Book Review: Dark Prince and Dark Descent

My Roomie is working on her 4th year in the Pacific Northwest, after moving to Seattle from Florida. Aura is a big fan of Christine Feehan, and the Carpathian characters she has been writing about since the late 90’s. Many times Aura has suggested I might like the series because it is contemporary, rather than historical. I’ve thought about it, but my TBR shelf was stacked with other authors at the time, and I figured I’d pick up Christine eventually.

Christine’s Wild Rain was just on the shelves when I bought it at the airport after I’d forgotten to bring a book along on a business trip. I really enjoyed the story and her writing style was easy to follow. Wild Rain is the first in a series of books about shape shifting cat people, and I look forward to the next in the series expected out later this year.

Aura splurged on an audio book version of Dark Prince, the first in the Carpathian series and was listening to it in the car one day when we were shopping.. uh, I mean running errands. The characters sounded interesting and I was intrigued by the parts I heard. Aura has offered her copies of the books to me many times, but I have always turned her down – I can be hard on paperbacks - thinking I would pick up my own copies when I was ready to read.

On a trip to the book store with the boyfriend and his kids, Aura picked up a copy of Dark Prince for me – little sneak – so I could read it whenever I was ready, and some how it ended up on the top of my TBR pile.

From the beginning of the book there was intense non-stop action. And too much sex. Yes, you hear me right, too much sex. Unusual for me to say, but I was about ready to put it down and find something else when I shared my thoughts with Aura. She said that she’d heard somewhere (perhaps even from the author herself) that the published version of Dark Prince was not the book Christine had written. I know publishers and editors often take certain liberties, and I really wanted to see how the story ended so.. kept on reading.

It was fascinating the way the author jumped form one characters head to another, yet the printed page did not offer any indication of the move form one character to the other – not even so much as and extra space between paragraphs. At times, with all the action, it was hard to follow who’s thoughts were who’s. Characters seemed to appear without much introduction, though the reader was supposed to understand and accept them without suspicion. That fact also made me uncomfortable and caused confusion.

I enjoyed the story and the adventure – but the writing, mechanics and flow of the book was a bit disappointing. I’m still not sure if I like the main characters. Raven started out as likeable, and when she confronted the vampire hunters in the forest I was with her every step. It was believable that when she first met some of the other Carpathians, she could hear their thoughts and it made her crazy… but it was really too much to expect that they’d have control all the time when they were around her, I didn’t buy that. I know that Mikhail is a prince, and old school, but he felt like an over bearing macho man, and I don’t think I can say that I ever really liked his character. He didn’t seem to let Raven grow and adjust to the changes, but his over protective assuming attitude was way beyond alpha male for my taste.

I felt there was much of the detail missing, and want to know more. I have to continue to remind myself this was the first in the series, perhaps the first book Christine published. I do want to read more, and plan to, but I think it will be a couple months before I visit with the Carpathians again. Withholding judgment on the series until I’ve read more.

The book Aura bought also had a novella length story from an anthology as a
bonus feature. Guess I’m going to visit the Carpathian Mountains sooner than I thought.

Dark Descent ~ initially part of The Only One Anthology ~ started with a bang, literally - with Traian fighting vampires and Joie was shot on the job, but the writing and syntax was much easier to read after struggling through Dark Prince. The characters jumped off the page and while I wanted to know more about the special gifts of Joie and her family, the shorter story was more cohesive and solid, and I would think that’s because the author is now very comfortable with the world she’s created and the publisher will print the heart of the book, not just the sex and action sequences. I hope that the story started here will be more fully explained in the series – there are still so many unanswered questions.

It is very apparent Christine knows the craft of writing and has good stories to tell. I think it will be easy to move past the disappointment from the first book and enjoy the series as the tale of the Carpathians unfolds. I will, however, read them in order of publication, including the other novella stories, because there was information in Dark Descent that will probably color the books about some of the characters already introduced but their full stories yet untold. I don’t think it was a good idea to include Dark Descent with Dark Prince.