GENRE:
Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Steam, Fetish Porn
SETTING:
Various locales, including — unsurprisingly — Europe’s Carpathian Mountains.
SEX:
Explicit. Also, be advised: “forcible seduction,” aka “Your lips are saying NO and your body — as evidenced by the fact that you’re screaming and fighting — is saying NO and even your mind is saying NO (and I know this because I’m a vampire, so I can read your mind), but I know that you really mean YES, so I’m going to keep on keeping on with this” is a continuing thread running through these books.
OUR HEROINE(S):
Multitudinous, and will not be tamed (until they are) with names like Tempest, Ivory, and Raven.
OUR HERO(ES):
Legion, and will not be saved (until they are), with names like Mikhail, Vikirnoff, and Rafael.
LOVE RIVAL(S):
Our Dark heroes, and we use the term loosely, neither recognize nor tolerate rivals.
SIDEKICKS:
Varies; usually a fellow Carpathian who exists only to see his friend/brother/secret crush find happiness (and will thence often get his own book).
VOICE:
Third person.
VAMPIRE MYTHOLOGY:
Vampires in this series are members of a race called the Carpathians, a race that is ancient, powerful… and dying. The birth of a Carpathian child is a vanishingly rare event; the babies who are born are all male, and most die during the first year of life.
STATUS:
Secret.
SOCIETY:
Modern, but vaguely unsettling.
NOTABLE POWERS:
Shape-shifting, control of the elements, telepathy and astonishing longevity. A select few can also perform magic.
CREATION:
Basically, you’re born into it, although you can be Made (the usual way).
WEAKNESSES:
There aren’t a lot of female Carpathians, on account of the whole only boys being born thing, and when a grown male Carpathian doesn’t acquire a female lifemate, he loses the ability to see color and feel all emotions save the joy of the kill. If he kills, he loses his soul, and it is only in — improbably — meeting his lifemate that his color vision returns and his soul is saved.
FOOD SOURCE:
Human blood, although they don’t generally kill their prey. In fact, killing a human turns a Carpathian into a ravening fiend.
OTHER LEGENDS:
Dragons, exotic animals, other things.
BOOKS:
At this writing, there are THIRTY of them, beginning with Dark Prince (1999), and all with “Dark” in the title. Representative titles: Dark Possession (2007), Dark Curse (2008), and…
RECENT:
… Dark Carousel (2016).
FORTHCOMING:
Not yet announced but, oh, for sure.
OTHER MEDIA:
There are a lot of fan-made YouTube clips about the Dark Series, most of them featuring super-hot guys. You can also download samples of Carpathian chants in Carpathian here. Plus, audio books.
MERCHANDISE:
What do you get the submissive who has everything? Perhaps a Carpathian Gift?
ANALYSIS:
With their, ahem, forcible seductions, overbearing alpha Carpathians, and women basically existing to save their males from madness, with very little say in the matter… suffice it to say, you’d be unlikely to see any of these books housed in the library at NOW Headquarters.
WEBSITE:
QUOTE:
“The males were essentially predators, the darkness growing and spreading in them until they had no emotion, nothing but the dark in the gray, cold world. For each it was necessary to find his other half, the lifemate that would bring him forever into the light.”
— Dark Prince (1999)