Dark Curse: Dark Series, Book 19 (Unabridged)

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
A new Carpathian novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling queen of paranormal romance.(USA Today)

Born into a world of ice, slave to her evil father, Lara Calladine knew only paralyzing fear as a child. Only by escaping with her mysterious gifts unbroken would she survive to claim her great Carpathian heritage as a Dragonseeker

Now, Lara is in search of the source of her nightmaresthe cold, dark corners of her childhood just on the edges of her memory. Only one man has the power and the will to help her: dangerous, arrogant Nicolas De La Cruz.

Together, Lara and Nicolas search the treacherous Carpathian landscape for the truth about their pastsand discover a passion that neither has ever known before.

Customer Reviews: Read 72 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

Mixed Feelings On This Offering From Feehan September 4, 2008
64 out of 67 found this review helpful

For those of you who are fans of Feehan's Dark Series, you are already familiar with Lara, who escaped on the back of a dragon from the evil mage's cave. Flash forward and Lara is an adult who has spent a lifetime searching for the same cave in order to give her two aunts a decent burial. Reaching the village of the Carpathians, Lara is found by Nicolas De La Cruz, her lifemate. Nicholas is so close to turning vampire that he actually begins to feed on Lara before her voice brings him into the light. Lara and Nicholas begin to work out their differences and also begin helping to solve the low birth rate of the Carpathian women. Why mixed feelings?

Positive - A truly excellent hero. Even when Nicholas is doing things the reader doesn't approve of, Feehan still manages to create sympathy and empathy for her tortured hero. By the end of the book, Nicholas is a terrific lifemate and one you won't soon forget.

The mystery surrounding the Carpathian women's low birth rate is becoming clearer and clearer and the answers are intriguing and complex.

As Lara is a Dragonseeker mage, she uses various "rhyming" spells to work her magic. Some of them in the book are very descriptive, touching and very well done.

Negatives - Lara is a heroine that is too hard to like or to figure out. She is by turns insecure, confident, weak, strong, indulgent, selfless - the reader has a hard time figuring out her true nature. I realize that Feehan was trying to show that Lara was damaged emotionally as a child and is growing as the book goes along. However, the mixtures of emotions don't seem to ring true. At one point in the book, Lara tries to commit suicide. This was such a departure from the heroine's character that I was like, WTH? This is the same woman who escaped from a mage, became an adult, practiced her magic and went all over the world trying to find one ice cave. Someone that determined decides to throw it all in? I don't think so.

Feehan once again used the new Carpathian language which she introduced in Dark Demon. Her hero uses it constantly and the reader is forced to skim it, looking for the next English word to understand what he really said. It jars the reader from the story and makes it very frustrating to get a flow going - especially when you realize that it isn't really a true foreign language, but rather an imaginary one.

Feehan spent 32 pages at the end of the book on this so-called language to give translations to various words and phrases. I felt cheated and ripped off. Those 32 pages could have been used to write more to the story. At the end, I briefly considered taking the book back to the bookstore and asking for a return on my money.

So definitely mixed feelings about this book. I would recommend it to other fans of the Dark Series, but just be aware that along with a really good story are some serious flaws.

4 out of 5 stars

Wow, I really liked this one a lot!! One of her best in a while! September 21, 2008
20 out of 22 found this review helpful

Okay, I'm really surprised by some of the negative reviews of this book. As I was reading it, I kept saying to myself, "Wow, this is one of the best Carpathian books in a long time!! Yeah for Feehan!" I enjoyed it immensely. It's not perfect, but it has so many great aspects to it that I really enjoyed reading it and can't wait for the next one.

First off, Nicolas De La Cruz was a very refreshing South American hero. I really really liked him, and thought, darn! Lara is one lucky lady. :) In the previous books that featured De La Cruz brothers, I thought they were obnoxious with their overly-chauvinistic attitudes (even for Carpathian males, they were way too chauvinistic - except for Riordan). Nicolas isn't really like that. He kind of starts off that way for about two minutes, but he catches on pretty quickly that his attitude just won't work with a partner in his life. He quickly evolves into a really nice, supportive (and hot!) lifemate for Lara, and you can see the evolution occuring in his mind. He's very aware of himself, his attitude, what Lara needs, and how he needs to adapt himself to meet her needs, etc... I thought that was very refreshing.

Secondly, what I really really loved about this book is that so many characters are in it. Mikhail and Raven (and her pregnancy), Gregori and Savannah (and her pregnancy), Francesca, Virkirnoff and Natalya, Lucien and Jaxon, Jacques and Shea and their baby son, Destiny and Nicolae, Skyler, Syndil, Dominic, and Dmitri are all in the book to varying degrees. And a couple of new Carpathian men and unmated women were introduced, and they are sure to show up in future books! But Mikhail and Raven, Gregori and Savannah are in it quite a lot, as their endangered pregnancies are the key crisis in this book. I don't want to give too much away, but Lara is the key to the Carpathians understanding why their women miscarry so often, as well as why their babies often perish in their first year of life. I found this plot line absolutely wonderful, and I loved how these secondary characters played such an important role in this book. I also found the very heated debate that is going on in the Carpathian world about the role of women in their society to be very intriguing, and can't wait to see how it gets resolved in future books (good luck with that one, Mikhail. :) My favorite scene in the book is between Lucien and his little brother Gregori; after reading Dark Curse, I had to immediately reread Lucien and Jaxon's book (I think I'm in love with Lucien again!!)

Lara herself starts off pretty strong, but we quickly see that she's carrying a huge amount of emotional baggage with her because of her very twisted and tortured childhood. She turns out to be a pretty "flawed" individual, but I think that adds to her charm. It doesn't take much to set her off, and Nicolas does a good job of trying to take care of her. Ironically, she turns out to be the key to the survival of the Carpathians, so that just adds a lot more interest to the plot, as well as complications to her relationship with Nicolas.

The downsides of this book are that it ended way too quickly. I turned the last page, fully expecting a new chapter, and found that there were no more chapters. It had ended on the previous page and I hadn't even realized it. I was like, huh? It should have been a longer book. Several key scenes are summarized in a couple of paragraphs, when you know it should have taken several pages to get through those scenes. As I was reading it, I felt like the editors told Feehan to cut out X number of words, and so those scenes got dropped. Either that, or she was just tired of writing. Some less important scenes went on for pages, and could have been edited down significantly, and some key scenes were simply glossed over. That was really odd and confusing. Also, there was too much "Carpathian" language in this book. It's a weird language, and doesn't add anything to the book. And definitely lose the glossary and dictionary at the end of the book; that just took away from pages that could have contained story in them. Another problem was trying to keep track of the relationships of the Dragonseeker people. Trying to keep track of who is whose brother/sister/aunt/great-aunt/mother/father made my head hurt. Even though these are flaws in the book, they're minor problems in comparison to all the many things I loved about the book.

I think if you're a Carpathian fan, you'll enjoy this book a lot. I felt that it was a turn in a better direction for Feehan, and I'm looking forward to the next book. This book reminded me a lot of the Christmas book, and I really like that one. I like seeing a lot of characters interacting with each other, and finding out what previous couples are up to. In this book, you find out that several couples have moved back to the mountains to be closer to their people, and I really liked that.

1 out of 5 stars

Never again! September 3, 2008
17 out of 24 found this review helpful

I, too, was very leary about reading this book after the last 2 releases. I have been a big fan of Feehan's for 6 years now. The last two Drake sisters books disappointed me so much that I stopped reading them halfway through. I wish I hadn't read this book either. Since her publisher change a couple of years ago, Feehan's books have gone downhill.

The book has no ending and has become so scientific that I wanted to take notes. I will not read another Dark Series book again, except for Skyler's book when it EVENTUALLY comes out, as we have been waiting SEVERAL years already for it. Go back to your old publisher, because they knew what they were doing. I rarely leave a bad review on amazon, but I am now. Not to mention, I work at a public library, and this is one book I will NOT be suggesting to other people.

5 out of 5 stars

Different but wonderful September 3, 2008
16 out of 20 found this review helpful

I'm going to be completely honest, I was a little taken back after I finished this book. It certainly takes us on a different track than the one we have been on with the Carpathians and it has all the romance, conflict, and fights that we would expect. But it is also poignant and rough to read at certain points. In the end, we are given a happy ending but with a twist I hadn't expected. I highly recommend it but it is not the Carpathian novel that its predecessors were. I think its probably the beginning of a new arc in the story and I can't wait for more.

2 out of 5 stars

Not impressed. September 6, 2008
11 out of 16 found this review helpful

I have to say I have not been impressed with Feehan's last few Dark entries other than Dark Celebration. I don't feel invested in the characters like I did with the first half of the series - except for Skyler and Dimitri and Dominick. The only reason I liked Dark Celebration was the revisiting of older characters I still had feelings for and the interactions between Skyler and Dimitri. As for this entry, Nicolas was fine but not to the level of Mikhail, Gregori, Darius, Lucien, etc. And Lara is certainly no Destiny (talk about someone with a horrible childhood!)

(SPOILER ALERT) The meeting of the warriors really irked me - can't let the women fight (no matter how well-trained) because we'll lose our baby making machines! They just distract us! What bull... the only ones who should have any say in it are the women and their lifemates. And I'm not liking the way the whole miscarriage thing is going - it's making strong women characters like Raven and Savannah just look whiny instead of tragic. And I actually miss the threat of the Morrison Center - for some reason that did seem kind of frightening vs this Xavier storyline which just irritates me.

At this point, I'm only waiting for Skyler and Dimitri's story and Dominick's - but I'm also getting really concerned that they aren't going to be any more substantial than what Feehan has recently been churning out. We'll just have to see.

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