Customer Reviews

The Immortal Hunter: A Rogue Hunter Novel (Argeneau Vampires)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This story picks up in rural Canada where the previous book, The Rogue Hunter, left off. Decker Argeneau Pimms is a vampire Enforcer who along with some friends is searching for Nicholas Argeneau, his cousin, who went rogue 50 years back and has recently been implicated in some local biting no-no's. They find Nicholas alright, but only because he wants them to as he needs their help to rescue two girls who have just been kidnapped by another ruthless gang of rogues.

The beginning of this story was as contrived, useless, and confusing as the bumbling of it's characters. The overall storyline got no better and during the three days that Decker and his rescued lifemate are together before the story ends, the only bright spot was when they spent the second day like bunnies. Ms. Sands can still right a love scene with the best of them. But overall this story was the flattest yet in a series that once captivated me with it's imagination and fantastic writing. While Lucerne is still my favorite vamp male ever, I'm sad to say his plethora of relatives is starting to feel monotonously repetitive.In a lesser author you might expect this but Ms.Sands has shown she is capable of reaching far above her current level of writing. Here's hoping the next installment gets better. It couldn't get much worse than this quick read.

The Series in order:
A Quick Bite
Love Bites
Single White Vampire
Tall, Dark, & Hungry
A Bite to Remember (personally where I think things started going south)
Bite Me if You Can
The Accidental Vampire
Vampires Are Forever
Vampire, Interrupted
The Rogue Hunter ( where you knew the series was in trouble...)
The Immortal Hunter

I was very disappointed with this book. I'm getting tired of having a "short story" packaged to me as a romance novel. The story was not bad, and the author did some unique things with her storyline that did a good job of not simply re-hashing the ideas from her previous stories in this series. (Yes, I've read them all, and absolutely loved some and found others to be a bit short of that mark)

That said, the story ended too abruptly, with many plot points not finished. Come on, authors, we're not buying romance novels to read serialized books. We want a nice tidy ending, clean it up and finish it. You want to put out another book, come out with a new idea. I'm tired, so tired, of picking up paperbacks and finding out what could be conveniently packaged as a very exciting story gets split up into three separate romance novels. Take out the 30+ pages of explicit sex scenes, fill it up with dialogue and plot and move the darned story along, for pete's sake! Maybe I'm just getting old. I've been reading romance since Barbara Cartland and Rosemary Rogers in the early 70s, and have seen it all. I'm getting bored with this latest machination to get more books out of one or two good ideas.

Back to this book, do I recommend it? Maybe, after the next one comes out, and you can read them back to back. Not on its own.

Having various characters do occasionally stupid things just to move the plot forward doesn't do it for me. It also has somewhat of a cliffhanger ending, no doubt to ensure that the reader will buy the next book. I will buy it because yes, I want to know how the story arc works out and because I know how great Lynsay Sands vampire books usually are, but not because of this one.

Argeneau Family
1. A Quick Bite (2005)
2. Love Bites (2004)
3. Single White Vampire (2003)
4. Tall Dark and Hungry (2004)
5. A Bite to Remember (2006)
6. Bite Me If You Can (2007)
7. The Accidental Vampire (2008)
8. Vampires Are Forever (2008)
9. Vampire, Interrupted (2008)
10. The Rogue Hunter (2008)
11. The Immortal Hunter (2009)
12. The Renegade Hunter (2009)

In Canada rogue vampires kidnaps sisters Dani and Stephanie McGill and. Vampire Decker Argeneau Pimms is called back from R&R to mount a rescue of two the mortals. He extracts Danielle successfully, but fails to get her sibling from one of the scoundrels who escaped with her. To his shock he knows Dani is his life mate.

Dani is attracted to the strange hero, but distrusts him as too much about him remains murky. Besides she is worried about Stephanie. Decker will do whatever it takes to rescue Stephanie from the-fanger-less vampire, a sub-species thought extinct centuries ago, while also keeping his Dani safe

The latest Rogue Hunter romantic urban fantasy (see THE ROGUE HUNTER and BITE ME IF YOU CAN) is an exhilarating thriller enhanced by the hero rescuing his life mate but unable to protect her sister from being snatched. The lead couple is a wonderful pairing as saving Stephanie supersedes their love. Fans will enjoy this fine tale summed up nicely by Decker who struggles with persuading Dani they are mates and with rescuing her sister while he ponders what to tell his future in-laws (not as simple as meeting the Fockers and Byrnes or even Falk-Arkin's The In-Laws).

Harriet Klausner

Decker Argeneau Pimms isn't having a very good day. A council enforcer, his vacation is cut short so that he can chase a rogue vampire-his own cousin, and former partner, Nicholas Argeneau. When he finds Nick he discovers that Nicholas is waiting for him and looking for help. An insane "no fang' vampire has kidnapped Stephanie and Dani McGill. Nicholas is trying to get them back. Once the enforcers are on the case Nick disappears. Dani is rescued-Stephanie isn't. Decker and Dani fall in love while trying to chase down and save the missing girl.

Unlike Rogue Hunter, which I hated, this book has a plot. Dani is in danger a few times and Decker saves her life more than once. The typical Lynsay Sand's humor is present; the couple find themselves making out in the most unusual places and are interrupted in embarrassing ways but you never forget that a 15 year old girl's life is at stake. The villain is insane-the chances that he'll go off the deep end and kill a character is higher than in most of the Argeneau books. It's a fun romp for a Saturday afternoon read. There are lots of open threads leading to the next book-Nicholas' fate must be determined, Stephanie's life has been changed forever, the villain is still not in the enforcers hands and a mysterious fanged female vampire is introduced in the last few pages of the book. I'm already curious to know what happens to Nicholas and I hope his book is the next one.

Unfortunately I think the whole series is crippled by the "lifemate" business. Within 2 or 3 chapters the hero knows he can't read the mortal woman and therefore she "must" be his lifemate. The hero is predisposed to love the girl and all the hard work of falling in love is already done. We're not brought along on the voyage of discovery because there isn't one. It's a fated love and the nanos never choose wrong. I'd be interesting to see a hero confronted with 2 women he can't read or fall in love with a woman he can read just to shake up the series a little.

Some lines should never be crossed, and high on that list is making light of the abduction of a barely fifteen year old girl. The main characters, Dani and Decker, are so unconcerned about this abducted CHILD about which the plot revolves -- and is baby sister to one and victim of rogue vamp to the other (i.e. the immortal enforcer whose job it is to hunt said rogues)-- as to seem somewhat sociopathic, not to mention entirely unlikable, themselves. There's no mistaking what will be done to the fifteen year old because Dani, the 30+ year old big sister, was herself briefly held captive by the same vamps who have her sister and has seen the dead victims of these vamps, and yet she is more concerned about making other characters late for work and/or waking them up. Well, heck, she even has the presence of mind barely 18 hours after her sister was taken to head out to the mall to get some "extra outfits" (can't think what would be appropriate child abduction-wear), indulge in some nookie in a dressing room, nosh at the food court and talk boyfriends with the last book's interchangeable heroine. Best line in that utterly offensive, commiserative little talk the girls have is Dani describing life mates, namely herself and Decker, as "Walking horn dogs and doggettes." Who talks like that? I found myself being alternately offended, outraged at the utter self-absorbed callousness of these characters and bored to distraction. Okay, I understand that this is supposed to a light, mildly amusing romance about vampires and is basically fluff, but as I said, you don't make light of kidnapped kids. If that's a touchy subject for you too, then skip this book. You won't be missing much anyway.

A great read as usual. Lynsay Sands has it all romance with humor.
Loved it!!

This could have been a very good suspenseful book, but with how it was

written it was anything but. The good guys were so dumb you had to

wonder how they survived all those hundrend of years! The scences

written for excitement were too quickly over and turned into sex scenses

whenever they could be. You had more exposition than actually feeling

the story move along with you experierancing it. Spoiler alert After

being rescued Dani gets kidnapped by the villian of the piece two other

times while under the heros so called protection. Once from another

grocery store, another when she is left in the hallway in the hotel so

they can recover Stephanie. Why was she left alone a second time when

the first time it turned her whole life upside down when the villian

changed her into a fangless vampire! Dumb, Dumb, Dumb! Stephanie of

course is also changed into a fangless vampire and we are supose to be

concerned about her but despite their warnings about how only a few

fangless vampire being changed and not going insane you know if you read

any other books of the series that not one of the charachthers that have

been changed have had any problems so she was trying to create suspense

with this and failed. It was nice hearing more about Atlantis I hope

this continues. Of this book the only charather who I found mildly

intersting was Nicholas, why because unlike all the others he is a wild

card unpredicable. I am tired of all the life mates of the heros being

changed by villians and so forth why bother with the you can change one

person rule when it is never put into play? Also I hope that a rule

created along a line is lifemates are not allowed to work together in

emergeancies if it puts others lifes at risk! I found Sams amusement at

almost casuing an auto accident extremly distaseful! I could not

understand why Dani didn't hit her after she admited that Dani would

most likely still be captured with Stephanie if They had search that

area.

Will I buy the next book, most likely but like I did with this one I

will buy used from an amazon seller at a low price. I work hard for my

money and too many books of this series I have preordered and waited with

anticipation and they failed to live up to my expcectations. Are they

too high I'll let you judge. When I buy a book I want the story to be

gripping one I csn't put down because I need to know what happens next.

The characthers should be people who make mistakes and grow as people,

someone you can care what's happening to. When you put down the book you

should be tempted to pick it back up again and reread it because you

read it so fast in one sitting you want to make sure you read it

slower this time so you don't miss anything. Than after the second

reading you should be so eager for the next book you check the

authors website and or the site you buy your books for the next of

the series and curse your luck when you see it is months away from being

out.

Love the Argeneau Vampire series, although it would be great to have a book that doesn't entail finding a "life mate" - too much repetition with that. There are enough great "already mated" characters, and I think some really great stories could come from continued writing about them.

Decker Argeneau unexpectedly finds his life mate when he's sent to hunt down a group of rogue vampires preying on mortals. Dr. Danielle McGill and her young sister Stephanie were running out of hope when Decker and two other men arrive and save them. Dani starts to wonder about her safety again though when the mysterious men who saved her start saying odd things like, they haven't eaten in one hundred and twenty years. Decker is desperate to gain Dani's trust and save her sister, but telling her that vampires exist and that he is one, is not going to be easy. Time may be running out to find Stephanie alive. Dani is faced with possibly losing her sister and trusting in a man who claims to be her immortal life mate.

The Immortal Hunter is sexy and action packed. There is no unnecessary angst, and there really could be, considering what Decker is. The sex is hot and Dani is tough too. When she's thrust into a new and rather unbelievable world, she shines. The history of the immortals is more scientific than romantic. It does give an old storyline a fresh new look though. Decker and Dani's story is exciting and sensual and Nicholas' captured my attention just as much. I'd love to read abut what really happened to the rogue vampire. The Immortal Hunter is another compelling story in the Argeneau and Rogue Hunter Series.

Nannette
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed