Dark Prince
I had a hard time getting through this one and I found myself continually wondering why such the big hooplah over this series. Perhaps it's because this is Feehan's first book, but I swear if I had to read once more about Mikhail's coffee-colored hair, or Raven's blue-violet eyes, I was going to gag. The love scenes were too long and drawn out—how many times did I have to read the same thing over and over?

The writing also got to me. Usually when authors write in the third person but want you to be able to get inside a character's head, they break from one character's point-of-view to another's via logical divisions, whether that be chapters or simply sections within the chapter itself. However, after only a few pages into this book, I found the author jumping from Mikhail's point-of-view to Raven's from one paragraph to the next. This was very disconcerting, and I found myself having to reread many paragraphs a few times just to figure out who was saying or thinking what.

I've heard that this wasn't the best book in the series and that it gets much better going forward so I'm willing to give this series the benefit of the doubt and continue with it nonetheless.

Dark Descent
Hmmmm... I liked this a little better than Dark Prince. Could be that Feehan has grown into her writing a bit and is no longer all over the place as much. Or possibly I just got used to it. Unfortunately, the love scenes are still entirely too flowery for me: "her velvet sheath enclosed his strong manhood..." And after a paragraph or two of that, my eyes are crossing or I'm nodding off (if reading in bed). No, it didn't come off as erotic to me, too flowery perhaps, I don't know.

The premise of the story was very similar to Dark Prince though: good-guy Carpathian male meets human lifemate female, all the while battling off rogue undead vampires in between bouts of "white-hot lightning" sex. I hope Feehan can mix it up a bit in some of the other books in this series or I don't think I'll continue reading them. ( )