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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780843955286
ISBN number: 0843955287
Label: Leisure Books
Manufacturer: Leisure Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 447
Printing Date: April 05, 2005
Publishing house: Leisure Books
Sale Popularity Level: 4958
Studio: Leisure Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
Mikhail Dubrinsky is the prince of his people, the Carpathians. But they are dying out, there are few women, and the men are either falling prey to vampires, or are choosing the soulless life. Losing all hope, Mikhail is no longer sure he can bear the bleak future laid before him. The only thing that can add light to his life, can relieve the terrible and haunting loneliness, is to find a life mate. But he has given up believing one exists. Raven Whitney has a rare gift. She not only can read minds, but she can communicate telepathically. But her talent is not always a gift. Her job is to track the twisted mental paths of serial killers, and those evil thoughts drain her both mentally and physically. Now, she is hoping to heal and seek a quiet escape in the Carpathian Mountains, but when she mentally hears the anguished cry at dawn, she can not ignore it, unaware that her life is about to change forever. Read by Juanita Parker. 11 CD's 12.5 Hrs.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
This novel was the very first in a series that captivates many. It gave a whole new twist on the world of vampires and shapeshifters. Feehan molded a concept that has been around for years into her own. You fall in love with Mikhail and Raven. You are affected emotionally when things start happening to them. You feel for the carpathian people and wish them deliverance from the plight with ignorant others who don't and don't want to understand them. So, should you read it...lets just say when you read this novel you will most likely seek the second installment afterwards.
Write on, read on
N.M. Phillips
Rated by buyers 
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Upon reading some of the reviews posted for the books, I selected two of the Carpathians series. One had to be the very first - there seemed to be little point in giving a series a try without reading the very first book: Dark Prince.
It's obvious from the start that the writer focuses a lot more on the romantic aspects of the book than on character or plot developments. It's as though the whole focus of the book are the sex scenes, and the "plotline" is just the way to keep them (deficiently) connected.
The two main characters - Mikhail and Raven's - relationship develops in the flip of about twenty pages. Then, for the subsequent one-hundred-something pages, there is little more to the book than the romantic scenes. You don't have to wait long for the very first hot scene... you do have to wait a lot to see a semblance of plotline though.
This makes it very hard to connect to the characters. Raven, for instance, is presented as an assertive, independent woman, but she seems to lose all sense of "self" at the slightest sexy whisper from her lover. She pretends to resist, he seduces, and it's easy to know what follows. Whenever he produces great chance in her life her reaction is something close to "I'm my own person! You shouldn't have done that.... But it's ok. You are really sexy and I love you." It's very hard to believe or feel for the characters, to believe they are three-dimensional. It feels too cliché.
As for the plotline, I did not believe for one second that the main characters were in danger. One moment, the Carpathians are writen as all powerful, and the next, a weakeness just pops out of nowhere for the sake of attempting to create some danger that is never truly believable.
It's a light read, the romantic descriptions are good, but I wish there was more substance to the book, as the Carpathians have potential. The essence of the mechanics in the male/female relatioship reminds me of Anne Bishop's Black Jewells Trilogy, but pale in comparaison.
I sincerelly hope the subsequent one is better.
Rated by buyers -
I'm a fan of Feehan's and this is the very first vampire book of hers that I read. I'm a fan of strong women and thought Raven might be a good one. Unfortunately, the heroine is weakly written in my opinion. There are tons of good, juicy parts where the two are getting it on left and right and how they can't take their hands off each other, but between all that the rest of the story is "Ehhhh."
I was able to put this down multiple times, so it's not one of those books you can't put down. Then again, romance is typically light reading for me, so it's easy to pick up where you left off with this book. It's not like you easily forget any major plot twists if you do.
If you really want an excellent vampire novel that's not like "Ooooo, gory!", then Lynn Viehl's "Evermore" is excellent. It was that book that got me to consider other vampire romances.
Rated by buyers -
Although it was a quick, easy read this novel did not live up to its glorious reputation. I couldn't get over the mental image of Bela Lugosi standing on the stairs speaking to the children of the night whenever our hero, Mikhail, entered a scene.
The entire thing read like a grey and white monster movie, even though it is set in the modern age. Feehan does her heroes a disservice by giving them antiquated dialog and stilted mannerisms. She tries very hard to use the heroine to bring us into the modern age and throws in computers and such, but they seem very out of place. I might have liked the novel better had it been set in the 1700's.
The romance was tiring and lacked chemistry and the plot was lifted straight from various vampire lore. I kept waiting for the villagers to show up with pitchforks and torches.
The most compelling characters in the novel were secondary - Mikhail's brother Jaques and friend Gregori. Once I resigned myself to the cobwebbed grey and white imagery Feehan conjured, I enjoyed the story. I found myself skipping ahead in several places however, and I can't say it was anything better than a rainy afternoon's diversion.
Rated by buyers 
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I tried, I really really tried to read this book, but I've had more coherent experiences while standing close to a gas pump and inhaling too deeply. The head hopping actually made me nauseous. It was so bad that at one point, I was pretty sure that Raven was making Mikhail's virgin skin burn. What the hell? And none of the action follows any logical sequence. He's holding her wrists above her head, then he runs his hands down her body, parts her thighs, does all this business in her moisty regions and THEN let's go of her hands? What is she, third ape from the left on Darwin's chart? All those endless and repetitive descriptions of Raven and not once did the author mention that her knuckles scraped the ground when she walked. Page 62 and I'm done. I love paranormal romance, I wait impatiently for the subsequent installments of Ward, Kenyon and even Adrian, but I really hated this one.
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