Cris's Reviews > A Hunger Like No Other

Basically I despised Lachlain MacRieve. He is an alpha character with no redeeming qualities. He treats Emma like crap for the first half of the novel. He takes her hostage, blackmails her into staying with him by threatening her family’s safety with his clan, lies to her about why he’s kidnapping her, comes within inches of raping her and that’s all within the first 100 pages or so. The author implies at some point that his treatment of her is justified because Lachlain hates vampires, but I never got the feeling he was reacting to Emma as a vampire. (Not least of which because even he keeps forgetting she’s a vampire because she doesn’t act *anything* like a vampire.) And hatred for someone’s race isn’t a good enough reason for behaving badly anyway.

Basically for the first half of the book Lachlain acts like Emma’s his sex toy or possession (*his* mate to do with as *he* wishes) rather a person who might have thoughts or feelings of her own. The second half of the book, after one of Emma’s aunts threatens him, he suddenly starts acting a little better. (More of just your typical macho-alpha jerk behavior. But his behavioral change didn’t seem to be accompanied by any deep or meaningful character change and he didn’t really express remorse for his behavior.)

Characterization: Stinks. Emma’s aunts are rather funny and zany, but very one-dimensional. The other Lykae are very stereotypical types, and so are the bad guys. Emma’s the only half-way original character and we don’t get nearly enough insight into her.