Dark Celebration, Christine Feehan

This book was intended as an enjoyable book for fans to revisit the characters they love.

According to Feehan, it got away from her a bit.

All the Carpathians are invited to a Christmas celebration. Most, but not all attend.

Mostly, it's an update book. Mikhal goes around visiting all the people who've come for the celebration.

There are some attacks against the women and children, particularly against Shea and her baby, as well as Skyler, but that's a fairly minor part of the story.

So, let me give you the highlights.

Raven wants Mikhal (Dark Prince) to play Santa for the kids. He's not a fan of the idea so decides to make Gregori, his son-in-law and 2nd in command, do it instead. Gregori. The Dark One. The boogie man of all Carpathian children.

Seems legit.

And hilarious.

So, as he goes around to visit, he tells them all his plan. All the men want to see it happen. All the women think it's mean. And funny.

Dark Magic, Christine Feehan

Gregori is safe!

And I finally get a woman who knows what's up!

Her reaction is kinda the same, but still, she has more info to go on.

And. It. Shows. She stops fighting it way earlier.

So, Savannah is the daughter of Mikhal and Raven. Raven has raised her daughter to be strong and independent. She's travels, performing a magic show. That's where she's been for 5 years.

Beyond that she's got more info than the past women - being a full Carpathian woman (Finally!!) - their story isn't as good as I had hoped.

Gregori is as wonderful and tragic as I had imagined, so there's that. And the evolution of his relationship with Savannah is really sweet. How she comes to understand what the 5 years without her cost Gregory, and his opinion of himself, is really sweet.

As was his comprehension of what she needs. I can admit there were quite a few tears through this one.

It's just...it wasn't as memorable as I'd hoped, I guess.

There's some vampire hunting, here of course. They move to New Orleans (can't have a vamp series without at least mentioning NO!) and find the (human) vampire hunters active in the area.

They take care of them, of course, but in the process, they meet Gary, the most interesting part of the story.

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.