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Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Kresley Cole

Published 2010          448 pages

Reviewed by Ania Tyburska

Summary (from the book cover)

A dangerous beauty
Lucia the Huntress: as mysterious as she is exquisite, she harbors secrets that threaten to destroy her—and those she loves.

An uncontrollable need
Garreth MacRieve, Prince of the Lykae: the brutal Highland warrior who burns to finally claim this maddeningly sensual creature as his own.

Lead to a pleasure so wicked...
From the shadows, Garreth has long watched over Lucia. Now, the only way to keep the proud huntress safe from harm is to convince her to accept him as her guardian. To do this, Garreth will ruthlessly exploit Lucia’s greatest weakness—her wanton desire for him...

The Review

Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series does not cease to amaze me. It is mostly inevitable that after some time the volumes in the series become similar and the characters and places are recycled and reused. Pleasure of a Dark Prince, the ninth release in the series, is but as new and as exciting as the couple of first instalments. The world of Lore has quickly become one of my favourite backgrounds for romantic novels.

Unfortunately, though the story of the lost artefact is worthy of an Indiana Jones movie, it is a bit of a shame that it was spent on such ordinary characters. There are far more exciting creatures in the world of Lore, that are waiting for their own romance, than Garreth and Lucia.

He only before appeared as the brother to the king of Lykae, Lachlain, and the whole detail about him being known as the Dark Prince because of his pennant for earthy pleasures, seems rewritten in the last moment just to make the character a bit more unique. Its the same situation with insipid Lucia, known only as the Archer among the Valkyrie. It seems a poor characterization for a heroine to be described only as the woman with the bow. Luckily here the added twist with a horrific god for the nemesis actually fuels the action.

And quite an action it is, taking the heroes from the misty swamps of New Orleans to the exotic hell of Amazonian Jungle and frozen peaks of northern mountains. The love story is fairly typical, considering that the male is dominating werewolf, who is driven by desire to protect his mate. A mate who would rather prefer to handle her own problems, than relinquish her career for an insanely hot piece of man candy. Add to that vows of chastity that the heroine made a long time ago. Sexual tension ensues.

Still the best parts of Pleasure of a Dark Prince are the episodes with the characters from earlier novels from the series. Regin, Lothaire, Nix, I could go on. All the brilliantly written weirdos more than deserve their own instalments in the series. The author seems to be of the same mind, because the epilogue suggests that they may actually have a larger part to play in the next novel. Kudos to that and to the Pleasure of a Dark Prince. Full set of stars!

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