Dark Prince by Christine Feehan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Dark Prince
Enter the enchanting world of the Carpathians,
where dark adventure, mystery, and love await,
and the desires of two daring hearts unite in one
irresistible passion.
A telepathic hunter of serial killers, Raven
Whitney helps to catch some of the most depraved
criminals. But her work keeps her from getting close
to others, and has drained her body and spirit. In
need of rest and rejuvenation, she embarks for a
vacation far from home.
Mikhail Dubrinsky is the prince of the Carpathians,
the powerful leader of a wise and secret ancient
race that thrives in the night. Engulfed by despair,
fearful of never finding the mate who can save him
from the encroaching darkness, his soul cries out
in loneliness—until the day that a beautiful voice
full of light and love responds, softly soothing his
pain and yearning.
From the moment they meet, Raven and Mikhail
are helpless to resist the desire that sparks between
them. But just as fate unexpectedly brings these
life mates together, malevolent forces threaten to
destroy them and their fragile love. Yet even if they
survive, how can these two lovers—Carpathian
and human—build a future together? And how can
Mikhail bring Raven into his dark world without
extinguishing her beautiful goodness and light?
Dark Prince
Overly flowery and dramatic!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Narration: 🎧
Romance: ❤️💙💜
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📙📕📗
World building: 🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 😌🤓
The heroine: Raven Whitney – a psychic that assists the FBI in finding serial killers. She is on Hiatus in the Carpathian mountains after a particularly brutal case.
The Hero(es): Mikhail Dubrinsky – prince of the Carpathian people. They are a blend between vampire, shifter, and mage. Their life does end after a long time if they don’t find their life mate. His people are dying out because the birth rate is extremely low and girl children are rarely born. They can only have children with their life mate and humans die during the transition if they try to change a human.
The Love Story: Mikhail realizes that Raven is his life mate as soon as he meets her despite the fact that she is human. He is determined not to turn her but gets caught up in the moment and does it. Raven survives and could be the key to saving their race.
This is the first book in the series and I have previously read one of the more recent ones, #29 or 30 and I really loved that book so I was looking forward to this one but I didn’t really like it that much. The overall story was fine, but there were issues with the characters and I absolutely hated the narration. There was only a female narrator, which I hate. Even if a book is all third person or told from the female character’s POV, I think there should be multiple narrators.
This narrator has a good reading voice (used for third person narration) but the voice she used for Raven was so whiny that I couldn’t stand it. The fact is that the character was extremely whiny anyway. But the voice made it that much more annoying. Also some of the male voices she used were too dramatic like someone overacting would use for an evil villain character. This was for the villains and some of the other side characters, like Mikhail’s friend and healer Gregori, so I never knew if he was supposed to be a friend or a villain.
Regarding the main characters, I know Mikhail was extremely old and is used to the Carpathian females, but he and the other Carpathian males are extremely misogynistic. It is funny the way some men think that keeping a woman from doing things like talking to other men, or going out alone is the way to protect them. Can’t they see how if the woman did that to them, they would not appreciate it or stand for it, but the woman are supposed to just say, “Well as long as you are locking me up for my protection, its ok”.
Then it seems they always have the heroine balk at the restrictions and go out into the world and of course they nearly die, so the Hero can basically say I told you so. I guess in this one I really hated how weak Raven was. She was afraid of everything and said so often. It made no sense that she used to hunt serial killers when she was such a fearful whiner. She had to be saved numerous times in this book.
The romance was pretty bad, due to the fact that Mikhail was such a chauvinist and he thought he could do whatever he wanted. The intimate scenes were a bit too much for me. I have seen this with other authors where the words used are just a bit too dramatic and flowery to be believed. It makes the intimate act sound like some sort of literal poetic heavenly experience.
I do plan to read more from this series due to the fact that I like the overall story and I really did enjoy the later book I read. I think this was just a matter of this being the first book and Christine’s writing has greatly improved along the way.
Blog|Goodreads|Facebook|Instagram|Twitter|BookBub
View all my reviews
Books Best Blog 