The Dream-Hunter [Mass Market Paperback]

Seriously, Sherrilyn Kenyon needs to cut back on the number of novels she writes in a year. It's still pretty clear that she puts effort in the main novels of the Dark-Hunters series, but these side-story spin-offs are nothing but Kenyon phoning it in to get a paycheck. With only two stories to its name, I can see that the Dream Hunters are going the way of the Were-Hunters in that the series is unabashedly awful.

That brings us to the Dream Hunter. I've given Kenyon's Were-Hunter novels low marks before, but as much as I hated the books, I never took more than three days to read them cover to cover. I bought this on release day and it sat on my night stand for three weeks before I finished it.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but this book is another one of the ones that is trying to build suspense to Acheron's book. As far as I am concerned, I never care if that much promised book is ever published at this point because it is about two years too late. Sure, at first everyone was in love with that character and wanted to know what his deal was. I don't think many people still care, because after many books of teasing and still never getting any real answers, Acheron has turned into the Dues Ex Machina plot device from Hell and a character that almost rivals Anita Blake as most annoying reoccurring character in a series.

Dream Hunter features Arikos, an incubus god of sleep, and Dr. Megeara Kiferi, global trotting PHD in search of Atlantis. Arikos is infatuated with Megeara after giving her naughty, naughty dreams at night. He gets high off sucking emotions out of wet dreams, and decides he wants to experience the real thing. He cuts a deal with the god Hades to make him human for two weeks, but forgot to read the fine print at the end of the contract that stipulates he will have to bring Megeara's soul to Hades in return. Wonderful, a junkie who uses and endangers other people to get his fix is just what every girl should want.

Megeara is an ugly duckling with a PHD. Despite supposedly being smart and focused enough to get a doctorate before she turned thirty, she talks and acts like a dumb valley girl. She's supposed to be an expert in ancient Greek culture but she seems to be totally ignorant of basic points of their mythology. Oh, and Ms. Kenyon and all the other romance authors, being an academic or smart doesn't already automatically translate to being unsociable, a loser, unsexy, and frumpy like you guys seem to think. I spent most of the book wanting to give both these characters a giant slice of clue cake.

There is a plot in here somewhere about excavating the Lost City of Atlantis and the gods fearing a possible resurrection of Apollymi the Destroyer who is sealed up in the ruins. Honestly, it kind of gets lost in between introducing about five new characters to the Dark/Were/Dream Hunter world that ultimately don't serve any purpose.

Kenyon just needs to cut back on books like these. They aren't any good, and they are making the otherwise fine main series seem stale before its time.

Well, this is the last book I'm reading from Sherrilyn Kenyon. When Ms. Kenyon started her dark-hunter series several years back, the books were the best thing going in the world of romantic/fantasy fiction. Each book was new, exciting and the romance between the featured couple was tremendous. As time has gone by, this series has invented more and more different species, all with different powers, reporting to different gods with different powers, featuring different story lines, all of course, with different agendas. What is left is a hodgepodge of 10 million storylines & characters all trying to pull together at some point in each book. The series is now confusing, watered down, and a real disappointment. And the romance? It has taken a back seat. There is just too much going on in each book to spare the word count for serious romance. With this particular book, there were 3 or 4 chapters when the old Kenyon magic shown through, but overall, it didn't hold my interest, it took me 4 days to get through it (why I bothered I don't know), and I basically just didn't care. As this is the pattern I have seen with the last 3 books of Kenyon's, I think it is safe to say that this series has ran its course and should die a natural death. At today's publishing prices and the number of books I read a month, I can't afford books that confuse and/or bore me. This series does both.

I have really enjoyed Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series, but Mother of Pearl, what's with these boring spin-offs? I had to yawn my way through pages of repetitive text making me feel as though I was on a circular read to nowhere. I laid it down, I picked it up, and finally finished it two weeks after purchase (I usually finish one of her books in an afternoon). I found the characters unappealing (Arik, the "Dream-Hunter," was nothing more than a voyeur) and I fail to understand why SK's mythological deities always use American slang and colloquialisms. It's not as bothersome when her novels are set in the States, but in Greece and Atlantis? The Dream Hunter series was aptly named since it is guaranteed to put you to sleep.