I swore after Dark Fire that I would never read another Carpathian story, but kept hearing this one was different. It's not. Big tough he-man sees girl, takes her against her will and forces her to be his regardless of what she wants (and it's for her own good. Thanks, Dad). Same old bodice-ripping garbage that I thought this genre had shed.Repitious writing and escalating violence make this book hard to endure. The rules of the world are ever changing (meaning the writer needs to to start writing down what she tells us because in every book she seems to forget what laws she made about her world in the previous book) while the characters are not. Same hero, same heroine + graphic violence + no setting = BORING BOOK. As for the surprise ending? So lame, I'm still in recovery.