We met our hero in the previous book (Private Demon), where he was introduced as a really, really nasty guy.

One thing I like about Lynn Viehl is that there's not a single characters of hers that is two dimensional -- even the bad guys have their redeeming qualities..

Lucan reminds me a lot of Lestat from Anne Rice's novels.. He's selfish, powerful, and has a bad temper, but is also tired of all the bullsh.... Yeah.

Samantha, our heroine, is a homicide detective with a really disgusting cool "power", even as a human.. Add to that her innate resistance to the vampire hypnotism (which I can't spell because, hey, it's French, and I'm not), and you've got a perfect foil for Lucan

As with any of the Darkyn novels, you really need to read the series in order, because all of the books are interconnected and you won't know WTF is going on if you try to join mid-series or skip around.

Fans of the series will be glad to see that Alexandra & Co. do continue to play a big part, as well as the fact that there are some lovely twisty bits (haha pun intended - you'll see!) involving Richard, the high king/lord/whatevertheycallit

And of course, I will admit that as many people have pointed out, sometimes LV does tend to jump into the ILY's a bit fast... *shrugs* Being a fan of fated-to-be-mated stories, this doesn't really bother me, even though technically these don't fall directly into that category. I see it more as a love-at-first-bite-sight thing.

Overall, this is one of my favorites in the series (and yes, I glommed the whole bloody thing this past week -- it's KILLING me that she's moved onto the Kyndred spinoff now, but I digress).

Solid 4 1/2 Stars