Monday, August 10, 2009

Dark Slayer-Christine Feehan

Dark Slayer
Christine Feehan
Berkley, Sep 2009, $25.95
ISBN: 9780425229736

The vampire hunter Ivory, and her seven Carpathian wolf pack and her normal wolf pack head home after killing two vampires only to find a dying man. To her horror she knows this Carpathian is her lifemate. He tells her to leave him die as the evil Xavier uses his body to cause death. He is Xavier’s grandson and sold his soul to save his daughter and sister. Ivory knocks him out and takes him to her hidden shelter while Xavier searches for Razvan. She will heal him and if he still chooses death, so be it.

Ivory sees a child tied in snares, which is a trap. With her wolves she kills a ghoul, but her brother master vampire Sergey escapes before the Carpathian healer Gregori and Prince Mikhail arrive. They offer to heal her, but she refuses as she wants nothing to do with Carpathians. Though not fully healed Razvan knows his lifemate is in trouble. She has given him hope that she can kill Xavier as she told him that is why she lives. Razvan arrives placing a knife to Mikhail’s neck. Mikhail calmly tells Gregori to heal Ivory. He does and is stunned that she was once sliced into many pieces and should be dead. Ivory and Gregori heal Razvan. She explains her only friends are the wolves as her brothers chose the power of the vampire and sacrificed her. Ivory and Razvan plan to kill Xavier or die trying.

The relationship between the lead couple is fresh and gender bending as she leads the excursions against Xavier. The Carpathian support cast is strong especially the wolf pack, the prince and the healer while the malevolent villain is brilliant using modern science as well as magic to attack his foes and the heroine’s brothers, though we meet only one of them, are pure evil. This is a super entry, which long time fans will enjoy including the addition of background information appendices though newcomers will feel awed by the Feehan mythos.

Harriet Klausner

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