Dragonmark: A Dark-Hunter Novel

About 100 pages of this book is word by word repetition of Dragonbane...a parallel story about the main character's brother. I get that the story overlaps and intertwine but I'm reading pretty much the same conversation between all the characters with no added insight. I've skipped pages of this book. This was lazy editing and lazy writing. I'm truly disappointed because the author has done such a good job intertwining the stories with her other books. Most of the good reviews are probably from readers who have not read the preceding books. I feel so cheated. I paid full price for half of a story.

I do so love the Dark Hunter universe and I’m always so excited when a new book comes out! DRAGONMARK left me happy and perturbed at the same time. The story started off great Illarion was betrayed by humans and now he hates them. He’s a surely dragon with a heart thought long-dead…until he encounters the kind and fearless Edilyn. Their story is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful. They grew to love each other beyond reason and fight together against their enemies. Unfortunately, their mating was doomed from the start and years later, enemies separated Illarion from his beautiful mate. Heart wrenching. After the separation, there is a long period of time where the story overlaps with previous storylines from SON OF NO ONE and DRAGONBANE. While it was nice to connect the dots of who Illarion was from those previous books, I’d already read those scenes and found myself skipping large chunks of the book in order to get to the new stuff. The overlaps took up almost half (if not more) of the book. Getting to the new parts at the end of the book was refreshing, but since the majority of the story was eaten up by the overlaps, Illarion and Edilyn’s reunion was rushed and the book ended relatively fast. While I was happy that the couple did find one another again, I disconnected with their storyline during the large amount of the story overlaps. Still, it was a Sherrilyn Kenyon book and it was good, there were some surprises and lots of excitement. But, in my opinion, it just wasn’t a complete story. I felt the overlaps hurt the storyline rather than contributed to it.

I enjoyed this book, but it felt a bit off with introduction of characters. The plot basically picks up a little bit after Dragonsbane with most of the story about Illarion's past. I would have preferred to have more time during the present to further satisfy my need to the Dark-Hunters lore. Overall, great read.