The Dark Knight
(Montagues #4)
Elizabeth Elliott
Medieval Romance
Pub date: 26 June, 2012 (ARC review)
H/h - Lord Dante Chiavari/Lady Avalene de Forshay
Setting: England, 1293.
Read in June 2012.
My rating:
[spoiler alert]
For me, storywise Dante’s book wasn’t as per my expectations. Somehow I was hoping for something more. I, again, felt that the story was dragging in the middle, without anything interesting happening. At times, I found Avalane quite the wishy-washy thing too. But there are good things in this book as well, one of them is definitely Dante himself. He was just... so romantic. :D I wasn’t impressed by him in Betrothed but WOW, I saw a really different man in here. Totally enjoyed EE’s writing and all the historical connections as usual.
This story takes place 5 yrs after Betrothed. In there, we knew that Dante was working as King Edward I’s personal assassin. There were many conflicts and Dante’s boorish activities pissed me off. But his sister and only living relative, Claudia fell in love and finally married Guy, who loved her back equally.
His childhood was a tragic one. Dante’s parents died because of a betrayal done by his aunt’s husband, Lorenzo. This man poisoned Dante’s father, an Italian merchant and his mother, an Englishwoman, was later murdered with torture, also by Lorenzo. The three siblings, Roberto, Dante and Claudia were cast off from Italy with a scheme which and robbed off their inheritance. I don’t clearly remember how they survived but Claudia was left in the care of their mother’s brother, another greedy bastard called Lonsdale. Roberto turned into a hired mercenary and as he was a impetuous man, he paid for his rash decisions with his life (in The Warlord).
Now, Dante was taken in by a King’s adviser called Mordecai, who is a magician and has sights into the future. Mordecai trained Dante to be a weapon of destruction, with all kinds of skills. Dante is very handy with various weapons as he is good at being a chameleon. For many years he has killed on the King’s command; all traitors of the crown one way or the other. This, of course, shaped Dante and even though he can be called very efficient, in the core, there was a softness still lurking because the man inside, before he became what he is today, used to wear his heart in his sleeves. And, even though Dante doesn’t let remorse take him over, he was still bombarded by those after he met Avalene.