#BookReview – “Dark Slayer” by Christine Feehan

Blurb

A rumor has persisted in the vampire world of a dark slayer—a woman—who travels with a wolf pack and any among the vampires who meets her is slain. Mysterious, elusive and seemingly impossible to kill, she is the one hunter who strikes terror into the hearts of the vampires.

Ivory Malinov is that woman, betrayed by her own people, by her family, by everyone she held dear and she hunts during the night with only her pack to sustain her sanity. She has not spoken to or been with any other person for a hundred years other than to feed from or slay. She stumbles across a body on her way back to her lair and discovers—her lifemate.

He is Razvan, branded a hated criminal, detested, feared and loathed by all Carpathians—he is also a dragonseeker of one of the greatest lineages of all Carpathians. Held captive nearly his entire life by his grandfather, the Carpathians bitterest enemy, he is seeking the dawn to end his terrible existence.

This is a story of two people, horribly betrayed, wounded in spirit, fighters to the death, who must struggle to unite against a common enemy.

Review

In the seventeenth book of the Dark/Carpathian series, Ivory Malinov has been hunting and killing vampires for centuries while searching for the evil mage Xavier. Four vampires had decapitated her and chopped up her body, leaving her for dead, but she miraculously healed. The Carpathian people, including her five brothers and the De La Cruz brothers, believe she is dead. Her brothers are now vampires, and one of them is on the hunt for her. Then she finds an injured Carpathian male a few minutes before sunrise. He plans to kill himself, but she can’t let him do that, especially since she recognizes him as her lifemate.

Razvan is the enemy, an outcast, and hated by his people. He finally escapes his vicious grandfather Xavier after centuries of horrific abuse and wants to die. Ivory was the last person he expected to find. For years, Xavier has experimented on Razvan and taken over his mind and body, forcing him to do unthinkable acts to strangers and to his own loved ones. To save his sister Natalya and his daughter Lara, he sacrificed his life and soul, giving himself over to Xavier, but the women never knew of his actions. His only confidants were his aunts Branislava and Tatijana, two powerful Dragonseekers who were just as tortured as he was.

In the previous book, Dark Curse, Razvan was the villain, but it’s later revealed he was forced into doing evil and that he truly loves his sister, daughter, aunts, and his human wife, Shauna. In this book, Shauna isn’t included as a “loved one,” which just didn’t seem right. He’s definitely a beta hero—the first in the series! He’s calm and controlled, not arrogant or demanding. Even though Carpathians aren’t supposed to age or go gray, he has because of his extreme torture. He lets Ivory take the lead and treats her as a partner, not a woman to be coddled.

Ivory is strong, scarred, sometimes overly protective of Razvan, and self-reliant, having lived alone for so long. The role reversals made these characters very likeable and different from previous couples. They complemented each other perfectly.

My favorite scene is at the end when Razvan finally meets two of his daughters, Lara and Skyler, but it was too short. Also, that’s when Ivory meets Nicolas De Le Cruz again, a man she thought of as a beloved brother. This long anticipated reunion should’ve been a whole chapter, not just a few pages.

It was great Mikhail and Gregori accepted Razvan and Ivory pretty easily, realizing they weren’t the enemy, but not all of the hunters and lifemates were as understanding (including Natalya and her man Vikirnoff).

I loved Ivory’s wolf pack. Years earlier, she converted the dying wolves into Carpathians and considers them her family. The wolves can shape-shift, and she sometimes wears them as a coat, which is a surprise to an attacking enemy when they come to her aid.

I was really looking forward to this story, but it just didn’t sit well with me. The H/h are great characters, but the constant chants and the Carpathian language bogged down the story, as did the repetition and extreme detail to little things like dirt. The overall plot just didn’t interest me, which is a shame.

3 Stars