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DARK CURSE
by Christine Feehan
Berkley, August 2008
416 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0425223434


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Lara is an expert on extremophiles, microorganisms that thrive in extremes of heat, cold, etc. She is also an expert in the field of ice-cave study, because that‛s a prime place to find extremophiles. She and her cohorts, Gerald and Terry, are in the mountains searching for a very specific cave. When Lara was a small child, she was kept captive by her grandfather, a powerful mage searching for the secret to eternal life. Xavier tortured Razvan, Lara‛s father, in her presence. He kept her aunts, Branislava and Tatijana, frozen in ice in dragon form in order to have their blood to feed upon. Xavier is SO not a nice person. Lara wants to find her aunts and free them.

While on the mountain, Lara exposes Gerald and Terry to grave danger from Xavier. In an effort to heal Terry of the parasites, she takes the two of them to a Carpathian village, where she encounters Nicolas De La Cruz, who is on the verge of turning vampire. He claims her as his life-mate, which terrifies her and grates upon her independent nature. She has vowed, after being in Xavier‛s control, never to be in anyone‛s control again. Nicolas is a very large challenge to those plans.

Nicolas and the rest of the Carpathians are trying to find some way to stop their women (just writing those words makes my teeth itch) from dying in childbirth, or from miscarrying. The race is dying. They know about Xavier; apparently there is an enormous amount backstory in these Carpathian novels.

DARK CURSE is something like the 16th or 17th in Feehan‛s Carpathian series; she writes at least two other series. She‛s obviously not a novice, and it shows in her work. Lara and Nicolas are a great couple, no matter how much she resists his charms and his rampant sexuality. He learns the hard way that Lara will not be controlled by him, no matter how many centuries of experience and authority he brings to the table. He discovers how truly vulnerable love can make a person, and it scares him. Lara finds out that she has more family than she dreamed of, and that family can be a good thing. Feehan brings to life so many kinds of relationships, so many manifestations of what love can be, and still makes the evil in Xavier seem as real as the pervert living down the street, around the corner.

Feehan writes about the paranormal with the same level of skill as Jim Butcher, only her sex scenes are much better. DARK CURSE was my first encounter with Feehan‛s work; I promptly ordered the first two in the series (DARK PRINCE and DARK DESIRE). If paranormal romance is your sub-genre of choice and you haven‛t read Christine Feehan, you are in for a treat.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, September 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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