Character Review #1: Christine Feehan's Carpathians

For my first character review (which will hopefully be an ongoing blog feature) I've decided to review a set of characters that all have very similar characteristics: Christine Feehan's Carpathian males. If you're not familiar with this ongoing series you can find out all about it here. At the moment it's a 21 book series that has a HUGE following, and rightly so. I honestly enjoyed the first dozen or so books of this series. Unfortunately I'm the type of reader that gets burnt out on a series of this size. I'm struggling to stay faithful to Anita Blake at the moment as well. So, I own about half of the Dark books, but have read more by borrowing from a friend and the library.

What do I think of the Carpathian males? Well, first and foremost, where can I get one?! These fiercely loyal men are HOT,HOT,HOT! Every one of them is a study in masculine perfection of the physical form (well, duh). They're tall and gorgeous, some dark, some light and ALL alpha male. To be completely honest, I wouldn't mind having a man who could toss a small car, with an overprotective streak ten miles long, wanting to pamper me and set me on a pedestal. My biggest beef with this series is how many of the female characters get angry at them for these inherent characteristics. I'm all for women's rights but can easily put them aside for a little pampering. I mean really, is it so hard to let the man take over where your life is being threatened? No. So, overall these men are strong, fight vampires and whatever else threatens their lifemates, friends and families, and are nigh indestructible. They can turn into mist, sleep in the healing earth of the Carpathian Mountains and prefer blood to beer. What's not to like?

The Carpathians are not exactly vampires because vampires are evil, former Carpathian males who resorted to killing their prey. Carpathians do drink blood but don't kill innocents. They exist in a muted world of black and white, with no emotions until they meet their lifemates for the first time. Once they meet their lifemates, they hate to be separated from them for any length of time, which really pisses off a lot of the women. Their female lifemates can be converted into Carpathians, however, reproduction is a problem that hadn't been solved by the time I stopped reading the series. They were working on it though. There are humans who know all about them and work with them in some way. They have enemies in both evil vampires and humans. They live all over the globe.

That is the Carpathians in a nutshell. I did enjoy most of the books, but became burnt out and found it hard to keep reading. I still have a couple on my TBR shelf. One of them, that I did in fact read, is Dark Possession (#18). It's a good story that can be read alone, though the information about will also explain a lot. The copy I'm giving away was read once and is in very good condition. Do you want it? Just post a comment below, either with your own opinion on the Carpathians or just to say hi, and you're entered to win. I'll draw a winner on Wednesday, April 6th.
Good luck!