LoveVampires - the website dedicated to vampire fiction.
With vampire book reviews, information and author interviews.

Primal Desires

Susan Sizemore

Published 2007        352 pages

Summary (from the back cover)

Jason Cage is known in Las Vegas as "The Beast Master" - he uses lions and tigers in his act, and keeps wolves as pets. But Jason is far more than a stage magician. He is a vampire Prime of the Family Caeg, and one of the most powerful telepaths in the world.

Having been attacked by dogs as a child, Sofia Hunyara is afraid of them, and terrified of wolves. When Jason and Sofia meet, the attraction between them is instant. Then Jason saves Sofia from a werewolf attack, and the adrenaline of the moment triggers all his primal urges - he realises that he has found his bondmate.

They embark on a passionate affair, but a fearful menace surrounds them both, born out of a secret from deep within Sofia's family history, a secret which has been kept from her - until now. And although the knowledge of her past shocks and frightens her, she must overcome her fear and embrace her dark legacy if she is to protect herself and those she loves from a terrible fate...

The Review

Primal Desires is the sixth vampire romance novel set Susan Sizemore’s Primes universe.  You don’t have to have read the previous novels in this series to understand what going on in this book - mainly because there isn’t a lot going on.

Reading the description on the book jacket, I was initially excited by the thought of a dark brooding vampire who could command wild beasts.  The reality is a buff, blond, sun tanned vampire who has a magic show involving lions and tigers in Las Vegas.  Perhaps Jason’s occupation was the problem for me - because without his character being fleshed out for me by the author I had to fall back on what I could imagine for myself.  Unfortunately for me all I could picture was Siegfried, from “Siegfried and Roy”, which just about killed any sexy vibe from this character for me…

Jason/Siegfried aside, Primal Desires had more problems for me than a poorly fleshed out lead character.  The wafer thin plot didn’t make too much sense.  It was something to do with feral werewolves and some mad world domination plan – but in reality it was just a vehicle to facilitate the romance between Jason and Sofia. 

Not that there was much romance.  They met, they had sex, they had sex again…  There was no realistic romantic conflict in this story.  Jason and Sofia’s characters were instantly attracted to each other and acted on that attraction.  Whether they loved each other seems irrelevant and it certainly wasn’t explored in the plot.

Primal Desires really didn’t float my boat as either a romance or a vampire novel.  However I know that a lot of readers like this series so I would add that if you have enjoyed the previous novels in the Primes series you will probably enjoy this book too.  There is very little difference between Primal Desires and the previous novels in this series…

In the words of Cathy (one of the few characters that I liked in this book) - “I’ve been kidnapped by a gang of white supremacist werewolf bikers?  Oh, for crying out loud!  There’s only so much a woman can be expected to put up with, and I’ve had it up to here.”  Yes Cathy, I know exactly what you mean.

LoveVampires Review Rating: