Imagine a Regency book with vampires. I couldn't, so I bought my first Karen Harbaugh, The Vampire Viscount. I loved it and proceeded to search out more of her works. When I started Dark Enchantment, I found myself in the sort of dark environment to which the Dark Romance Novel group at Yahoo.com is dedicated. I love those guys in that group, so I pushed myself to continue a book that I might have put down a year ago. It did not take many pages to hook me.

Catherine de la Fer is ragged, frightened, and unprotected in the mid seventeenth century streets of Paris. She cannot remember how she came to be there or why. She is compelled to battle those preying on the weak with her rapier. Hunger makes her faint as she attempts to rescue a woman from a pair of would-be rapists, and she falls to her knees, welcoming death. Instead, she is rescued herself. She is able to speak her name before she faints.

Jack Marstone is an Englishman who deduces from Catherine's rapier and from her name that she is from a well-to-do family. He hopes to restore her to her family, and use the reward they will surely offer to return to England and reclaim his lands from Oliver Cromwell. He is dismayed to see the scars on her back showing she has been beaten. When he scolds her for trying to use her rapier so poorly, she demands that he give her lessons. As she regains her strength under the warm eyes of Jack's innkeeper and wife, Jack hones her fencing skills. Harbaugh weaves an intricate tale of their journey to Catherine's family home that includes a sorcerer who creates dangerous fog that hides dark monsters, light-hearted intervals of fencing matches staged for coins from the crowd, and, finally, the reason Catherine was forced to flee her family.

I have always loved Regencies, humor, and light romance. Dark Enchantment taught me to enjoy the uncertainty of a dark romance. If you already love dark romance, this is a book for you. If you don't, I bet that this is the book that will teach you to love it.

Reviewed by Catherine H.
© February 2005