REVIEW: Midnight Rising by Lara Adrian (Midnight Breed #4)

REVIEW: Mid­night Ris­ing by Lara Adrian, copy­right March 2008, pub­lished by Dell. Mid­night Ris­ing is the fourth book in Ms. Adrian’s Mid­night Breed vam­pire series set in Boston, New York. Mid­night Ris­ing is avail­able in paper­back and ebook at your favorite retailer.

The vam­pire nation has been liv­ing secretly among humankind since the mid­dle ages. It is a frac­tured soci­ety that has been at war for sev­eral cen­turies. The Breed are a set of hybrid war­riors who fight to pro­tect the vam­pire nation by elim­i­nat­ing Rogue vam­pires, who rep­re­sent the blood­lust mad­ness and insta­bil­ity of their kind. It is a minor­ity view but one that is believed by the Order in that a peace­ful exis­tence between humans is nec­es­sary for the sur­vival of their cul­ture. Breed war­riors of the Order are led by Lucan ‚who is one of the longest liv­ing vam­pires around. It is a broth­er­hood of war­riors sworn to pro­tect their way of life by any means necessary.

Breeds and their kind live apart from human soci­ety; they live in the Dark­haven com­mu­nity. The Enforce­ment agency that polices the vam­pire com­mu­nity, do not care for the Order or their meth­ods in met­ing out Breed law or jus­tice. There is the social struc­ture and cus­toms of this oth­er­worldly com­mu­nity that plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in this series such as the blood bond. Blood bonds are unbreak­able and are sacred between mated cou­ples. There is the gen­er­a­tional hier­ar­chy within the vam­pire cul­ture that is also sig­nif­i­cant where power and pol­i­tics come into play. Each Breed war­rior is borne with a spe­cial gift (or curse) and have der­maglyphs that mark their skin and acts as a barom­e­ter for mood and emo­tion. Weak­nesses are few but deadly: sun­light is to be avoided and decap­i­ta­tion is one sure way to kill their kind.

Women who are Breed­mates are born with a dis­tin­guish­able birth­mark along with a spe­cial oth­er­worldly gift that makes them “dif­fer­ent” as well. Once rec­og­nized as a Breed­mate, the women are given the choice to live among the Breed or return to civil­ian life with no mem­ory of this oth­er­worldly com­mu­nity. Breed­mates are rare and are treated as such. The ben­e­fits of being a Breed­mate are many but impor­tantly, they are given a bit of immor­tal­ity from Breed blood and can have Breed children.

The events of the last book con­cluded with the leader of the Rogues removed and the Order dis­cov­er­ing that the Ancient line is not dead. A jour­nal inter­cepted by the Order sev­eral months ago revealed the loca­tion of a cave that held a hiber­na­tion cham­ber for the Ancient, hid­den in the Czech moun­tains. The Ancient was apart of the off-planet alien race that raped humankind with their blood­lust and cre­ated the first gen­er­a­tion of Breeds. The war between them ended with the Ancient line dead or so they thought. The Order, after learn­ing about this hiber­na­tion cham­ber, got there too late, as the tomb is now empty and the Ancient now gone, by per­sons unknown. In order to hide evi­dence of this, Rio vol­un­teered to stay behind and seal the cave. That was five months ago. The story picks up with a reporter find­ing the cave and threat­en­ing expo­sure of the Breed com­mu­nity to the world at large.

Wal­low­ing in self-pity and suf­fer­ing from black-outs for the last five months, Rio’s plan to destroy the cave and it’s con­tents gets com­pli­cated when Dylan Alexan­der dis­cov­ers the cave with him inside it. Rio’s been suf­fer­ing from post-traumatic stress dis­or­der (PTSD) or some­thing like it for the past year. Cer­tain events, sounds, or sit­u­a­tions trig­gers his mem­o­ries and dis­ables him. A year ago, his now dead Breed­mate, Eva, betrayed him and the Order. A ware­house explo­sion resulted in Rio get­ting a seri­ous head injury that scarred half his face. Rio’s been con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide but found that he couldn’t do it. He’s been starv­ing him­self and going half-mad; he refuses to feed for fear of killing his human hosts.

Dylan Alexan­der is on a Euro­pean hik­ing trip with her mother’s friends when she dis­cov­ers the cave. Her mother could not make the trip because she is dying of can­cer. Her mother’s friends ask Dylan to join them in her place and she does. Dylan’s deci­sion to go on this unplanned trip costs her. She needs a story to impress her boss if she’s to keep her job, thus mak­ing part of this trip research. After dis­cov­er­ing the cave, Dylan doesn’t real­ize that she has become a com­pli­ca­tion and a tar­get for con­tain­ment. All she sees is a break­through, head­line story to jump start her career.

Rio takes on the assign­ment of find­ing Dylan since it was his screw up. He berates him­self and ques­tions his skill as a war­rior for let­ting this com­pli­ca­tion arise. He tracks down and abducts Dylan and dis­cov­ers she’s a Breed­mate. The two of them go to Berlin and then back to Boston where they develop much of their rela­tion­ship. In the end, it all comes down to Dylan decid­ing if she wants to be apart of the Breed com­mu­nity or remain a civil­ian. The only anchor to the human world she has is her mother.

The other thread where the Ancient has been reawak­ened and the prob­lems that will cause to the vam­pire soci­ety as well as to humankind? That con­tin­ues to be an ongo­ing thread. As for the vil­lain in this part of the story, he remained mostly hid­den through­out much of the story. There are a cou­ple of scenes where we get his POV and learn what trou­ble he plans to reap on the Order. Even­tu­ally, the vil­lain jumps from behind a false mask at the end of the story to sur­prise the reader (only it didn’t work for me since I guessed who he was). There were just too many red flags point­ing him out.

The one thing that stands out so far for me in this series is the con­sis­tently strong, inde­pen­dent minded hero­ines and the world build­ing. Dylan and Rio are a well matched pair just like Elise and Tegan. Dylan is a lik­able char­ac­ter who can take care of her­self. I didn’t much care for the romance. Apart from the main story arc, it is the weak­est part of the plot.

What made this mated rela­tion­ship prob­lem­atic for me was that Rio was pretty dam­aged and his hatred of Eva was still raw. I just find it hard to believe that he could let go of his bit­ter­ness toward one woman who betrayed him, turn right around, and fall in love with another woman in a mat­ter of days. You can’t cre­ate a hero this bro­ken emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally and expect the reader to believe that he would fall in love this quickly. I just didn’t buy their HEA. But to be fair, most romances these days are quick­ies but the romance in here just didn’t work for me.

Over­all, I think I liked Mid­night Awak­en­ing more for the action and the tighter plot­ting. Mid­night Rising’s plot was pretty thin. Just like the third book, Mid­night Ris­ing had a great begin­ning, yawn induc­ing mid­dle and a great end­ing with a hot yet weak romance. There is noth­ing unique about this world. I found a lot of the plot pre­dictable with a sto­ry­line that offers very lit­tle in the way of sur­prises. I liked Rio and Dylan and the other hybrid war­riors but must they always be armed to the teeth? It’s nice that they have safe houses all over the coun­try that they can run to for emer­gen­cies and that they employ a com­puter genius with con­nec­tions all over the world; but it does get to be a bit too over the top and prompts much eye-rolling from this reader. Fun read with some weak spots. My grade, B–.

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