I wanted to like this, since there are so many fans of the author, and maybe the series/setting would grow on me of I read more books, but I honestly found this boring. This felt like standard mediocre bestseller vampire paranormal romance from the 90s, and I was surprised to see that this was published in 2002. Blending history and mythology with vampires was different, but not enough to keep my interest. Amanda's family appears in this book, but not enough is portrayed about their relationships to give Amanda's character nuance. The fantasizing just seemed to interrupt the story at an annoying frequency, but maybe that was the point, if it was supposed to show how distracting Amanda and Hunter found each other? Shrug. Accountant Amanda suddenly having extremely strong witch powers and a hot supernatural lover was too Mary Sue for me, especially with the author making sure to mention Amanda had never been "bold," as if to have her smexy scenes yet assuage any self-insert fan readers from feeling like "sluts." Magical power-stealing vagina, meh. I thought that had died with the Anita Blake books.