Exina's Reviews > Pleasure of a Dark Prince

"Lass, I'm about to make you a widow--"

Kresley Cole is more and more merciless – with her characters and with her readers as well. So much blood, so much tension, pain, and death.

The first 16 chapters parallel the storyline of A Hunger Like No Other. The book starts with Lucia and Garreth’s first encounter, when Garreth realizes that Lucia is his mate, and ends when Lucia runs away from him, and Garreth vows he is going to have her back in two weeks.

We meet them one year later. Garreth spent that year chasing her all over the Earth, meanwhile Lucia tried to get rid of him, and also to get an unimaginably powerful weapon to kill the cause of her nightmares and stop an apocalypse. Garreth finally catches her, and they continue her quest together along the River Amazon.

Although the first half of the story is relatively slow, the second half is adventurous and full of fun. They face several dangers, such as giant caimans, new kinds of supernatural beings, mysteries, the legend of El Dorado, and really hot nights.

Garreth's perseverance is admirable; he is loyal, fierce, possessive, and never misses his aim. The portrayal of the beast inside him, the nature of the Lykae is very logical and consequent, till the very end.
He would do anything for Lucia, never gives her up. He protects her “Lousha”, hunts down her enemies, saves her life several times, gives her precious and sweet gifts, including a gift that finally saves her life again! He stands by her side in every situation, despite the fact that he gets only rejection and distrust from her.



I try to understand Lucia, but I’m afraid I'm failing. Okay, she had very, very bad experiences with a certain man, so it is pretty hard for her to trust in anybody. But it was thousands of years ago! With keeping important things back from Garreth, she rushes him into an almost fatal situation.

She is under pressure and seems to be running out of time, so it is understandable that she worries about her archer abilities. But I was really upset when (view spoiler)[she passes all the responsibility to Garreth after their first night, and ruins that beautiful, intimate moment. (hide spoiler)] I just couldn't believe her behavior. Poor Garreth...



I’m not satisfied with the end, because I don’t feel (view spoiler)[having sex (hide spoiler)] is so big a deed or sacrifice from Lucia to save Garreth. I feel this part superficial. She does almost nothing for this love, while Garreth risks everything.

The new secondary characters, Damiãno, Chizabel, Travis, Schecter, Rossiter are intriguing, the old ones, such as Regin and Nïx never disappoint.

“Have you ever fought an opponent you had no defense against? Like a fire breather or an acid spitter?”
“Once I faced a female with diamond skin,” Nïx said breathlessly. “I was transfixed—even as she was choking the life out of me.”
“Really?”
“No, I saw that character on X-Men. I just wanted to commiserate. Alas, I have no weaknesses.”
“Except your insanity,” Lucia pointed out.

Pleasure of a Dark Prince is a real adventure, with lots of humor, and some really dark, horror scenes. I loved the setting, the luscious and dangerous River Amazon, with its amazing wildlife and vegetation, also loved that Cole mixed ancient legends with modern technology. The epilogue is really compelling and puzzling to make me eager to read the next book.


My favorite quotes.