Customer Reviews

Dark Curse (Playaway Edition)

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Okay, I'm really surprised by some of the negative reviews of this book. As I was reading it, I kept saying to myself, "Wow, this is one of the best Carpathian books in a long time!! Yeah for Feehan!" I enjoyed it immensely. It's not perfect, but it has so many great aspects to it that I really enjoyed reading it and can't wait for the next one.

First off, Nicolas De La Cruz was a very refreshing South American hero. I really really liked him, and thought, darn! Lara is one lucky lady. :) In the previous books that featured De La Cruz brothers, I thought they were obnoxious with their overly-chauvinistic attitudes (even for Carpathian males, they were way too chauvinistic - except for Riordan). Nicolas isn't really like that. He kind of starts off that way for about two minutes, but he catches on pretty quickly that his attitude just won't work with a partner in his life. He quickly evolves into a really nice, supportive (and hot!) lifemate for Lara, and you can see the evolution occuring in his mind. He's very aware of himself, his attitude, what Lara needs, and how he needs to adapt himself to meet her needs, etc... I thought that was very refreshing.

Secondly, what I really really loved about this book is that so many characters are in it. Mikhail and Raven (and her pregnancy), Gregori and Savannah (and her pregnancy), Francesca, Virkirnoff and Natalya, Lucien and Jaxon, Jacques and Shea and their baby son, Destiny and Nicolae, Skyler, Syndil, Dominic, and Dmitri are all in the book to varying degrees. And a couple of new Carpathian men and unmated women were introduced, and they are sure to show up in future books! But Mikhail and Raven, Gregori and Savannah are in it quite a lot, as their endangered pregnancies are the key crisis in this book. I don't want to give too much away, but Lara is the key to the Carpathians understanding why their women miscarry so often, as well as why their babies often perish in their first year of life. I found this plot line absolutely wonderful, and I loved how these secondary characters played such an important role in this book. I also found the very heated debate that is going on in the Carpathian world about the role of women in their society to be very intriguing, and can't wait to see how it gets resolved in future books (good luck with that one, Mikhail. :) My favorite scene in the book is between Lucien and his little brother Gregori; after reading Dark Curse, I had to immediately reread Lucien and Jaxon's book (I think I'm in love with Lucien again!!)

Lara herself starts off pretty strong, but we quickly see that she's carrying a huge amount of emotional baggage with her because of her very twisted and tortured childhood. She turns out to be a pretty "flawed" individual, but I think that adds to her charm. It doesn't take much to set her off, and Nicolas does a good job of trying to take care of her. Ironically, she turns out to be the key to the survival of the Carpathians, so that just adds a lot more interest to the plot, as well as complications to her relationship with Nicolas.

The downsides of this book are that it ended way too quickly. I turned the last page, fully expecting a new chapter, and found that there were no more chapters. It had ended on the previous page and I hadn't even realized it. I was like, huh? It should have been a longer book. Several key scenes are summarized in a couple of paragraphs, when you know it should have taken several pages to get through those scenes. As I was reading it, I felt like the editors told Feehan to cut out X number of words, and so those scenes got dropped. Either that, or she was just tired of writing. Some less important scenes went on for pages, and could have been edited down significantly, and some key scenes were simply glossed over. That was really odd and confusing. Also, there was too much "Carpathian" language in this book. It's a weird language, and doesn't add anything to the book. And definitely lose the glossary and dictionary at the end of the book; that just took away from pages that could have contained story in them. Another problem was trying to keep track of the relationships of the Dragonseeker people. Trying to keep track of who is whose brother/sister/aunt/great-aunt/mother/father made my head hurt. Even though these are flaws in the book, they're minor problems in comparison to all the many things I loved about the book.

I think if you're a Carpathian fan, you'll enjoy this book a lot. I felt that it was a turn in a better direction for Feehan, and I'm looking forward to the next book. This book reminded me a lot of the Christmas book, and I really like that one. I like seeing a lot of characters interacting with each other, and finding out what previous couples are up to. In this book, you find out that several couples have moved back to the mountains to be closer to their people, and I really liked that.

For those of you who are fans of Feehan's Dark Series, you are already familiar with Lara, who escaped on the back of a dragon from the evil mage's cave. Flash forward and Lara is an adult who has spent a lifetime searching for the same cave in order to give her two aunts a decent burial. Reaching the village of the Carpathians, Lara is found by Nicolas De La Cruz, her lifemate. Nicholas is so close to turning vampire that he actually begins to feed on Lara before her voice brings him into the light. Lara and Nicholas begin to work out their differences and also begin helping to solve the low birth rate of the Carpathian women. Why mixed feelings?

Positive - A truly excellent hero. Even when Nicholas is doing things the reader doesn't approve of, Feehan still manages to create sympathy and empathy for her tortured hero. By the end of the book, Nicholas is a terrific lifemate and one you won't soon forget.

The mystery surrounding the Carpathian women's low birth rate is becoming clearer and clearer and the answers are intriguing and complex.

As Lara is a Dragonseeker mage, she uses various "rhyming" spells to work her magic. Some of them in the book are very descriptive, touching and very well done.

Negatives - Lara is a heroine that is too hard to like or to figure out. She is by turns insecure, confident, weak, strong, indulgent, selfless - the reader has a hard time figuring out her true nature. I realize that Feehan was trying to show that Lara was damaged emotionally as a child and is growing as the book goes along. However, the mixtures of emotions don't seem to ring true. At one point in the book, Lara tries to commit suicide. This was such a departure from the heroine's character that I was like, WTH? This is the same woman who escaped from a mage, became an adult, practiced her magic and went all over the world trying to find one ice cave. Someone that determined decides to throw it all in? I don't think so.

Feehan once again used the new Carpathian language which she introduced in Dark Demon. Her hero uses it constantly and the reader is forced to skim it, looking for the next English word to understand what he really said. It jars the reader from the story and makes it very frustrating to get a flow going - especially when you realize that it isn't really a true foreign language, but rather an imaginary one.

Feehan spent 32 pages at the end of the book on this so-called language to give translations to various words and phrases. I felt cheated and ripped off. Those 32 pages could have been used to write more to the story. At the end, I briefly considered taking the book back to the bookstore and asking for a return on my money.

So definitely mixed feelings about this book. I would recommend it to other fans of the Dark Series, but just be aware that along with a really good story are some serious flaws.

Like everyone who loves Feehan I thoroughly enjoyed the early books. The characters stand out vividly in my mind and I could recognize each one of them by a brief description. In the last few books the characters all run together and Lara and Nicholas are the worst. She's a whiny cry baby and he's just bland period. And I am so sick of the whole mage line of the story. But the foreign language part is the worst. I have always loved the words the men used to bind their mate. Now the whole rhythm and beauty of their chant is broken because she is obsessed with this new language. It pulls you out of the story and adds nothing but losing your place as you skip it to find English words again.

I thought it would be so interesting to find out why they were losing children but instead it was just boring. So many parts of the book were boring. I read steadily through the first third of the book and then just started skimming and skipping pages. I never do that!

I know people complained that the early books were too much alike so she had to add some new elements but I find the early books much more interesting. When I need a Feehan and Carpathian fix I'll just stick with the first eight or ten books. I still love re-reading those books. The books after Destiny I'll never open again. Once was more than enough for such forgettable and boring reads. But Oh, Gregori, Julian, Darius, Jacques, Lucian, and Gabriel? Now those were the days.

I've been an avid fan of the Dark series since I read the first one (Dark Prince). That being said I was disapointed in Dark Curse and I reccomend waiting for paperback! For the cost of a hardcover book I expect a whole book, and Dark Curse left too many issues up in the air to even list, I feel as though I didn't read the ending. This story certainly needed another 100 pages or more to tie things up. I did enjoy what we did get in the story, which is good since I did not like Dark Possession at all. I do look forward to the next in the Dark series, but I do not think I'm going to buy them when they come out, I will borrow, then buy the paperback to complete my collection.

I discovered Feehan's series two years ago, and at the time I systematically devoured all of the books released in about two weeks time. I have to say that Dark Legend and Dark Demon are two of my favorites.

Once caught up, I began the fan's burden of waiting impatiently for new books to come out one by one as the year progressed. I tried getting into her other series as a means of distraction, but as enjoyable as some of them are, they don't really compare to the mythos she's created here in the Dark series.

Well, when Dark Possession came out, I had a really hard time. Feehan's blatant theft of White Wolf's World of Darkness games has always been a bit bothersome, especially when she pulled the mages in (mages who get corrupted into vampires by way of greed is the storyline for house Tremere in Vampire, the Masquerade), but injecting "eco-protectors" that are nature magic using Werewolves got a bit much, even for me.

On top of the plagiarism of ideas, Dark Possession was not very well written. The dialog and flow of events would get jumpy and confusing at times - like she didn't have as good of an editorial staff telling her where to go back and check flow in certain passages. Also, her heavy handedness with Solange and her obvious lifemate status with Zacarias was a bit harsh going down.

I thought maybe that I was imagining the drop in quality, so I went back and re-read the series from the beginning - nope, I wasn't imagining it. Books like Dark Desire and Dark Challenge are just much better framed, with better development, more seamless transitions and dialog, and more character development. They're also a bit longer - and the pages used for development show the benefit of the work.

So, it was with a bit of trepidation that I picked up Dark Curse. I wanted to know about the De La Cruz brothers and I had high hopes for their lifemates.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I didn't have the problems that some other reviewers had with Lara as a character - having a flawed heroine is not a problem and I agree that her fractured nature seems like a deliberate attempt to illustrate her mental scars. Unfortunately, Feehan has done the same kind of damage better in characters like Destiny, Jaxon, and Skyler.

Using language is not a bother - I've gotten used to it in my plethora of fantasy novels, and she was very good about giving us an approximate translation immediately after for those of us that didn't want to break pace to look up crap in the back of the book.

My biggest problem was the book itself. Again, jumpy imagery and flow, again, confusing switches between character focus, description, and dialog. Again, poor plot diagram and obvious places that needed better fleshing out - again, it looked like she isn't using or listening to editors of the same honesty and caliber as her previous work.

The book ends abruptly, with no resolution on Lara's status in the Carpathian society. The inclusion of extremophiles feels well researched but not well communicated and not embraced enough to connect the reader well with what Feehan is trying to convey.

I feel she needs to go back to her roots, spend time in the heads of her characters and spend the pages making us love them as opposed to trying to come up with the next weird gimmick to toss into the story line.

Most of us are here to find out what happens to our favorite characters, not to have to filter more incidental facts into an already convoluted storyline. Finish what you started with the mages, let us fall in love with your characters, stop adding more layers to a stack of problems that you haven't finished developing yet.

I'd rather read a sweet story about Skyler falling in love with Dimitri - focused on character development , a strait forward plot and no more weirdness piled on top - then another book like the last two.

This book was a fabulous addition to the Dark series! Dark Curse was different from other books in this series, and I found those twists both interesting and refreshing. The role of women began to shift. Feehan's female characters have always been strong matches for their highly protective and frequently overbearing mates; however, in this book they came together and joined those strengths to help solve the crisis of extinction facing their race. The cause of high infant mortality rates and miscarriages that has been a common thread in this series was finally identified by Lara (the female protagonist)who is instrumental in saving a number of babies in utero including the soon to be born son of the Prince.

Lara is an extraordinary character of strength and courage. She has faced horrors that would completely crush all but the strongest of individuals, yet she is a survivor who doesn't indulge in self pity. Because of what she has faced, and all that she has accomplished, this character would not be believable had Ms. Feehan not exposed some of the emotional struggles and flashbacks that would certainly accompany such a traumatic past but they are not a central focus.

The love story between Lara and Nicolas de la Cruz is passionate and steamy. It is accompanied by many of the struggles Carpathian men have with their mates. When Nicolas first sees Lara he is so close to turning vampire that he has determined to deliver a crucial message to his Prince and then meet the dawn. It is literally to be his last night and he is on the way to meet the Prince when he sees Lara. Their initial meeting is not as smooth or complex as many others in the series but it serves to demonstrate the desperation and critical point Nicolas and many other Carpathian males have reached.

I have only two complaints. I would have enjoyed more character development where Nicolas was concerned. This was more a story about Lara than Nicolas. I also found the frequent use of the Carpathian language irritating. I skimmed over it where possible. All the pages at the end of the book devoted to the language, in my opinion, were wasted.

Before reading Dark Curse I was worried about the Dark Series. It seemed to have lost much of its momentum and direction. Dark Curse has brought new life to the story line and I am optimistic we may see progress and victory for the wonderful Carpathian race.

Since the emergence of the De La Cruz family four years ago there has been numerous of twists and turns in the series, but most importantly we have been given a true understanding of how the Carpathians function as a society. I believe that Feehan is still trying to drill the same theme constantly into the readers that Carpathians, especially Carpathian males are not human and do not see themselves as human beings and do not act nor believe in the human code of morality as humans do. As such, Feehan has done her best to really make all the heroes more darker, more dangerous, and especially more alpha male. Dark Curse if anything really showed the complexities of Carpathian society and their struggle to survive in the 21st Century. Here are my good and bad high lights of the novel:

Good

1) Out of all the previous De La Cruz novels Lara has got to be one of the strongest female characters joined with the a De La Cruz brother. Although her character is complex and she is at times is strong yet insecure, scared yet confident. Lara really held her own against Nicolas. And although she does attempt suicide, she struggles to find her place not only as a woman in this world but a woman for Nicolas.

2)By far Nicolas was the best character out of all the De La Cruz brothers. When you first read the second and third chapters your thinking here we go again.. however once Lara attempts suicide, Nicolas is slapped with the realization that if he does not change his domineering ways he could lose his lifemate and so through the book you are shown how Nicolas changes from being a caveman here me roar to a cavemen yet I'm going to really listen to what you have to say and we both will come to the conclusion what is right for us.

4)Action and Adventure great loved the fight scenes they were great and my stomach actually knotted with butterflies when they were looking for Lara's aunts. And we finally find out the reason for the miscarriages of the women.

5)Although this book does not really have a lot of love scenes the few written were very very very erotic maybe at times too erotic. The love scenes, especially the oral scene with the two characters were very sexual, graphic, aggressive but tender and smooth at same time. Let me just say I learned a few pointers reading.

6)Feehan returned with characters from the previous novels. I especially loved the skirmish between Gregori and Lucian that was priceless.

7)Raven and Savannah pregnancies are in danger what Nicolas and Lara do to aide them was real tear jerker.

the Bad:

-Too much carpathian ritual I found myself skipping through the pages to reach to the scenes

-Too much Carpathian language and I was really ticked off that most of the pages of the book is devoted to the language and rituals.

-The End of the book was very disappointing, which is why I gave a four. To rush the ending while the book was really pleasantly written was a huge disappointment.

Quite frankly the series is nearing its pinnacle point however with Feehan only publishing one novel per year i fear that I may not be able to wait for the series to end. And with the new enlightments and new characters I fear that we have a long time before this series end.

I liked the book/story until I came to the last line in the story and turned the page expecting the next chapter to start. But....... it just ended! When I turned the page, I entered CF's long Appendix's, which were interesting the first 5 times I read thru all of them. But now I wanted more of the story, or at least for the story to end at a place that felt like an ending. Absolutely no sense of completion. I realize that CF wants to do more sequels, but she's never just "ended" a story line in the middle of an action scene!

I genuinely liked the story up till that point. Lots of answers are starting to be revealed about several previous plot lines, she's introduced new characters that I know we'll see again, and I had no problem with Lara and her issues as some of the reviewers did. Nor the way Nicolas responded and reacted to her. Everything was believable for me.

I just hope that CF reads all these reviews and doesn't leave her readers/fans in such a state of "What's Happening?" again!

Te avio palafertiilam. Entolam Kuuhua, avio palafertiilam. Te avio palafertiilam. Entolam kuulua, avio palafertiilam. Ted kuuluak, kacad,kojed. Elidamet andam. Pasamet andam. Uskalfertiilamet andam. Sivamet andam. Sielamet andam. Aimamet andam. Sivamet kuuluak kaik etta a ted. Ainaak olenszal sivambin. Te avio Palafertiilam. Ainaak sivamet jutta aleny. Ainaak terad vigyazak.

(If you find the above gibberish...try reading the book...those are just samples of some of the junk you have to skim over)

I have to say I have not been impressed with Feehan's last few Dark entries other than Dark Celebration. I don't feel invested in the characters like I did with the first half of the series - except for Skyler and Dimitri and Dominick. The only reason I liked Dark Celebration was the revisiting of older characters I still had feelings for and the interactions between Skyler and Dimitri. As for this entry, Nicolas was fine but not to the level of Mikhail, Gregori, Darius, Lucien, etc. And Lara is certainly no Destiny (talk about someone with a horrible childhood!)

(SPOILER ALERT) The meeting of the warriors really irked me - can't let the women fight (no matter how well-trained) because we'll lose our baby making machines! They just distract us! What bull... the only ones who should have any say in it are the women and their lifemates. And I'm not liking the way the whole miscarriage thing is going - it's making strong women characters like Raven and Savannah just look whiny instead of tragic. And I actually miss the threat of the Morrison Center - for some reason that did seem kind of frightening vs this Xavier storyline which just irritates me.

At this point, I'm only waiting for Skyler and Dimitri's story and Dominick's - but I'm also getting really concerned that they aren't going to be any more substantial than what Feehan has recently been churning out. We'll just have to see.