Dark Needs at Night’s Edge: Kresley Cole

Another novel in the Immortals After Dark Series …

Neomi Laress, a famous ballerina from a past century, became a phantom the night she was publicly and torturously murdered by her ex-fiance. Dead to the world and invisible to the living, she relives her harrowing death every month during the full moon. Bound by her violent demise and as a result unable to leave her beloved manse Elancourt, Neomi haunts the grounds … protecting the premises and scaring away trespassers and potential vandals – until she encounters a lodger even more terrifying than herself.

To prevent him from harming others, Conrad Worth’s three brothers imprison him in an abandoned manor. Half-mad for centuries, the Fallen vampire is driven by an overpowering bloodlust, the urge to kill, and most importantly - to revenge himself upon his makers … and his family is running an immortal intervention.

But at Elancourt, the vampire warlord risks being driven even further into madness by an exquisite female who leaves his body racked with lust and his soul torn with desire. For when Conrad realizes that Neomi is real and not merely another one of his hallucinations, he knows that he’ll do anything to claim his destined Bride, even if it means wrestling her back from the Reaper himself …

All of the definitions at the beginning of the book before you got to the story threw me off, but I will say they were necessary to understand the text – I just don’t know if the average reader would pick up this book in a store, flip open the first six pages, and want to keep reading after seeing that they are all a glossary.

Who would have thought of a klepto casper? Or a three-hundred (plus) year old (male) virgin! Vampires having the ability to regenerate limbs like lizards (don’t know if I would have ever been driven to chop off my own limbs, even taking that into account), or for that matter, have children! There’s definitely some new twists on the vampire theme pulled out of Cole’s hat.

I loved the Valkerie sister-in-laws. You take their menfolk, they wage war on you, and it doesn’t matter a damn that you’re a vampire king with a vast immortal army. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, give us our men back.

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ISBN 10: 1-4165-4707-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-4165-4707-5
Publication date April 29, 2008 through Pocket Star Books