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Dark Legend

by Katrina Michaels

August 11th, 2006

Dark Legend is the eighth book in the Carpathian Series by Christine Feehan. This book directly follows After Twilight: Dark Dream, where Prince Vladimir Dubrinsky sends his fiercest warriors out into the world to hunt down the ever present vampires. Lucian and Gabriel willingly pledge their lives.

Dark Legend had all the elements of a great read, only it wasn’t great by any stretch of the imagination. I confess; I quit the Dark Series at Book #6 because I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with specific writing elements and Christine’s duplicated trend formula. While her books offer diverse opening situations, they positively lack realism when it comes to the Heroine’s physcial attributes. Like some quirk of magnificence, all her Heroines possess impossibly:- small, tiny, fragile, slender bodies, with full inviting breasts and a minuscule waist. Beautiful doesn’t begin to cover our Heroine. As a reviewer, and passionate lover of Romance Fiction, I would love to see Christine take a giant leap of faith forward and craft “real” women in her future books. I’m positive her Carpathian men would love her for it. I know I would. Second on my Quit List is the one dimensional sex scenes, but more on that later. And third on my Quit List was the repetitive Old World Charm masculine dialogue. It’s one thing to say the Hero is of Old World Charm, but to have book after book; Hero after Hero repeat the same Old World Charm dialogue just smacks of unoriginality. To suggest our heroes do not understand modern day slang is absurd. They’re ancients; they’ve walked the earth for centuries, mingled with diverse social and demographic groups; commanded humans to do their bidding. These Heroes should know some modern day slang. Unmated Carpathian Males only lose their ability to feel; not their intelligence or their aptitude to assimilate into society. On a lighter note, I love Christine’s unique Vampire premise. The Carpathians race have all the strengths and weakness of Vampire, but where other vampires are destructive and take pleasure in pain and torture – according to Christine, Carpathians – or more concisely and precisely, unmated Carpathian Men are the exact opposite, regardless of the fact that they feel nothing. They are, in essence, emotionless husks searching for a life-mate to save them from eternal damnation by bringing emotion and colour back into their otherwise barren existence. There is nothing more fearsome than a Carpathian Male. With a unique premise of eternal damnation hounding our Hero yet again, this book should have been as good, if not better than the preceding ones. Only it wasn’t. What is truly disappointing about Dark Legend is that I can’t remember the last time a romance book bored me. My overall impression of Gabriel is mixed. From Page One I immediately sympathised with his situation, his emotions, his thirst for blood, his lonely existence, and his eternal struggle to contain the Beast within, but it was his deep sorrow and soul-shattering pain he felt for his twin brother, Lucian that had me rapidly page turning. I’m a twin myself and I couldn’t possibly conceive how I would feel if my beloved sister suddenly turned evil. The thought is simply too shattering to ever entertain. Even more shattering is that I found myself becoming detached from Gabriel as quickly as I read. By Chapter Four I wasn’t the least bit interested in him as a Carpathian Male nor was I interested in his situation or the life-altering struggles he had yet to face. I would have liked Francesca more had she not lacked conviction. Christine penned this independent female as a strong and powerful Carpathian in her own right, but strangely once Gabriel enters her life all her convictions seem to fly right out of the window. As a child, Francesca knew Gabriel was her life-mate, and when Gabriel fails to claim her, she channels her emotions into saving people, particularly children. But now he’s is back in her life, he’s intent on claiming her. Francesca doesn’t want life-mating rituals. She’s lived long enough, alone, thank you very much. It’s time to seek dawn’s peace. Gabriel, naturally, won’t have it. This stubborn stance between the lovers could have been an emotionally gripping conflict had Christine taken the idea and run with it, but as it stands it simply failed to launch. But then again, I did not encounter any emotionally gripping conflict that jeopardised their budding love. Any conflict that can be logically resolved without emotional deficit isn’t conflict. That’s merely a misunderstanding. Conflict must have emotional deficit. Conflict must have resolution. Resolution must involve personal growth; a learning of inner self. This learning may involve sacrifice; but sacrifice, by very nature, is a deficit. We all know that conflict moves a book forward; one chapter at a time. By chapter 4, I was wondering why I hadn’t tossed the book away. There is a vast difference between external conflict (ie: fending off Brice/Skyler’s father/fighting vampires/hunting Lucian) and internal conflict (self doubt; can you love again?/past secrets that may jeopardise budding love/childhood prejudices that may threaten trust). Dark Guardian failed to show any emotionally gripping conflict whatsoever.

 

Dissecting The Myth

I know these lovers are Carpathian, and the ritual is normal, to them, and they are ancients; Gabriel is an elder having lived for more than 2000 years, but the sex scene in Chapter 3 felt wrong. Francesca was spurned, for goodness sake. Gabriel was more interested in chasing vampires with his twin brother than seeking eternal contentment with his life-mate. Yet the pair find themselves in bed together before I could catch my breath. I admit I was disappointed. But my disappointed didn’t stop there. Sex in romance fiction is normal, even healthy for our lovers and our readers as the very act itself, so carefully and artistically penned, merely solidifies love in the purest form between two people wholly committed to each other. But generic sex scenes; one layer sex scenes; wham-bam sex scenes become tiresome and boring, especially when there’s sex scene after sex scene which this book, much like its predecessors has in abundance. In the end I just skipped the sex altogether.

 

Trends

A familiar trend is upheld in Christine’s books; one I’d like to see change. Whether the heroine has sexual history or not, Christine has her performing oral sex on our lust driven but perfectly grateful hero with the skill that would bring the entire sex industry crushing down. In every Carpathian novel our hero has his hands tightly clenched in her hair and thrusting eagerly in response. I cannot help but roll my eyes. These women, as decisively defined by Christine herself, do not have that type of sexual experience, even with the hero’s erotic (but never publicised) graphic sexual thoughts clouding her innocent mind. After eight (8) Dark Series Carpathian books, it would make for a nice change to actually know – read – our hero’s erotic thoughts before our heroine spontaneously performs an intimacy of that particular nature. More important in my view is the absence of human - feminine - emotion like hesitation, clumsiness, ineptitude, doubt and nervousness. Such deliberate omission on the Author’s behalf certainly begs the question: Why do these women not have just the tiniest bit of self-doubt about their sexual ability to please their partner? We’re talking oral sex, here. Surely women - real women - have felt, at one time or another, some measure of conflicting emotion when it comes to this type of loving, especially if it’s her first time? I remember watching The Notebook and smiling, then grinning, then laughing outright when Allie and Noah attempt to make love for the first time. Poor Allie is so overcome with virginal nerves she talks non-stop throughout the entire interlude, driving our darling but ever-patient Noah to distraction. Her nervousness, however, kills their one and only chance to consummate their young love. I could not help but empathise with her, there and then. Allie’s natural fear for the unknown made that particular scene a warmly remembered one. What she felt was real and normal. One of my main reasons for moving away from the Dark Series was because Christine’s love scenes are generically mechanical and paper-thin. Consider for a moment just how many sex scenes are showcased in one of her books. I’d have to say on average there’s 4 love scenes. That’s a lot of duplicated generic blandness. Let us not forget repetitive cliché words like: silken hair, satin mouth, velvet core, he was on fire, falling off a cliff, outside their bodies… yadda, yadda, yadda. I know there’s only so many ways in which an author can write sex, particularly the mechanics of it, but that should not excuse a lack of creativity or imagination for the written word. The sex scenes lack flesh, and I don’t mean that in the literal sense. What happen to foreplay? Afterplay? Seduction? Sexual tension is not sex; it’s a prelude; an emotional setting; an invitation. I can only ascertain that Carpathian Males do not need to seduce their life-mates; all he’d need do is share his erotic sexual thoughts, and presto! She’s magically turned on. The only problem with that is we, as readers, cannot read his mind! Just because an Author writes that the hero is having these thoughts, doesn’t necessarily constitute arousal. Or Seduction. Or foreplay. Or intimacy. And I know for a fact it doesn’t Seduce me. Its all too convenient to Tell your reader what’s going on than Show it:

He opened his mind; shared his thoughts - she was suddenly as hot as he.

There’s no foreplay whatsoever, yet remarkably - strangely - the heroine is aroused, seduced, without the hero having to work for it. Without the reader ‘knowing’ how he did it. And the act itself couldn’t be more boring. As usual there’s no intimacy between the lovers; no repetitive deep kissing; no touching; no lingering; no involvement with the senses. There is more to sex than mere thrusting. I sincerely hope Christine takes a moment to reconsider exactly what her book is about. It’s not a war book. It’s not a fighting book. It’s a Romance book. Vast difference.

 

Last Word

Christine’s implied reference that Gabriel’s twin brother, Lucian, was superior in all things was truly irritating and disheartening. Like any avid fan of romance fiction, I want my hero to be superior to all men, all things, if not in physical form than skill and intelligence, and completely undaunted by any obstacle carelessly thrown his way, yet human enough to accept his fears and quirks all the while projecting utter confidence even when he doesn’t feel confident. Granted, Carpathians are mind-readers; Francesca knew Gabriel’s every private thought, so it’s plausible and entirely reasonable for her to also know his worries and fears. Gabriel’s fear that Lucian would destroy him if the brothers ever faced each other in combat is reasonable I suppose, given the superiority conspiracy theme. Lucian, after all, was Superior to any other Carpathian, young or old, because Christine purposefully sprinkled the special Lucian Superiority dust throughout the entire book. Once or twice, cleverly injected, and supported with corpse-like evidence would allow us readers to get a concise picture of this potentially dangerous Carpathian Male without purposefully destroying Gabriel’s masculinity. Let us not forget that this book was about Gabriel; not Lucian. When it was incessantly repeated throughout the book, I could not help but question Gabriel’s presence. Let’s face it. Would any woman want a self-doubting Beta man when an Alpha one (who just so happens to look like every woman’s sexual fantasy come to life) is available and crooking his finger enticingly? I know which one I’d chose. At one point I was thinking Lucian would be a better life-mate for Francesca – Hell, for all women world-wide. And, rather pointedly, when Christine confirmed the Lucian Superiority premise by allowing Lucian to defeat, then destroy The Evil one, even though Gabriel himself was fighting the same creature, I almost threw the book away. The short version is this: Dark Legend is a 395 page premise to Dark Guardian. And yes, by every account Lucian Daratrazanoff is the Superior Carpathian.