as a huge fan of the anita blake series, this was poor in comparision.the story was good but i found most of the conversations between the 2 main characters repeating itself over and over and over and over again. it didn't give you a great background of what the differnece between the vampires and the carpathians were but enough to enjoy the story. guess i'd need to start start the series from the beginning to get it.i'd be interested to read another in the series to see if it's just this book or how the author writes. JMO