Eternal Kiss of Darkness

Hello everyone, I am back on my normal day and can I just say I sooo do not want to be working today!!! There are so many books that came out today that I would much rather be home reading. The second in Maya Banks KGI series, No Place to Run and Richelle Meads last book in the Vampire Academy series, Last Sacrifice, just to name a few. But alas, I am not independently wealthy so I will be at work until 5 and then all bets are off and I am ordering pizza for dinner.

Right now I want to talk about one of my favorite authors, Jeaniene Frost. If you have not read any of the books from her Night Huntress series/world then run, don't walk, to your nearest book store and start with Halfway to the Grave. This is one of my favorite series, and has the HOTTEST couple to ever be put on paper, Cat and Bones. While Cat and Bones are in Eternal Kiss of Darkness, this story is actually about Mencheres, who we originally meet in One Foot in the Grave, the second of the NH series.

Eternal Kiss of Darkness, Jeaniene Frost, Avon, July 2010

An immortal war has been brewing in the darkness...and now one woman has stumbled into the shadows. Chicago private investigator Kira Graceling should have just kept on walking. But her sense of duty refused to let her ignore the moans of pain coming from inside a warehouse just before dawn. Suddenly she finds herself in a world she's only imagined in her worst nightmares. At the center is Mencheres, a breathtaking Master vampire who thought he'd seen it all. Then Kira appears - this fearless, beautiful....human who braved death to rescue him. Though he burns for her, keeping Kira in his world means risking her life. Yet sending her away is unthinkable. But with danger closing in, Mencheres must choose either the woman he craves, or embracing the darkest magic to defeat an enemy bent on his eternal destruction.

Kira Graceling is on her way home after a long night at her job as a private investigator when she hears a noise and decides to see if she can help. She walks into a warehouse and what she sees makes no sense, something is torturing a man with knives, but before she can do anything ghouls attack her and mortally wound her.

Mencheres was in that warehouse in an semi-attempt to end his life. Not wanting the human to die as she was there to save him, Mencheres kills the ghouls and flees the scene with Kira. He takes her to one of his homes in Chicago where he gives her blood to heal her. When she wakes up, he realizes that she is immune to his mind control and he cannot erase the scene that she witnessed. He holds her captive for a week in the hopes that once his blood dilutes he will be able to wipe her mind. However that does not happen and her knowledge puts her in danger, especially now as his millennia old feud between himself and a Law Guardian named Radjedef is coming to a head.

During the week that Kira is with Mencheres the two develope feelings for each other but both refuse to act on those feelings. Realizing that Kira needs to get back to the real world with her sick sister, Mencheres lets her go and asks that in return for helping her family she not talk about the vampire world. Kira agrees, but once she is back in her own world she cannot stop thinking about Mencheres and decides to go looking for him. In her attempt to find Mencheres, Kira gets herself in a bad situation, that gets worse when Radjedef shows up and demands that Mencheres kill her for interferring in the vampire world. Mencheres has no choice but to kill Kira and then bring her back as a vampire wether she wants it or not.

Now the two must fight together to save their lives and prove that Mencheres has been set up by Radjedef.

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, because while I found Mencheres an interesting character in previous books, I didn't like him very much. This book changed my mind. Kira was another strong female character who I think will fit right in with Cat and Denise. While Kira and Mencheres are the main focus of the book a lot of favorite characters from The NH series make appearances. This book will only pull you further into The Night Huntress World and its characters. The story line was strong and was everything that I have come to expect from Ms. Frost. I give the book 4.5 chocolate dipped strawberries!