The Dark Highlander - Karen Marie Moning

The Dark Highlander by Karen Marie Moning
Form: Audiobook
Reader: Phil Gigante

From his penthouse lair high above Manhattan, Dageus looks out over a glittering city that calls to the darkness within him. A sixteenth-century Scot trapped between worlds, he is fighting a losing battle with the thirteen Druids who possess his soul, dooming him to an eternity of sexual pursuit. When Chloe Zanders, student of antiquities, is drawn into his world, she finds the insatiable alpha male an irresistible lure.

I liked this Highlander book more than Beyond the Highland Mist. I thought perhaps jumping to some of Karen Moning’s latter highlander books I may enjoy them better, and I was right. I also, for whatever reason, seem to like the guy to be kind of dark and evil in a way, as this Highlander is. I kind of like the animalistic nature portrayed – it makes for fun sexy men in my opinion.

The tension and sexual frustration between the two main characters in this book is great. There were many parts where I literally laughed out loud (and when you’re listening to an audiobook at work, it can cause some weird looks). I liked Chloe much better than Adrienne as the female lead – she was fun and she also wasn’t going to take any crap. I like it when the girl is not completely helpless, and even the better when she’s willing to kick a little butt.

Some of my favorite points of the book; one would definitely be listening to it on audiobook as oppose to reading it. The reader, although I was a little leery of having a male reader for such a sexual book, was great! He did a beautiful Scottish accent. His girly voices were awful, but he definitely made up for it with the Scottish accent and his animated reading. He really got into the part, making it very very good. Another favorite part of mine was the way Dageus would look at Chloe and bite his lower lip and slowly release it. It caused sparks to fly, and near the end of the book ended up being their own sort of sexual dialogue. The story line was good to, filled with myths and druid histories and all sorts of fun little tid-bits. I don’t know if Karen made up a lot of that stuff, or if she got the information elsewhere, but I always like depth. I like the stories of the past that play into the here in now (in books). I like it when you can see a lot of though and effort went into making the book as real as it possibly can be, without being real of course. (Because, you know, time travel..just isn’t happening…yet.)

I’m growing attached to these romance novels. I’ve already got the library sending me The Immortal Highlander because I’ve been dying to know what happens to Adam Black after reading the excerpt from Beyond the Highland Mist. I’m going to have to go back to some normal books sometime soon to get some variety in my system. I also don’t want to be pegged as a “romance reader” or people to think of my blog as being mostly romance novels. I like being a semi-well rounded reader, although the romance is becoming a favorite. Especially when it is mixed with dark/evil or the paranormal/fantasy aspects. I’ve been having fun in make-believe worlds.