Arikos & Megeara 'Geary' Kafieri

Chthonians --
Savitar
Acheron -- 12,000 years old
Zebulon (ZT) -- 25,000 years old
? Jaden ?
? Toki ?
? Nick ?

"...the key to humanity is simple. Live your life with purpose. They need goals to strive for. ... Without goals, humanity is lost and single man can't function." ( )

In the ethereal world of dreams, there are champions who fight to protect the dreamer and there are demons who prey on them...

Arik is such a predator. Condemned by the gods to live eternity without emotions, Arik can only feel when he’s in the dreams of others. For thousands of years, he’s drifted through the human unconscious, searching for sensation. Now he’s finally found a dreamer whose vivid mind can fill his emptiness.

Dr. Megeara Kafieri watched her father ruin himself and his reputation as he searched to prove Atlantis was real. Her deathbed promise to him to salvage his reputation has now brought her to Greece where she intends to prove once and for all that the fabled island is right where her father said it was. But frustration and bad luck dog her every step. Especially the day they find a stranger floating in the sea. His is a face she’s seen many times.... in her dreams.

What she doesn’t know is that Arik holds more than the ancient secrets that can help her find the mythical isle of Atlantis. He has made a pact with the god Hades: In exchange for two weeks as a mortal man, he must return to Olympus with a human soul. Megeara’s soul.

With a secret society out to ruin her expedition, and mysterious accidents that keep threatening her life, Megeara refuses to quit. She knows she’s getting closer to Atlantis and as she does, she stumbles onto the truth of what Arik really is.

For Arik his quest is no longer simple. No human can know of a Dream-Hunter’s existence. His dream of being mortal has quickly turned into his own nightmare and the only way to save himself will be to sacrifice the very thing he wanted to be human for. The only question is, will he?

Synopsis: The Dream-Hunter is #18 in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters series. This book takes us back in time from when the rest of the series takes place - about 10 years into the past - to the shores of Greece. Dr. Megeara Kafieri is trying desperately to fulfill her life's ambition: to find the ancient continent of Atlantis. She's pretty sure she's found the exact location, only she can't seem to get permission from the powers that be to dig beneath the ocean floor. What she doesn't know is that the gods don't want anyone poking around the ruins of Atlantis for fear of what might be unleashed - and they'll do whatever it takes to stop Geary from fulfilling her mission. The book's hero, Arikos, is a Skotos (a cursed and unfeeling dream god who can only experience emotions when siphoning them off of human dreamers). Arik has been hooking up with Geary in her dreams for the past several months, feeding off her extra-special super-vivid emotions. Apparently, Geary is all work and no play in the real world but a total demon in the sack (when she's dreaming anyway). Only it's not enough for Arik to experience her in the dream world; he craves more of her and her intense emotions. So he makes a bargain with the god of the underworld, Hades: he can walk the earth as a mortal man for two weeks and experience all of the feelings a human can experience. The price: when his two weeks is up, Arik must deliver unto Hades Geary's soul.

Well, needless to say, it doesn't ever bode well for a relationship when one of the parties goes into it with the intention of eventually murdering the other person. You can see the set-up for the end-of-the-book drama right from the start. Also, their relationship starts out based on sex (well, dream sex anyway) and I never felt like there was all that much real romantic tension between them. I honestly think the author could've taken the romantic elements out of the book completely and just focused on the plot because I found that far more interesting. However, what saves this book is the continued development of the overall storyline of the series. It explains just a little bit more about the imprisoned Atlantean goddess Apollymi. Also, the world and mythology of the Dream-Hunters is fleshed out a little more and lots of new characters are introduced, several of whom I hope get their own stories one day. My favorite new characters were probably Geary's sweet and brainy teenage cousin Tory and Arik's jaded demigod brother Solin. We also see some characters we've seen in other books, but in this novel we get to see some of their past. And what a treat to get snippets of Acheron, Kyrian, and Nick ten years earlier than when we meet them in Night Pleasures!

My favorite part: Tory feeding Arik his first moon pie. ( )

http://booksbypickles.blogspot.com/20... ( )

I was bitterly disappointed with this book. I have always heard good things about Ms. Kenyon's books and thought I would love this story. The basic premise is excellent and should have been captivating, instead, it seemed to drag on and on. A book that normally should have taken me 2-3 days to read, took several weeks because I just wasn't that interested. I am not sure if it would have been better if I had read her previous works, but I felt it should have been a stand alone read. I found myself more interested in the peripheral characters like Solin, than I was in the hero and heroine, and that is never a good sign. ( )