriors who hunt vampires. If a Carpathian male doesn't find his lifemate he loses his ability to see in color, to feel emotion. The race is nearly extinct when we find the Prince of Carpathians contemplating his fate. As he thinks to himself a woman invades his thoughts and begins speaking to him. A human woman.
Amazed and intrigued he locates her to find that, as he sees her, his ability to see color returns.
These are fun, romantic books in this series. This book is the first in the series. ( )

Dark Prince
3 Stars

Dark Prince is my third attempt at reading a Christine Feehan book. Although her plot premises are usually good, the execution leaves much to be desired as her writing style tends toward telling rather than showing, and this results in endless pages of unnecessary description.

Feehan’s book was originally published in 1998, however, reading it now means that there is nothing truly original about the story as, these days, the paranormal romance genre is inundated with dark, tortured and suicidal vampires who can only be saved by their fated mate.

Mikhail and Raven’s romance is the focus of the book and is quite entertaining as they have an interesting dynamic and solid chemistry. Many reviewers have taken objection to Mikhail’s sexist possessiveness. However, this type of behavior is not uncommon in the genre so it is easy to just go with the flow. Raven’s passivity and TSTL behavior is far more annoying as my preference is for kick-ass heroines who don’t wander into danger and then wait for rescue.

The secondary story element revolves around a group of fanatical vampire hunters who have targeted Mikhail and his fellow Carpathians. There are some good action scenes, but the villains are on the stupid/incompetent end of the evil scale and it is difficult to take them seriously.

In terms of the world building, the concept of the Carpathians has potential but there is insufficient background on the origins, natures and abilities.

All in all, there are better written vampire series out there such as Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed and Tina Folsom’s Scanguard’s Vampires. ( )

I seldom write reviews but for this one I had to. It is an interesting concept but I will admit it took me a while to really get into it. The main reason I kept at it were all the foaming at the mouth bad reviews of it and I was not disappointed. For those of you who condemned how Mikhail dominated Raven you have to stop looking at this like a mortal/mortal romance story. He is an Ancient. His people and his ways are completely different than the domesticated man on the street and for good reason. After about page 100 the story opens up and it becomes very good, very engaging even if you are not into this type of literature. ( )

Another re-read of this one for some reason. 4th time in 10 years. It has some poor writing and melodrama but the story sucks me in and I love the characters. A guilty pleasure I'll probably keep returning to. ( )