Goodreads Summery: The severed head marked by a distinctive tattoo on its cheek should have been a Guild case, but dark instincts honed over hundreds of years of life compel the vampire Dmitri to take control. There is something twisted about this death, something that whispers of centuries long past…but Dmitri’s need to discover the truth is nothing to the vicious strength of his response to the hunter assigned to decipher the tattoo.
Savaged in a brutal attack that almost killed her, Honor is nowhere near ready to come face to face with the seductive vampire who is an archangel’s right hand, and who wears his cruelty as boldly as his lethal sensuality…the same vampire who has been her secret obsession since the day she was old enough to understand the inexplicable, violent emotions he aroused in her.
As desire turns into a dangerous compulsion that might destroy them both, it becomes clear the past will not stay buried. Something is hunting…and it will not stop until it brings a blood-soaked nightmare to life once more…
Archangel’s Blade is Dimitri and Honor’s book. I am kind of disappointed it’s not another episode in Elena and Raphael’s life (the couple in the last three books). But not too disappointed. Come on, this is Dimitri, Elena’s nemesis. Plus, just look at that cover.
I have to say, in past books, I didn’t really like Dimitri. Part of that is probably because Elena is the main character in the other books and she doesn’t like him. He doesn’t like her, either. He hurts her; he constantly winds her up. (Winding someone up is a phrase I found in books by British authors. I quite like it.) Anyway, he’s a jerk in past books. In this book, he’s a sympathy hero. The way she does that, transforming him from a jerk to a likeable hero, well, I am just amazed.
There are hints in the other books about Dimitri’s painful past. Nothing explicit, it’s all just kind of in the background and I still dismissed him as an ass. This book explains it all. It explains in a way that is not sentimental or overdone, but just right. I am amazed. He has to kill his own child – and I didn’t even know he had a child, let alone two. Painful. All his past memories, they range from sweet to bittersweet to painful. He’s never forgiven himself. (Yes, that is a lot like other troubled, painful-past heroes, but Dimitri is better written than a lot of them, including the bulk of Dark Hunters, even though that sounds sacrilegious.)
Honor is the heroine; she is a hunter, but her skills are primarily academic. As a child, she bounces from foster home to foster home and later she’s kidnapped by vampires for months. She’s a mess when they get her back. With Dimitri, she begins to regain confidence. It’s fast, but not hard to believe. Of course, it’s just as easy to believe that if Dimitri hadn’t come into her life, she wouldn’t have regained her confidence.
Minus points – the summary talks about murder, headless bodies and distinctive tattoos. All that is there, but it seems almost a secondary plot in the book. Capturing the vampires who tortured Honor is more important and the two have nothing to do with each other. Except as a means to bring Honor and Dimitri together.
The romance between the two is really great. In the end she agrees to become a vampire – that isn’t such a surprise, is it? It’s hardly a HEA ending if you know your SO won’t survive your death a second time (yes, a second time!!!!! The first time was centuries in the past. He barely survived his own grief).
Grade: A-
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