Well, I must admit I never thought I would see this side of Dmitri, ever...

It was nice being in that world again, Angels and Vampires all over the place, but it had a distinct different feeling to it than the books written around Elena and Raphaël.
There was not as much action as we're used to, nor was there much of the continuing story line. The focus was rather on the dance between Dmitri and Honor.

Did this bother me? Hell no! It was nice having a breather between the other Guild Hunter books.

It was a smooth and easy read, we saw the Dmitri in a very different setting, having him deal with his past, and we saw Honor clawing back from her near catatonic state of being after a terrifying and dreadful ordeal.
I must say though, I'm really looking forward to seeing how Dmitri will behave in the next instalment, will he be more lenient towards Elena? I don't think so, but maybe he might have a better idea how she is feeling and what she is going through. Then again... he is a male... so probably not ;)

All in all, a very worthwhile read, a tad too bittersweet at times for my taste, but still a great insight into some of our other cast members in the series. ( )

This book is more about Dimitri's background before he became a vampire. It plays importantly in the current dynamics with the heroine of the book, Honor.

Slow burn, decent payoff, easy storyline, very dark themes.

This book has a some very dark themes, with some really cringy moments.

There is imprisonment, torture, and the death by eating (vampire) of a baby with descriptions of the sounds. So yeah.

However, it was a good book. ( )

La cabeza decapitada marcada con un distintivo tatuaje en la mejilla debería haber sido un caso para el gremio de cazadores, pero el instinto agudizado durante siglos de vida impulsan al vampiro Dmitri a tomar el control. Hay algo retorcido en aquella muerte, algo que habla de siglos pasados… pero la necesidad de Dmitri de descubrir la verdad no es nada comparado con la feroz fuerza de sus respuestas hacia la cazadora asignada a descifrar el tatuaje.
Agredida salvajemente en un brutal ataque que casi acaba con su vida, Honor no esta preparada para enfrentarse al seductor vampiro que es la mano derecha de un arcángel, y que muestra su crueldad de un modo tan audaz como su letal sensualidad… el mismo vampiro que ha sido su obsesión secreta desde el día en que fue lo bastante mayor para comprender las inexplicables y violentas emociones que despertaba en ella.
Cuando el deseo se convierte en una peligrosa compulsión que podría destruirlos a ambos, queda claro que el pasado no seguirá enterrado. Algo acecha… y no se detendrá hasta que devuelva a la vida a un monstruo sanguinario…

Despite my general disinterest in "second love" stories (Dmitri was married as a mortal), I loved this book!!! Honor's journey of healing was so well done, and the angst was right up my alley! ( )

This wasn't terrible, but it was below average enjoyable for me. Their story and developing relationship were heavily overshadowed by their tragic pasts. I don't at all mind some darkness in a romance, but this felt like it just wallowed in it, or was trying to reach a new level of awfulness or something. Many considerable content warnings. multiple instances of enslavement, multiple instances of prolonged mental and physical torture, prolonged (2 months!) rape of heroine by multiple abusers, incest (though not involving hero or heroine), terrible deaths of loved ones including children, eesh. and probably some others as well, I'm not particularly sensitive to trigger warnings, these were just in my face enough that I couldn't help but note them. Actually I felt a little bit beaten over the head with them. A giant chunk of the book is about the two of them reeling from these terrible events as well, so it's not like they're just mentioned in passing or something. Every time I turned around it seemed like I learned that it was actually even worse than I'd previously thought! lol. I would have imagined that my empathy at least would have bonded me to the characters or something, but I didn't end up liking them all that much. Perhaps if more of the focus had been on the characters and their relationship, rather than so much about their trauma, and this mystery they're trying to solve, they would have been a bit more relatable or developed or something. There would at least be more romance to counterbalance the disturbing aspects. ( )