L.M. Prieto

BOOK BLURB:
In Victorian London, people lament over dreadful news in the paper. Give them a scandal, though, and they want blood.

An outspoken reporter, Collin Foster is used to keeping his desires silent. When he encounters a handsome and mysterious man, he’s tempted to step out of his carefully structured life. For one night, he will follow his passions. One night is all the man needs to change him.

BOOK REVIEW:
Historical vampires ~ how is anyone supposed to resist? My advice is ~ don't! Jump in and enjoy the read.

The author has clearly put in a good deal of work into the research for this book, tying journalist Collin's work ~ and internal landscapes ~ into some of the key concerns of the Victorian age, and simultaneously creating a sympathetically conflicted hero. It looks as though the author is writing from research and not familiarity, though. If the idea of someone running from the City of London to St Paul's makes you stop and wonder if maybe the author meant Westminster Abbey, then there are a few places when you can expect to be thrown out of the story with thoughts of that nature. Similarly, it's hard to get a fix on exactly which year the story is set, as various references to events and objects from all over the period are blurred together.

De Sonnac is a classically Victorian vampire, harking back to the original Dracula and Varney without the modern overlays of Buffy or Twilight, which just makes Collin's emotional state when he realizes just what he has surrendered himself to the more believable.

Collin's supposed ignorance of his own body is more of a stretch ~ it seems that not only is he a virgin (perfectly believable given the period and his orientation) but also that he's barely even handled his own penis.

That said, the sex scenes walk the line between flowery and stirring, and come down on the right side of the line, and Collin enticed me into the story. Our hero is at first depressed and conflicted, frustrated with the world he must inhabit, and then trapped between desire and fear, attraction and terror after he is found by De Sonnac, and the blend is compelling.

The plot is a little convoluted ~ I choose to read that as period style ~ but Collin is an engaging hero, De Sonnac a seductive vamp, and over all this is a cracking read.… (meer)

An extremely engrossing fantasy about a fantasticaly well-drawn world where humans and demons exist under a ceasefire. Peregrine is a male "witch", and the bastard of the ruling King. Kenth, scheming to be crowned king, ensorcels a demon to kill all heirs to the King. The Kingdom has a banshee who appears whenever a reigning king dies to provide a 'gift" and a "curse" to the next heir in line. The Banshee approaches Peregrine, and gifts him. The Demon "Winter", then knows that he has to kill Peregrine. However, Winter falls in love with Peregrine, but is still compelled by its ensorcellments to try and kill him.

The background is richly drawn, and the historical incidences intercepted here and there throughout the book are intriguing enough to wish that these too should have separate books of their own.

There is enough explicit man on man sex to satisfy, yet not drown out the story itself. A great read for all fantasy lovers.… (meer)

You have to bring a lot of patience and passion when you will start this book, and you have to save them till the end and beyond. Dark Designs is a more than 400 pages book and it’s only the beginning of a series, which, from what I understand, will have the same two main characters as leads.

Everything is complex in this book, from the intricate plot, switching back and forward in time, from the darkness of a past age with knights and mages, to the even too much light of modern time, where sometime the darkness would be welcomed to cover the ugliness of today. It’s also complex in the writing style, the author spent a lot of time to create her own language, mixing English, with Spanish and French, and yes also Italian, and I well know how much she took care in doing it, since I checked the Italian part of the story. It’s also complex in the relationship between the two men, probably one of the first time I read a book where the main heroes barely meet; true, as I told before, this is only the first book in a series, and maybe the author needed time for the world building and in the following books she will let her characters live inside it.

It’s strange since Kyler Withers, journalist and teacher, winner of a Pulitzer, who decided to join a small College instead of a big Ivy League, virtually meets Sorin, student in the same college, practically in the first pages, while Kyler is reading the college paper Sorin is editing. But then both of them are “kidnapped” by the Darkness, or better by two ambassadors, Rhune and Avery; and the author didn’t save the reader, and Kyler and Sorin, from anything, all the bad experiences are their to be lived, from having to witness the murders of innocent kids, to the one of your best friend. They are all proofs the Darkness is powerful and it doesn’t like t be ignored. Page after page the reader is waiting for the moment when Kyler will meet (again? eventually?) Sorin, something he was teased from the very beginning, something he understands is written in the stars, of better in their blood, but page after page he is delusional, it seems never the time.

In a way, especially for Kyler, I think that the Darkness is not a stranger, but it’s your half, like the Devil and the Angel playing on your shoulders, and when one is stronger than the other, you chosen path in life follow the consequences. Take modern Kyler for example, he is grieving from the bad experience he had in Colombia, he is continuously saying that he fears what he was, above all since he doesn’t remember; but then he wrote a book, and that book won a Pulitzer, and Kyler is the first to admit that it was his dream comes true… what if unconsciously Kyler is doing all of it basically to accomplice his thirst of recognition? What if he is paying his tribute to the Darkness in a macabre barter?

If you are starting this book with the attitude of reading 440 pages, filled till capacity of events, but hoping to find a resolution in the end, change your path. 440 pages are only the starters, and to complete your meal you will have to stay a lot of time with these men… after all, we are speaking of hundreds of years for them to wait, what is for us some months to know their complete story? This is not a light book, on the contrary, it’s quite oppressive, sometime even distasteful; it’s for sure more a dark fantasy than a romance: the characters have to let the Darkness go out in plain sight, to be finally free from it, but to do so, they have to fight and not in a fair play.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/160820071X/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (meer)