Review ~ Seize the Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Title: Seize the Night
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Series: Dark-Hunter #7
Length: 368 pages
Publisher: Piatkus Books

Original Publication Date: February 24th 2005

Valerius isn't a popular Dark-Hunter-he's a Roman, which means that the largely Greek Hunters have a major grudge against him and his civilization for superceding them. To make things worse, he's very conscious of his aristocratic background and breeding. So it serves him right when he runs into Tabitha Devereaux.

She's sassy, sexy, and completely unwilling to take him seriously. (Not to mention that she's the twin sister of the wife of former Dark-Hunter Kyrian-Val's mortal enemy.) What Tabitha does take seriously is hunting and killing vampires-and soon she and Val have to grapple with the deadliest of all Daimons-one who's managed to come back from the dead, and one who holds a serious grudge against both of them.

To win against evil, Val will have to loosen up, learn to trust, and put everything on the line to protect a man he hates and a woman who drives him nuts.

 My Thoughts:

The main reason I wanted to read this so badly was the fiasco between Nick and Ash. I'm reading this series completely out of order (not recommended!) I missed this one, and while I was reading the latest books in the series I didn't know why their relationship changed so drastically, what triggered it.

However, I got so much more from this book than just the answer to my question. At first it was hard to pay attention to it, especially to the filling parts where nothing really happened, but I have to say that Valerius and Tabitha were very great protagonists. On short term - if we look at it book by book, the Dark-Hunter books are mostly character driven and focus on their relationships, hence it's pretty important to me to like the main characters as well, not just some of my favorite "guest stars" from the previous/latest books. In my opinion, it's not really great if the sidekicks steal all the spotlight from the protagonists.

Anyway, Tabby and Valerius are entertaining and really interesting characters on their own, but together, in the same room, they're sweet and hilarious, even though they couldn't be more different. But that's why  they're complement each other perfectly, causing enviable and quite a few funny moments.

Tabby is the big mouthed, "slightly" hot-headed vampire hunter who lives by her own rules. She's smart, very perceptive, and she's the most kick-ass human girl in the series. However, She is blessed - or cursed as she would say, to be an Empath. She feels the emotions of others around her, even more powerfully than her own feelings. Ash taught her how to dampen down others' emotions, and to concentrate on her own, but they're still aren't completely muted. Mostly this causes her to lash out on people. Perhaps this is the very reason she is a very good pair of Valerius, the always so cold Roman general, who never shows his real feelings and always hides behind his mask. I adored, that these two are so different, and sometimes I truly felt like if Valerius would have jumped right out of the history books to this modern world, in moreover, Tabitha's crazy world. 

Vlad's life story and his relationship with his brother, Zarek was a bit like something we will see in Styxx's book, only not THAT dramatic. It's still pretty harsh, but nothing could top Ash's and Styxx's story. It's twisted, and of course he wears scars on his body and his soul, like every hero in this series. His relationship with the other Dark-Hunters was just as bad. Romans and Greeks? Everyone knows that's not a good pairing, but especially Kyrian hates his guts. Valerius is the big SOB in most Dark-Hunters' eyes. Kyrian (he earned some good points for making the last scene so incredible hilarious!), Julian and Amanda were beyond any doubt the most negative characters in this book (besides the villains),  with their ongoing personal vendetta against Valerius. 

The plot was also interesting. This book had it all: Stryker, Apollymi, a mysterious returning "guest", and of course, as usual, everyone has a different purpose, doesn't matter if they apparently working together. As for the real action, unfortunately I didn't get enough. And the mysterious villain's identity had been revealed too soon, however, there were some interesting scenes, like the way Stryker found out the truth about Ash's origin, the final battle, which was not specifically very exciting, but fact is, it will change the emphasis of the later books. There were real heartbreaking deaths, and this is where Ash and Nick's wonderful friendship runs aground.

Favorite character(s): Tabby, Val, Nick
Favorite scene(s): Tabby's and Val's first meeting in the alley
Favorite quote(s):

The tallest Daimon, who stood even in height to Valerius, laughed. "How nice of Acheron to send us a playmate."
Valerius pulled his two retractable swords from his coat and extended the blades. "Play is for children and dogs. Now that you have identified which category you fall into, I'll show you what Romans do to rabid dogs."

"I hear some godawful kind of music from outside, horns blaring, and I'm in a house with a mohawk cuckoo bird, a transvestite, and a knife-wielding lunatic."
"Why are you at Tabitha's?" Acheron asked.

"It's not my fault I stab all the fanged people. They shouldn't look like Daimons."
"I didn't look like a Daimon, but you stabbed me."
"Yeah, well, you looked like a lawyer so I had to kill you. It was a moral imperative."

"There are always three sides to every memory, Z. Yours, theirs, and the truth, which lies somewhere in between the two."

Better to be feared than liked. His father's words rang in his ears. People will always betray someone they like, but never someone they truly fear.
It was true. Fear kept people in line. He more than anyone knew that.

Overall:  Not too exciting, but still a very good book, with good main characters, interesting twists, jokes, family feuds. Definitely better than most of the previous books in the series. Worth reading.