'Dreams of a Dark Warrior' Immortals After Dark #11 by Kresley Cole

From the BLURB:

HE VOWED HE’D COME FOR HER . . .

Murdered before he could wed Regin the Radiant, warlord Aidan the Fierce seeks his beloved through eternity, reborn again and again into new identities, yet with no memory of his past lives.

SHE AWAITS HIS RETURN . . .

When Regin encounters Declan Chase, a brutal Celtic soldier, she recognizes her proud warlord reincarnated. But Declan takes her captive, intending retribution against all immortals—unaware that he belongs to their world.

TO SATE A DESIRE MORE POWERFUL THAN DEATH . . .

Yet every reincarnation comes with a price, for Aidan is doomed to die when he remembers his past. To save herself from Declan’s torments, will Regin rekindle memories of the passion they once shared—even if it means once again losing the only man she could ever love?

Regin is cursed to love one man, and lose him, over and over and over again. . .

The Valkyrie first met mortal man Aidan the Fierce when she was twelve years old. Nine years later they became lovers, until the night that Aidan was brutally murdered before her eyes. But he vowed he would come back for her, would never be kept from his beloved Reginleit, his Radiant One.

Over the centuries Aidan came back, again and again, always a warrior. Regin found and loved Aidan in four different reincarnations. And each time he dies right after remembering who he is, and what Regin means to him.

Now Aidan is back, this time as Declan Chase – ‘magister’ and hunter of immortals. He’s tasked with finding the infamous Valkyrie, Regin, and locking her in a cell to be experimented on and cracked open.

But when Chase inevitably remembers who he is, and how much Regin means to him, will he be able to live with what he has done to her as the Magister?

‘Dreams of a Dark Warrior’ is the eleventh book in Kresley Cole’s ‘Immortals After Dark’ paranormal romance series.

I love Cole’s series. Eleven books in and I still come into each new novel with giddy anticipation, and I’m very rarely disappointed with her heady mix of action, humour and romance. But I have to admit that with ‘Dreams’ I was a little underwhelmed.

In keeping with Coles’s usual timeline overlap, the eleventh book retraces over the storyline of ‘Demon from the Dark’. That book was also set in the immortals holding facility, but told from Carrow’s captured perspective. This time around we get the view from both imprisoned Regin, and her captor, Declan Chase.

I am a little bit over the prison-setting at this point. The twelfth book in the series is ‘Lothaire’, and I have a feeling that we might just be going back to the prison (for a little while at least) because a bit of Lothaire’s background takes place during his confinement. I do understand that this is Cole’s MO – she looks at the same events, from a different character perspective and lends new plot dimensions to ground that readers have already tread. But usually her settings are grandiose and exotic – she has taken us to the Scottish Highlands, picturesque New Orleans and even an Amazonian jungle. And if she’s not taking readers off the continent, she at least sets a good portion of her books in the always fun Val Hall – sorority home of the Valkyrie’s. So, by comparison, the immortals prison is just a little ho-hum.

I did like Regin and Chase/Aidan’s romance. It’s fraught with tension and drama, of the star-crossed, doomed-love variety. I thought Aidan and Regin had a wonderfully epic back story. But as the novel progresses we come to realize that Regin didn’t really, truly love Aidan . . . and that didn’t ring quite ring true for me. I admit, I thought it would be tricky for Chase to accept that Regin could love him, while remembering Aidan – but I also thought it was a minor cop-out to say that this beautiful, grand romance she had with Aidan wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be.

Of course this is ‘Immortals After Dark’, and Ms Cole brings the funny. Regina is a total crack-up, as is her prison cellmate, the fey Natalya. It’s always the case that the funniest moments intermingle with the high-drama, and that’s once again true in ‘Dreams’;

Regin cocked her brow at a dead guard’s machine gun. She hooked her foot under it, hiking it up to catch it.
Natalya said, “Have you ever fired one of those?”
Lorekind scorned them. The weapons were so tackily human. “Look, I've seen Terminator. How difficult can it be? Now, let’s go find Tiger!”

One thing I really liked about this book was introduction of a new Immortal call Thad. He’s a seventeen-year-old cellmate of Regin and Natalya’s, who has only just realized he is part-vampire when some storm-trooper-wannabes dragged him into the prison. To say he’s not coping well is an understatement. But underneath it all Thad is still a Texan quarterback and Eagle Scout, and some hilarity ensues when Natalya very nearly makes him her jailbait. I loved Thad, and I hope his appearance hints that he’ll get his own book one day soon.

All in all, ‘Dreams of a Dark Warrior’ kind of paled in comparison to bigger and better ‘After Dark’ books. I have high-hopes that Lothaire’s book will bring the series back on a high, because his story (and questionable sexuality) were very amusing in this eleventh book.

3/5