Title: Dark Peril
Author: Christine Feehan
Series: ‘Dark‘ Carpathian Series (Book #18)
Age Group: Adult
Release Date: 1st September 2010 (Aus)

Author’s Website

Book Summary: Dominic, of the Dragonseeker lineage—one of the most powerful of the Carpathian lines—is desperate to go to the very heart of the enemy camp and learn their plans. There’s only one way to do so: ingest the parasitic blood of a vampire. He knows that it is a mission from which there is no return. With little time before the blood takes effect, he’ll get the information he needs, relay it to the leader of the Carpathians, and go out fighting. There is no more honorable way to end his life.
Solange Sangria is one of the last of the jaguar people, a royal pureblood, a dying species that cannot recover from bad decisions made over hundreds of years. She has long been alone, fighting to save the remaining shapeshifters from the hands of Brodrick the Terrible: her own father, who slaughtered her family and everyone she loved. Wounded and weary, she plans one last battle, hoping to stop the man who has made an alliance with the vampires, accepting that she will not come out alive.
They are two warriors who have lived their lives alone. Now, at the end of their time, they find each other—an obstacle neither can hope to ignore.

‘Dark Peril’ is the latest book in the Carpathian series by Christine Feehan. The Carpathians are a race of people who survive by drinking human blood, unlike vampires they do not kill their prey, preferring to place their prey in a trance whilst taking their blood. Carpathians can only become vampire by succumbing to their ‘bloodlust’ whilst feeding and killing the human; losing their lifemate or failing to find their lifemate. Lifemates are human women with some psychic ability who become lifemates after three blood exchanges and the chanting of the ritual mating words. Males recognize their lifemates by the fact that, as they lose the ability to see in colour and also lose their emotions after their first 200 years this can only be restored upon finding their lifemate.

Through this series we learn of the evil vampires/mage that seek to destroy the Carpathians by infecting the women with parasites that whilst being ineffective to the adults have a reaction to any children that are born, with most not surviving their first year and the ones that do survive are mostly male. We learn of the special abilities of the Carpathians, and there are definately some heart stopping moments (some hot ones too!)in the battle against the very people that would see the extinction of the Carpathians.

In this book we meet Dominic of the dragonseeker bloodline who is on a final journey for his Prince in which he has volunteered to ingest blood that has the parasites, which will enable him to gain entry into the enemy camp and gather valuable info about the battle that is being waged against the Carpathians, after which he plans to “greet the sun” (a form of suicide) as he has not found his lifemate in over a thousand years. On his journey he meets Solange, who is of the jaguar bloodline and who is also on a mission to protect the women of her species from the males who kidnap them, rape them and force them to bear their children. Both are warriors for their people and join forces to fight a common enemy. Dominic finds that Solange is his lifemate and sets about winning her trust before he converts her to be his lifemate, thereby saving him, as once mated a Carpathian cannot leave his lifemate when they are bonded body and soul.

Christine Feehan has written a sensuous and seductive series of the vampiric Carpathians which takes us on a journey into the Carpathian world, a journey you don’t want to miss! Each book can be read as a ‘stand alone’ but to understand the battle for survival they face, and to meet all the people in the Carpathian world, I recommend you get the series, starting with ‘Dark Prince’.

Get your copy from:

Fishpond
The Book Depository (free international shipping)
Amazon

Have you read this book? What did you think? Leave your review or a comment below telling us what you thought :)