Edge of Darkness

by Christine Feehan

[wyvernfriend]

Dark Crime is right This book is 390 pages long and 216 of them are the Christine Feehan story.  I realise that there are a lot of deep Feehan fans but I find the stories disturbing, full of consent issues and undermining of strong women. I admit that I read many books where consent and agency are problematic but Feehan seems to push many of my buttons and make me quite cranky. 
Some authors pull you past issues and allow you to keep reading but I just can't with Feehan, my internal editor rears her head and spends the entire story pointing at things that irritate rather than going with the story.  She often creates characters that I like initially and then they fall in love and seem to be undermined and turn from strong to weak and stop being the people I liked.  Which is probably most of what I dislike about Laurel K Hamilton. There's also an amount of "this is what women are really like" subtext that rubs me up the wrong way.
 
Blaze is about to take on the men who killed her father and rings the number on a card to tell the person on the other side what's about to go down and instead he comes to her to try to persuade her to live, and that she's his mate and then he fails in woo and adulting. Sorry, I tried, it just annoyed me so much every time they talked.
 
Dead by Twilight by Maggie Shayne starts with some minor slut shaming and then continues into a detective novel with a vampire who has found ways of hiding in the police force and using her night-time skills well and who realises that there is a place and maybe a partner.  I found this a much better story with a lot more agency for everyone.
 
Cimarron Spirit by Lori Herter did show some inexperience but as a story of an old vampire and an archaeologist trying to choose between safe and dangerous men.  It was a good glimpse of possible better stories.