Am really enjoying this series. I like the vampire mythology mixed with medicine. ( )

PRIVATE DEMON is the second installment of the Darkyn series after IF ANGELS BURN. Lynn Viehl brings back the characters - Alexandra Keller and Michael Cyprien - as they play an equally important role to capture Thierry Durand, this book's hero.

Thierry centers in on Jema Shaw at a homicide crime scene, believing she can lead him to members of the Brethren, an evil group of monks set on destroying the Darkyn. He enters her dreams in order to discover information, but loses his heart instead.

One thing the book lacks is hot steamy romance scenes. Instead, the reader gets dark snippets inside Thierry mind which explains his past. Also through Jema's dreams a bond is formed with Thierry that goes beyond physical.

One thing that should be highlighted about this book is Viehl's ability to add subplots without disturbing the story. In J.R. Ward's book, DARK LOVER, the extra characters distracted, where as Viehl blends the characters together to perfection.

Staying true to the dark motif, there be no fairy tale, everyone walks away happily ever after ending. I don't want to say more as it might ruin it for the reader. You'll have to judge whether or not you like it or not. I admire the author for not taking the safe road and veering into new territory.

The only problem I had with the story was the same as with the first and that's believability. I just didn't buy the story hook, line, and sinker. Even so, it's one of the best dark fantasy series out on the market. I would suggest you start with the very first book, IF ANGELS BURN.

http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com/... ( )

I enjoyed If Angels Burn and wondered if Private Demon would be as good and it was, actually in some ways it was better because the world building grows in this story.

This story focuses on Jema Shaw, she's a diabetic and believes that she doesn't have long to live but still she wants to give something to her community and do rather than be passive and she works in the museum founded by her father. Her mother disapproves, in fact her mother disapproves of any sign of independence by Jema. She has ensured some control over her daughter by hiring a full-time doctor to keep an eye on her.
Next door to her lives a vampire, and she doesn't know it, he's been a family friend for years. There's another vampire around though. Thierry Durand was tormented body and soul by his people's enemies and by his wife. He's attracted by Jema and starts invading her dreams.
It's fun, light but I felt myself becoming involved with the characters and rooting for them. The world continues to grow and become more interesting. ( )

This is the second book in Lynn Viehl’s Darkyn series. It follows up If Angels Burn with the same semi-predictable but still very enjoyable plot style, yet there is nowhere near the unsettling feeling that comes from the torture scenes in the first book. This is still a dark fantasy, or perhaps an urban fantasy (the definitions blur a little), but there were no scenes that I will skip when I do a re-read (as there was in the first one).

I enjoyed this book, probably more than the first one. I like the heroine in If Angels Burn better, but she shows up in Private Demon as a supporting character, so that made me happy. In fact, many of the cast of the first book recur in the second. It was an easy sequel to read: a few new characters, the return of old favorites, and not too much re-telling of the previous plot. It had been several months since I read the first book, and Viehl blended the summary with new plot so seamlessly that it seemed I had just finished reading the previous book.

There isn’t a lot of the plot that can be told without giving away things from If Angels Burn, but I can discuss the heroine, who is a new character. She seems pretty realistic to me, yet there were a few aspects of her character that I had to take with a grain of salt. It seemed that she was focused on different parts of her illness than I would have been in her position, and while I can understand it from a plot viewpoint, it did leave me rolling my eyes at her a few times.

Also, there are almost two heroes in the book, which was a twist I found interesting. That part worked better for me than the heroine did. Most people who I’ve spoken to who have read this book favored one of the men as the one who should win the lady, but I found myself disagreeing with them. The “popular favorite” may have been better for her, but the situation was creepy for me. He’d known her and watched her for ages, ever since she was little – he was too much a father figure to her for me to want him to be her lover.

Anyway, it was an enjoyable book. The series flows well, and seems to have plenty of momentum to carry it through the other books which have been written and the couple of others that have been contracted for in addition. The only problem I have with the series is that it’s shelved in the romance section. I don’t see these as romances: they are urban/dark/paranormal fantasy. Yes, they have romance elements, but they are not – to me – true romances. ( )

2nd in the series, it still jumped around a lot without explanation. I did figure most everything out by the end, but if I weren't so stubborn, I'd probably have given up on this one before it straightened out. One thing that bugged me a LOT was in the initial fight scene where we meet the hero, he says "Connor" several times, and "we" once. ***spoiler, sorta: I guess the "we" might have been a giveaway, if I hadn't been totally confused by that point, but finally near the end of the book, it dawns on me that he was speaking French, and since we were in the heroine's POV, "Connor" and "we" was what she heard, instead of oui and whatever the French word was that I'm guessing means bastard or coward or something else bad. Good thing Antje warned me about the mangled German and the fact that the author thinks people drive on the left in France & Germany. *rolling my eyes* But other than those niggles, it was a good story. I liked that there were a lot of different things going on--Darkyn politics, skinhead ex-priests, secret plots, unrequited love, a couple of different familial angst threads... This was one of those few books that would have benefitted from an extra 50 - 100 pages. If it had been more fleshed out, I'd likely have given it 5 stars. ( )