Kelly's Review: KISS OF THE NIGHT

KISS OF THE NIGHT

By Sherrilyn Kenyon

Book 5 in the Dark Hunter Series

Published by: St. Martin’s Press / 175 Fifth Avenue / New York, NY 10010

First Printing: April 2004

ISBN: 0-312-99241-6

Amazon; Barnes and Noble; Goodreads

Concept: “Dear Reader:

What do you get when you take one immortal Viking warrior no one can remember five minutes after he leaves their presence, an Apollite heiress on the run for her life, and one seriously pissed off demigod? Basically, you get my life.

It started out simple enough. One night, I went to save a woman in trouble. The next thing I knew, the doorway to hell had opened and out stepped Daimons – vampires the likes of which I’d never seen before. Led by the son of Apollo, they are out to end the curse that has banished them all to darkness. The only problem with that is they have to kill Cassandra Peters to do it and if she dies, so dies the sun the earth and all who dwell here. Life’s just a bowl full of cherries, ain’t it?

Brought together by fate, it’s now my job to protect a daughter of the very race I have been hunting for centuries. Neither of us dares to trust the other. But she is the only one who remembers me…More than that, with her courage and strength, she is the only one who has ever touched a heart that I thought had died centuries ago.

The only way for a Dark Hunter to regain his soul is through the love of a woman. But what happens when that woman isn’t exactly human?

-- Wulf Tryggvasen"

Review: Wulf, who we first met in Talon and Sunshine’s book (still my favorite so far) is an ancient Viking warrior who suffers with a sort of amnesia. No one who meets him in person can remember him 5 minutes later. It makes it easy to have one-night stands, but hard to have a meaningful relationship, and of course, as everyone knows, a good man without a good woman is pretty much lost, even a Dark Hunter. Enter Cassandra, the one woman who can remember him even though she turns out to be the princess of the cursed race he's sworn to hunt and kill. This makes for that forbidden love thing that us readers eat up. The two of them must face ancient curses, prophecies, and the direct meddling of the Greek gods to not only find true happiness but to save the world.

This story makes us look at Dark Hunters and the world of Daimons differently. Daimons were always the bad guys in previous Dark Hunter stories and now, we are looking at life and love through the eyes of one and it reminds us to remember that there are two sides to every story. Don’t get me wrong, Daimons are still the bad guys, but there are different “divisions.”

We meet some fun characters in this book. My personal favorite was Chris, Wulf’s nephew. Wulf is completely obsessed with saving Chris’s baby making capabilities no matter what and this makes for some completely unbelievable (but who cares? It’s fun!) and funny endearments. We also meet Dante, a were panther. So now we have Sasha (from Zarek’s story) and Dante. I want more of these guys! We also meet Urian, a rather sad character and our first female Dream Hunter, D’Aria. There’s a new bad guy in town too and his name is Stryker and he is seriously one bad ass guy. We are treated to a scene with Simi (although it was really a weird scene).

What I liked: The climactic scene at the end that brings all the Hunters together working as a cohesive unit. These guys just say one sentence and you are reminded how much you loved them in their books. All of these guys (and their ladies) have a spot in my heart. I LOVE that.

What I disliked: I am slowly working my way through the Dark Hunter books. This book is my fifth in a short time and at first, I was bored with it and it was because I’ve had a little too much Dark Hunter in my mind lately. I don’t blame the author for this, it’s just my own self. I don’t like reading books back to back to back. I’ve been putting at least one book inbetween but I think I may need to put a few more. With that being said, here’s my problems with this book. Wulf and Cassandra first started doing the nasty in their dreams and then poof, Cass turns up preggers. Um…if I was able to get pregnant during my dreams, I’d have to shoot myself. It just didn’t make sense nor was it explained in some greek myth/fantasy sort of way. I felt like the author just flat out wanted us to believe that without offering any explanation. That happened with several plot points in this book and I just went with the theory that I like to use, to just let the author take me where they want. But, I have to take away some feathers on this one because these plot points were serious to me and they just weren’t explained very well.

My rating: 3.5 feathers