Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel [Kindle Edition]

Lara Adrian (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Evocative, enticing, erotic.”—J. R. Ward, bestselling author of Lover Mine

Praise for Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed novels
 
“A fast-paced tale of romantic suspense and intense realistic characters . . . Adrian compels people to get hooked on her storylines.”—Romance Reviews Today, on Shades of Midnight
 
“An entertaining ride and as usual kept me riveted from page one.”—The Romance Reader Connection, on Ashes of Midnight
 
“Will enthrall you and leave you breathless for more.”—Wild on Books, on Veil of Midnight
 
“Packed with danger and action . . . Adrian has hit upon an unbeatable story mix.”—RT Book Reviews, on Midnight Rising
 
“An adrenaline-fueled, sizzlingly sexy, darkly intense addition to Lara Adrian’s addictively readable paranormal Breed series.”—Chicago Tribune, on Midnight Awakening


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

The climactic novel in Lara Adrian’s New York Times bestselling Midnight Breed series—and her hardcover debut—Darker After Midnight invites readers to enter a thrillingly sensual world where danger meets desire.
 
In the dark of night, a blood war escalates within the hidden world of the Breed. After existing in secret for many long centuries, maintaining a fragile peace with the humans who walk beside them unaware, a single act of retaliation has put the entire vampire nation at risk of discovery. It falls to the Order—a cadre of Breed warriors pledged to protect their own and humankind alike—to stop Dragos, the power-mad vampire at the center of the conflict, before his push for domination can explode into catastrophe.

At the center of the Order’s quest is Sterling Chase, once a morally rigid enforcer of Breed law, now a warrior fallen from grace, whose biggest battle is the one he wages against his own savage nature. With addiction beckoning him toward eternal darkness, Chase’s path to redemption has never seemed more out of reach. But when his eyes meet those of Tavia Fairchild, a beautiful witness who identifies him at the scene of a mission gone terribly wrong, Chase finds himself drawn to the woman—and convinced she is something much more than she seems.

Pulled into a vortex of intrigue and danger she can neither resist nor understand, Tavia is uncertain whom to trust. And while everything sane and logical warns her against getting close to Chase, she cannot deny that the handsome, deeply haunted male stirs something primal and ravenous within her. But even as she surrenders to her cravings, nothing can prepare her for the shattering truth of who—and what—she truly is.

As the Order’s enemy mobilizes for the battle of the ages, Dragos and his Minions unleashing a hell on Earth like nothing ever seen before, Chase and Tavia are thrust into the heart of the violence. With time running out and the streets running red with the blood of innocent lives, both Breed and human, together Chase and Tavia must find a way to defeat Dragos once and for all—or die trying.

From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 2170 KB
• Publisher: Dell (January 24, 2012)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004YWJZVU
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #410 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost
  • #16 in Books > Romance > Fantasy & Futuristic
  • #17 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fantasy

More About the Author

Lara Adrian is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of the Midnight Breed series, including Kiss of Midnight, Kiss of Crimson, Midnight Awakening, Midnight Rising, Veil of Midnight, Ashes of Midnight, Shades of Midnight, Taken by Midnight, Deeper Than Midnight and Darker After Midnight (available January 24, 2012). She is currently at work on the next novel in this seductive series from Bantam Dell Books. Visit Lara online at www.LaraAdrian.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EPIC book of the series!!, January 24, 2012

By 

Carla Gallway "Book Monster Reviews" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel (Hardcover)

Midnight Breed is one of the first paranormal romance books I read and I instantly fell in love with the creative and original world Lara Adrian created. The characters stick with you, well after the story has ended and you are always left clamoring for the next book. Every book in this series was great but I have to say that Darker After Midnight is the EPIC book of the series and was truly phenomenal. I really can't give much details without giving away spoilers, so I will do my best to give you a summary.

When Deeper Than Midnight ended, Sterling Chase risked his life by running out of the compound and surrendering himself to the human police and that is where we find him when Darker After Midnight begins. He wanted to give Lucan, the rest of the Order and their mates a chance to flee the compound before the police found them. Chase is now locked up and the bloodlust is riding him hard but he will do what needs to be done in order to save the Order and their mates, the only ones he considers his family and friends. When Tavia Fairchild arrives at the police station for a line up, all hell breaks loose. When Chase meets up again with Tavia, he learns that she is much more than anyone could have expected, to him and to the Breed, and he will stop at nothing to protect her.

Tavia Fairchild is the assistant to a United States senator who also happens to be Dragos' newest minion. Tavia knows nothing about vampires or things that go bump in the night so when she sees Chase for what he really is, and in the throes of bloodlust no less, she thinks he is a monster that's on a killing spree. Tavia's life has been turned upside down. Everything she's ever known is not what it seemed and now Dragos is after her. Utterly alone and weary of who to trust, Tavia decides to go after Dragos to put a stop to his madness.

We also get to see quite a bit of Lucan in this book as well. Lucan is faced with some of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make for the safety of the Order and their mates. After the fiasco that happened at the end of Deeper Than Midnight, Lucan must decide whether or not to flee the compound. And if they flee, where will they go? The biggest test he faces is when Dragos puts his last horrendous plan into motion and puts the entire world into chaos. Now it's up to Lucan to clean up the mess and to try and save the Breed species.

With that said, SO much happens in this book and I don't want to give anything away, so I will not say anything more. This book can be read as a standalone, but I definitely recommend reading the series in order because you will not want to miss any of the events that led up to Darker After Midnight. You will fall in love with the world Lara created and all of the characters in it. This book is a MUST read for all Midnight Breed fans, as the story line from the previous books comes to a conclusion and opens up a new world for the Breed. Truly an EPIC read!!

I give DARKER AFTER MIDNIGHT 5 stars (but..if I could give it more I would)

30 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In a genre full of lackluster and tepid knockoffs, this is a good book. In a series that has been exemplary, it's a letdown., January 24, 2012

By 

Kylin N. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel (Hardcover)

It's awfully hard to keep momentum up through such a long series. Lara Adrian has, for the most part, been successful at keeping me engaged. However, I think this book is the first one that slumped a bit.

Thar be many spoilers ahead. Yar. Don't read if you haven't finished the book yet.

******SPOILERS HERE******

1. YOU STILL HAVE TIME TO STOP READING NOW BEFORE THE SPOILERSSSSS. Bloodlust. Going Rogue. It was supposed to be Sterling Chase's big problemo during this book, and Ms. Adrian definitely delivered on that promise for the first quarter of it. However, I felt that as soon as Chase got his eyeballz on the female protagonist with her glyphs, that struggle faded into the background. It cropped up now and again, notably during the scene where she convinced him to mate her, but I never really believed that fighting this addiction was a real struggle for him. So much of it felt glossed over. For the balance Lara Adrian was trying to walk between smut and action and violence and lurv, I understand why she made that choice. But I felt a bit sad. I wanted to hear about Chase's struggle.

I wonder if Ms. Adrian was hoping for us to believe that being with Tavia was enough to assuage some of that horrible bloodlust... that his lust for her was enough to help him keep the darker urges at bay. Call me a cynic, but I've known addicts, and that notion is way overly romanticized. An addict loves his or her addiction more than he or she loves anything else. And if Chase was really walking the line as closely as he seemed to think, it makes it harder to believe that he was able to shunt that need off for as long as he did.

2. Tavia is a Gen One female. Sigh. I hate it when authors break with their previously established world-building in the efforts to keep things "new" or "fresh." Only males can be Breed. Females with the crescent and teardrop are breedmates. Still. Is Tavia awesome? Absolutely. Chick has awesome Gen One tatts, an eidetic memory, and she is fiercely protective of those she loves. She's a bad-ass. However, she is the Mariest Sue to ever Mary the Sue. I could have forgiven her that if she'd had real chemistry with Chase. But all she appeared to have (in my opinion), was a long-term, blood bond-enforced case of Stockholm Syndrome.

3. Dragos. The end was a total let down. I read about his death, and my eye kept tracking down the page. I had to go back and be like, "Wha? That was it?" Considering how long that story arc has persisted throughout this series, I felt it to be a bit of a let down. Particularly Tavia's role in it. She's a n00b to the whole business of being a Breed. Despite being briefed, I doubt she's suddenly a dab hand at espionage, and the thought that she was able to dupe Dragos at all (even in the smallest of small ways) is kind of a hard thing to swallow.

4. ZOMG, babiez. Everyone has them. Everyone wants them. But no! Must not have! But yes! Want so much! It was kind of ridiculous. The arc between Lucan and Gabrielle felt so stilted and forced and angsty that I pulled a muscle rolling my eyes so hard. And Lucan and Gabrielle are some of my faves.

5. The poison pill. Mentioned about a hojillion times. I was expecting big things from it, but Tavia falling victim to Crimson and its ensuing blood lust was just a weird ending to the book. I hate when novels end on cliffies that are then wrapped up in the epilogue. It's a cheap way of taking away all hope and leaving the reader gasping at the climax of a book, only to put a band aid over the wound in the epilogue. "Oh, but it's okay, because she recovered after six months, and guess what? Gabrielle has a baby! And ta-da! Now the Breed have been inducted into the U.N. Hooray! It can be happy party time now! All the bloodshed was worth it."

So yes. There were many things that ended up irking me in this installment.

BUT WAIT!!! DON'T THINK I HATED IT!! Because I didn't. I know I'm picking things bloody here, but that's only at my leisure, after I've put the book down. What Lara Adrian DOES do very well is pacing and tension. I was white-knuckled as I gulped Darker After Midnight down in one sitting. I wanted Tavia and Chase to have their HEA. I wanted Dragos to pay for all the evil he'd done. I wanted Chase to come back from the edge of blood lust. I felt very strongly for all of them. It's just that when it was done--after I'd read the last page--I felt so unsatisfied. I got up, made myself a cup of tea, and started a list of what--ultimately--bothered me about Darker After Midnight. It turned into points 1 to 5 above.

I guess it boils down to this: In a genre full of lackluster novels and tepid knockoffs of lackluster novels, this is a very good book. In a series that has been exemplary, it's a bit of a let down. (Hovering somewhere between 2.5 and 3 out of 5 stars for me. I rounded up because I lub Lara Adrian normally.)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Darker After Midnight, January 29, 2012

By 

Trish Merchant - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel (Kindle Edition)

The Midnight Breed series has been one of my favorites since I picked up the first book in the series Kiss of Midnight. Like many readers, I have been anxiously awaiting Chase's story for quite some time. After watching him struggle so much in the earlier stories, I wanted to see him find the redemption and happiness that he deserved. I was not disappointed.

In Darker After Midnight we get an entirely new perspective into Chase's psyche. Not only has he been struggling with Blood Lust far longer than anyone realized, but we are also introduced to the fact that he has spent a lifetime feeling inadequate and unworthy due to family dynamics. Chase was a compelling character who managed to be very intense and dark at times but also extremely vulnerable. He so badly wanted to feel love and acceptance, but saw himself as such a failure that he was unworthy of it which meant he is constantly pushing those who want to give him those things away.

I like the introduction of female breeds and look forward to the future story lines involving these women. I hope there are some kick ass women to join Renata on the front lines with the men. I was thankful that this book provided us glimpses in to the rest of the order and their families as well. The plot surrounding Gabrielle and Lucan was very emotional and I appreciate that even though Lucan has found his HEA, that Lara Adrian continues to force her characters to develop further and face hurdles personally and not just as part of the larger story.

My only complaint would be in how the book ended. I am sure a part of it is that this was to the be last book in the series, but it was frustrating to have a book feel like it was wrapping up the series when you know that isn't the case. I also really struggled with how the Epilogue was handled. In Chapter 44 there was so much that you knew needed to be sorted out with both Tavia and Chase and then suddenly in the Epilogue it is six months later and we get a very short description that essentially tells us that yes it was bad, but now it is all better. Given how much focus was put on Chase's struggle with Blood Lust and the fact that Tavia ended up having to fight that same battle I do wish that we had gotten to see more of that time.

I am intrigued to see where this story goes how that the Breeds are exposed to the world and the order has a very visible role.
Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel