Dark Slayer

By Christine Feehan
Average customer review:

The brand new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author features the rarest of Carpathians-a female.

Ivory-a rare Carpathian female-has been protected by her brothers for most of her life. But once she frees the mage Razvan from his prison cave, they must flee together, enemies of Carpathian hunters as well as vampires. Ivory senses that Razvan is more than he appears to be, and she vows to go against the entire Carpathian race to help him, risking both their lives in order to save their love.

Customer Reviews

Dark Slayer twists the series’ formula into Something different but something good – -
Deviating a bit from the normal formula of her other ‘Dark’ Carpathian books, Feehan’s Dark Slayer was a unique entry into the popular long running series and ended up being one of my favorites of Feehan’s more recent offerings. Though fans who live for Feehan’s uber alpha males may be disappointed, I really liked the hero Razvan (former long time series villain) – unlike many of the other arrogant domineering former leading men, Razvan is non-neanderthal-like, supportive and more than willing to let his vampire Slaying mate, Ivory Malinov, take the lead (maybe because he’s a `turned’ as opposed to a `born’ Carpathian). Both of the starring pair have had enough pain and suffering in their interesting backstories, and in their experiences with family members turning to the darkside, to make them empathetic to the other’s struggles and to make them both cherish the gift of a Lifemate.

Other things I really liked: Lots of cameos of old starring pairs are worked in thoughout the story and there are some really cool aspects to Ivory’s wolf pack and her magical connection to the wolves. I also liked that Feehan waited longer to consumate the physical part of Razvan and Ivory’s pairing, allowing Razvan and Ivory to work through some issues instead of forcing it – and, after a gazillion other books in this series, I had been starting to feel I feel like I had read all of the love scenes many times before, so having less of them here than normal worked better for me and in them Feehan uses a lighter touch with Razvan which made them feel fresher too.

My nits: Yet another chauvinistic stubborn effort to `protect’ a `helpless’ woman by Gregori. I found his attempt to force Ivory’s acceptance of the Carpathians’ aid frustrating – though once Gregori comes to understand Ivory’s power, he does give her the respect she deserves. I realise that some readers enjoy them, but there are way too many spell-poems for me( I mostly skipped over these and the Carpathian dialog too, I just had to find out what happened next). It also bothered me that Ivory seems a bit diminished when she discovers her feminity – she starts out as a really strong independant character, a true survivor and she is more than competent at slaying ancient vampires and unraveling the evil mega-villain Xavier’s spells – and I didn’t like that she ends up doubting herself with Razvan. But even with that nit, she is still a great heroine.

So is anyone besides me wondering how long is Feehan going to be able keep this series going? There still several stories I’ve been waiting for, in this book even more potential leading men hunters are introduced, and I really don’t see the overall story arc building up to a big finish. But hey, I’m not the only one still shelling out the big bucks and preordering the hardbacks, so who knows – maybe this series will be as immortal as Feehan’s Carpathians themselves.

Dark slayer lost in translation
I am still reading the book and about halfway there. It’s OK but not my favorite. I’m losing patience with Ms. Feehan’s tendancy to delve so extensively into the carpathian language. I find that more of a distraction than anything else. I enjoyed her books more when she didn’t do that. She seems to delve deeper and deeper with each book she writes in the dark series. Why does she feel this is so important to the story line…it isn’t to me. In this book over 30 pages are used at the end for the Carpathian language index. That was a total waste, I’m not bothering to read that. I feel at some point she just may write an entire dark series book in the carpathian language and expect her readers to learn the language to decifer the book. This book has less romance and more violence and gore with a lot of pages wasted with reading lines first in carpathian language and then in English. Are these just page fillers? I think she should have edited this out. Who cares? Just stick with the story and stop trying to introduce a new language to the readers. I’m not interested in learning carpathian language, I just want to enjoy a good story written by her without having to learn the language to do it. I was a bit disappointed in this book but I’m still a big fan and I like her a lot. I’ll be glad when dimitri and skyler get together, I’ve been waiting on that storyline for a long time.

Totally enjoyable
I picked up the book today and finished it in one sitting, in all previous books Razvan was evil and only in Dark Curse were we told that maybe he was being used as a pawn by Xavier. Well all is revealed and it was well worth the price of the book, Ms Feehan also introduced a few more ancients but no character development to them yet. Dimitri made a guest appearance. I will not give away the story line, suffice to say enjoy!

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