Dark Series in Reivew

So I tweaked it a little, but the chart shows all our combos with the books they're in. It's pretty much the same chart that's in the books.

OK, so where shall we start?

Despite the terrible covers and the mostly terrible titles, I mostly liked the Dark series. Is it a favorite? Nope. Not even a favorite romance. However, it's close. There were just a few things, small by themselves, that bring it down.

If I was comparing it to another series, it'd have to be the Troubleshooters series, mostly based on the structure - that kind of ever expanding circle of friends and family. Unfortunately, it's just not as good. Granted Troubleshooters isn't paranormal, but you'd think that'd give the Dark series more to work with. Instead it's the basics are the same every time.

This is my first complaint: at times, it was really repetitive. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't binge read, but I did. We're talking language and overall themes. "Sinful mouth" came up a lot. And just the descriptions of sex. And then there's the basic premise of male Carpathian meets human woman. Something horrible happens, then they fall in love. It's not like I don't like the formula, but it does seem to be a formula. It definitely gets better in later books, though.

Dark Symphony, Christine Feehan

Ok, so The Scarletti Curse was absolutely unnecessary. Let's just get that out of the way.

So, back in Dark Desire, Jacques' best friend, Byron, acted a little nuts-o. He tried to convince Mikhal that Shea couldn't be Jacques' lifemate and that Jacques had turned. Jacques, being mostly nuts and not even remembering Byron, does not take it well.

Byron feels terrible for his actions and punishes himself with a self imposed exile as a hunter. He's an artisan, not a hunter, so that's quite the punishment.

His wanderings eventually take him to Italy, where he hears a woman play the piano. Antonietta Scarletti is that woman.

This one was a little different for a couple reasons. One, we enter the story after Byron and Antonietta have met. They're actually friends. The other thing I liked was that Antonietta is blind. That added some of that depth I like to see. I've kind of thought generally that the conversion would remove any illness or handicaps someone had, but this proved it.

This was probably the story most like a mystery so far. I guess that could be said for the Scarlatti Curse too, but lets just forget that book happened.

Someone is trying to kill Antonietta and her grandfather, the Don. The book is mostly about figuring out who's involved. Antonietta doesn't want to think it could be someone in her family, but Byron can't see how it couldn't.

Dark Gold, Christine Feehan

Book 3 of the Dark series and still interesting for the most part.

Though, I'm starting to worry it might get more repetitive as time goes on. More on that later.

The timeline is getting wonky again, too. Ok, so Mikhal bragged to Raven he had a computer that took up his whole desk in Dark Prince. So....what, 1960s? Then book 2 is 20/25 years later, so late 1980s-ish? Only now, Raven's daughter is all grown up, so it's like another 20 years later! So now we could be getting into the future, especially if we keep jumping forward. I hope we don't. If we stop, we should be ok.

Anyway, we meet Aidan and Alexandra here. Aidan lives in San Francisco and acts as the vampire hunter for the West coast on Mikhal's behalf. (I should clarify here, when I've talked about the hunters in the past, like the ones who hurt Jacques in Dark Desire, I'm talking about psycho humans).

He finds a vampire and kills him. Unfortunately, the vampire has turned a woman and now she's a deranged vampiress (yup, they use the feminine of the word) and she has a kid captive.

But wait!! She hasn't turned yet. The vampire only exchanged blood twice. And the kid? Her brother. The vamp was using him as leverage to make her comply.

Aidan only realizes this when he's about to kill her. He also realizes she's his lifemate. Of course, he's already taken too much of her blood, so he has to change her, hoping she doesn't have too much of the vamp in her.

And this is where I worry about repetition.

Dark Desire, Christine Feehan

OK, so another terrible cover, and the title is pretty horrendous, too.

According to the author's note, it wasn't Feehan's first choice. She wanted Dark Madness, which, while still cheesy, is way better. And more descriptive.

So, we meet Jacques, Mikhal's brother, in this one. Well, technically, we met him in Dark Prince, but we get to know him here.

We also meet Shea, a doctor researching her strange blood disease. She also has some psychic powers and a sun allergy.

Sounds familiar, right?

She travels to the Carpathian Mountains to research her father's people based on her mother's journal. Also because she's running from people who want to research on her. Funnily enough, they think she's a vampire.

The timeline here is a little funny, but the best I can make out, book 2 of the Dark series takes place about 20/25 years after book 1. At the end of Dark Prince, the Carpathians are planning to hide out for a bit. Raven and Mikhal have been attacked. The vampire hunters are dead, but they want to avoid stirring up a vampire hysteria like in the old days. Doesn't seem like it worked based on this book.

Anyway, about 8 years before this book, Jacques leaves hiding and returns home. The hunters find him about 6 years later and torture him. They then stake him and bury him alive. Luckily they didn't hit his heart so he doesn't die. Sadly, they didn't hit his heart so he doesn't die.

2 years in the ground, people!

Are you seeing why Dark Madness might have been a better title?