Excellent - Midnight series is even better than JR Ward!!! - Rated 
I first picked up Lara Adrian as my friendly local librarian had bought the series in and had reserved them for me, thinking that I might like them, given that I like most paranormals. I tried out the series, and immediately saw a resemblance to the BDB series by JR Ward, but the characters seem more believeable (Noughties-living guys, but not freakishly huge like the BDB, believeable romances and some hot sex!!)and seem to move on quicker. So far, Midnight Rising has been my fave, as Rio is a tortured soul and Dylan helps him come back and believe in himself. I think that when eventually Tohrment's book comes out, it will not be dissimilar to this one. I strongly recommend reading the entire series, in the order published for continuity, and look forward to the Dec 08 release. Hey, amazon.co.uk., why don't you have it available to preorder yet?
Fourth in series - Rated
Lara Adrian has really hit her stride! This is the fourth in her series about the Breed, vampires who battle the rogue members of their kind and who, one by one, find their mates. The first couple of books seemed to rely very heavily on J R Ward's "Black Dagger Brotherhood" series for ideas but it seems, in this book and to some extent in the last, that Lara Adrian has found her own voice. Yes, many aspects of the Breed's life seems like that of the Brotherhood but as Lara Adrian has explored her world more fully in these books they seem to have taken on more of a life of their own.
The hero of this book is Rio, scarred and wounded after the betrayal of his Breedmate Eva. Rio was meant to have destroyed a cave which contained the hibernation chamber of one of the Ancients in the middle of nowhere in the Czech Republic but as the story opens he hasn't yet done it. Several months have passed with Rio living in the cave almost like some kind of animal, suffering from the blackouts and mood swings as a result of his injuries in the explosion in the first book, trying to work up the energy to destroy the cave - and himself with it. Unfortunately for Rio the cave is discovered by a young American woman on holiday with some friends; not only does she discover the cave and see Rio, she photographs the contents. Rio desperately needs to do some damage limitation to prevent the photographs being shared with other people and the existence of the Breed perhaps being made known to the world. He tracks the woman, Dylan Alexander, but when he finds her he discovers things are worse than he had feared - she's a reporter and has sent the photographs back to her editor in America who has passed them on to some other people.
Rio realises all he can do is destroy the cave, kidnap Dylan and take her back to the Breed headquarters in Boston to get the other warriors to help to scrub the minds of the people who have seen the photographs before they are printed in the magazine. Things are even worse when Rio discovers Dylan is a Breedmate and that she has a very strong reason not to settle into the Darkhavens but to carry on her life in New York City. As Rio and the other warriors try to keep their secrets under wraps, investigate some strange murders and keep Dylan safe, things get very complex indeed.
This story was stronger on characterisation than some of the others in this series. Rio plays the damaged, wounded man very well - and he's also remarkably close-mouthed when it comes to secrets. Dylan, being a journalist, is full of questions, most of which aren't answered to her satisfaction. She is described very well so that we understand why she doesn't fear Rio as much as she might and how she is able to cope with and accommodate to the drastic changes in her life.
The other characters from previous novels are in this book, including Andreas Reichen in Berlin and Sterling Chase, the Enforcement Agent-turned-Warrior. However the vast majority of the pages focus on Rio and Dylan and their interactions; the 'baddie' in this book gets a few pages to himself but this isn't a distraction from the overall central plot - Rio's post-trauma problems and Dylan's life choice. It was a great read overall, probably the best in this series so far. I look forward to the next story, focusing on Nikolai, due to be released in December 2008.
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