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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sarafinas story: MUCH better than anticipated, March 13, 2004
Will Stone, a US military special agent captured by Islamist militants and being tortured, finds his mind slipping away from the pain being caused him to a place where he can see and feel a beautiful gypsy girl, Sarafina. He can only watch and try to warn her as she is betrayed by her younger sister and her lover, taken as a sacrifice to a waiting vampire - who doesn't kill her, but turns her into a vampire. Back in hospital in the US, Will is still haunted by the dreams he's had of Sarafina. He still believes that they were no more than dreams, until one day he startles a man called Jameson Bryant who is stealing blood. Bryant reminds Will of the vampire Bartrone he had seen in his dreams... and when Bryant confirms that he is indeed a vampire, Will begins to wonder whether Sarafina might actually exist. And when, a few weeks later, Bryant hires Will to `babysit' his daughter, Amber Lily, the first child born to vampires, on her trip to New York, Will seizes the opportunity to ask for help to find Sarafina. She exists, but is now an embittered, cruel woman, having been betrayed or abandoned by anyone she ever cared for: her sister, her lover, the vampire Bartrone who ended his existence by walking out into the sun, and later her great-nephew Dante, who rejected her in favour of Morgan. Now, Sarafina creates human slaves who do her bidding unquestioningly, including feeding her on demand. She also selects mortals whom she considers unworthy and feeds from them. When Sarafina discovers that Will, whom she'd thought of as some godlike or supernatural creature who loved her, is a mere mortal man - and not even one of the Chosen, at that, so he cannot possibly be with her for eternity - she turns vicious, threatening to kill him unless he leaves her alone. Later, when she sees Will tailing two young women, one of whom is a vampire, she suspects him of being either a pervert or with the DPI, and she kidnaps him, attempting to turn him into another mindless slave. And, while Will is thus distracted, Amber Lily is kidnapped... I hadn't expected to like this book. I hated Sarafina in Twilight Hunger, and it took a long time for me to warm to her in this book, though I did (mostly) in the end. What really made this book for me, apart from Will, whom I liked very much, was the role played by characters from previous Shayne novellas, principally Jameson and Angelica and Roland and Rhiannon. The story is still quite dark, made more so by Sarafina's behaviour, hence four stars rather than five, but the scenes with other vampire characters made up for a lot of that. There are several unresolved threads in this book, which I hope will be resolved in Shayne's next, Edge of Twilight, which is principally about Amber Lily. Certainly, with Embrace the Twilight, Shayne seems at last to have discovered how to write a full-length novel about her characters without boring readers! wmr-uk
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A keeper...., February 26, 2003
Sarafina has been betrayed by every person she's ever loved so she's shut herself off from feeling emotions for people. First it was her sister Katerina, who hated her from the day she was born. Her betrothed, Andre, betrayed her with the sister that hated her, all the while convincing Sarafina that he loved her. Even her companion, the man that made her a vampire chose to walk into the sun instead of staying with her. The last person that she opened her heart to was her great nephew, Dante, whom she felt turned his back on her for the woman he loved more than her. There was only one thing that gave her peace, and that was her beloved spirit. The spirit she'd always felt, even before she became a vampire. She felt safe falling in love with her spirit because she knew that it wasn't flesh and blood, therefore it could never break her heart. Wilem Stone was being tortured in a cave by Afghani military the first time he saw her. He was in so much pain that he left his body and hers was the face he saw. He felt everything she felt. He felt pain, betrayal, love and anger. Through the days of his torture, he would retreat to his beautiful Sarafina, even though he couldn't see her, she was his salvation. When Will finally escaped, he couldn't make any contact with Sarafina again. He was finally able to, due to the pain he inflicted on himself. When he did, he was shocked to learn that a hundred years had passed for her, where only two months had passed for him. He could finally be with the woman he fell in love with. He soon learns that she's not the same woman that he first saw. This woman is hard and bitter. She is defeated and ruthless. She is not the sweet and innocent woman he knows she is deep down inside. While in the hospital, Will comes upon a vamipre stealing blood from the blood bank. He instictively knows who he is when he sets eyes on Jameson Bryant. The two men soon strike a deal. Will is to protect Jameson's daughter Amber and in return, Jameson will help Will find Sarafina. The story goes on with drama that you can only find in a paranormal romance. Feelings are intensified in this novel of vampires. When Maggie Shayne first introduces the reader to Sarafina, you will believe that she is a vampire beyond redemption. She didn't count on the power of her love for a mortal man, however, and she finds that she still has some good left in her. If you have enjoyed Maggie Shayne's 'Wings in the Night' series, you will also enjoy this one, though it doesn't compare to the first three tales in the series. Happy reading!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but not a keeper, March 1, 2007
This review is from: Embrace The Twilight (Twilight Series Book 8) (Mass Market Paperback)
Embrace The Twilight is the first book that I have read by Maggie Shayne and although a reasonable read it didn't quite hit the spot for me.
The story started a little slowly with Sarafina, a Gypsy woman, struggling to deal with problems within her group. Her sister Katarina dislikes her and although Andre, her boyfriend, takes care of her she knows that others in her group think there's something odd about her (apart from her being a seer, that is). Sarafina knows that there is a helpful Spirit sometimes with her who talks to her and keeps her company occasionally - and she loves this friendly Spirit. Unfortunately there's also a demon out there who is draining blood from people and Sarafina is concerned as she can hear this demon's voice in her head sometimes, as well as the friendly Spirit's.
Willem Stone is an American soldier who has been taken hostage and is being tortured. When the pain gets too bad he passes out and finds himself dreaming about a gypsy girl Sarafina, watching as she tries to build bridges with her sister, but he knows that Andre and Katarina are actually plotting against Sarafina. And then one night he watches as Sarafina is turned into a vampire... his vision ends and he eventually escapes from his captors and returns to America a hero as he hadn't given away anything under torture.
But Willem can't quite settle back into his normal life - partly because his foot is seriously injured but mostly because he wants to know what happened to Sarafina in his dreams and isn't able to get back to them. And then he manages, with a lot of pain, to revisit her and finds that a great deal of time has past and she is now a vampire. When Willem bumps into a vampire in a hospital one evening he starts to wonder if his dreams might have some basis in reality.
All this that I have given as an introduction takes place in the first half of the book and from that point onward the story rather changes. We are introduced to new characters that Willem is hired to protect, he runs into Sarafina who's somewhat different from the young gypsy girl he knew and some vampire hunters manage to kidnap a very important girl. Can she be rescued, and why has she been kidnapped? Perhaps Willem can help with some of these problems.
The romance between Willem and Sarafina isn't actually all that significant a part of the story - in fact, I didn't find it romantic at all. Rather the opposite. There was much more interest in the relationship between some of the vampires in this story - a family relationship rather than a romantic one. The world that Maggie Shayne has built (where vampires can communicate by telepathy and can addict humans to their blood) is nothing new and I felt that the story never really got going. The preamble of Sarafina's life as a gypsy was too long and the rest of the story felt rushed. The ending also left rather a lot of open threads (although I can guess a couple) but I didn't find the book enough of a draw to find the next one and see how it continued. It's not a badly written story (the information about Willem's time as a prisoner and how he deals with that, and the subsequent fame, was very good) but for a romantic book this one fell rather short of the mark for me.
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