Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon - a review

Fantasy Lover is the first book in Dark Hunter Series by Sherrilyn Kenyon. This is series about Greek gods, demons, vampires, were-people but most of all about love and redemption. I started reading this series in the middle when I found a free e-book a year from now. It was a confusing way of entering a completely new world. I don't recommend it. But I was curious, and I started buying sequels. Yesterday I finally finished it. And what an irony - with the first book in the series.
Fantasy Lover kept me awake through the whole night. But I don't regret a minute of the lost sleep. It was great. It was heart wrenching and I cried a few times but I smiled too. It’s a book about lost youth and hard childhood. It asks the question about what we are prepared to do to earn love from other persons. It has a strong message about self-respect and a price of love.
S. Kenyon was an abused child and I think that's the reason why she can describe so well a suffering of unwanted child or even a grownup. Through all Dark Hunter series this theme is present. But that's the reason I just LOVE IT.

Here is the blurb:

Dear Reader, Being trapped in a bedroom with a woman is a grand thing. Being trapped in hundreds of bedrooms over two thousand years isn't. And being cursed into a book as a love-slave for eternity can ruin even a Spartan warrior's day.As a love-slave, I know everything about women. How to touch them, how to savor them, and most of all, how to pleasure them. But when I was summoned to fulfill Grace Alexander's sexual fantasies, I found the first woman in history who saw me as a man with a tormented past. She alone bothered to take me out of the bedroom and onto the world. She taught me to love again.But I was not born to love. I was cursed to walk eternity alone. As a general, I had long ago accepted my sentence. Yet now I have found Grace--the one thing my wounded heart cannot survive without. Sure, love can heal all wounds, but can it break a two-thousand-year-old curse?—Julian of Macedon

Although this is the beginning of Dark Hunter series, Dark Hunters themselves aren't mentioned yet. I loved Julian and all his good and bad qualities. I was a little suspicious about love-slave theme at first (hence the reason this was the last book in series I read), but there was no reason for suspicion - Kenyon is a great storyteller and she did it great, again. Grace is a great person who won't succumb to their mutual sex appeal just like that. She wants it to mean something. And it will mean a lot more then you or they expect at the beginning. This is the book that you read with your heart not your mind.
All in all - great read.

I give it 5 feathers:

There is another series called Dream Hunters which takes place in the same world as Dark Hunters and many of the characters appear in both. I strongly recommend both.

Here are all books in the both series (minus anthologies and free read that you can download on S. Kenyon’s web) - from my own bookshelf.

For more information about the book, other series and author please visit:
http://www.officialsanctuary.com/ or http://www.myspace.com/officialdarkhunter.

The new redesigned webpage is expected soon.
The next book in the series is called Bad Moon Rising and it will be available on August 4, 2009.