Love can unlock the secret to saving two worlds.

As the Golden Aspen Tree withers, darkness consumes the Dragon Demons of the Underworld, turning them feral. Prince Eric Wyvern must keep his darkness at bay and woo the silver-haired human tainted with angel blood whose touch is prophesied to save the Golden Tree and restore light to the Underworld.

Cassandra Wright, a gifted psychic, has dreamed of Eric her whole life. When her dream lover joins her on a ski vacation, he plunges her into a nightmare. Imprisoned in a dying world filled with abuse and torture, she must become the Demon Prince’s mate or remain trapped forever. If she fails to fulfill the prophecy, the darkness will spread to her world. But how can she give herself to this dark and frightening version of the man of her dreams?

Eric will give Cassandra the world, if only he can make her see past the darkness to the man he really is, and help him save it first.

Even though this isn’t one of my favorite books, I’ll definitely be giving this series a chance. There are good bones here, I just wasn’t all that into the execution. The idea is fantastic – I love the parallel fantasy world that Guida has developed – but the beginning of the story spends a little too long on details that don’t seem to matter to the overall story and not enough is given to the important things.

I want to get to know their world better – their history, their culture, how things relate – but we get a lot of posturing by Eric in our world. He’s trying to woo Cassandra but it doesn’t really work and a lot of time is spent on her ex. It makes sense to have Eric get close to her so I’m on board with that but there is way too much time describing the scenery or details about people (some who don’t turn out to be all that important to this story). Maybe it is to set up the scene, I don’t know, but for me it doesn’t go anywhere.  There are a lot of pages that could have been spent developing a connection between Eric and Cassandra but don’t.

The action really started when we get to Eric’s world and it was absolutely fascinating. I love the idea of what darkness could do to normally good people. But, because we don’t get a good basis for Eric and Cassandra’s relationship, when they have to become mates it just doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy. I will say from that point on, even though it will be disturbing for some, it is very engaging. The evil things that are done and the way that it is taking over their world is disgusting but it makes the ending that much better.

I really like the fact that there are far reaching effects from this time. Eric has a nephew who isn’t consumed by the dark and is fully aware of all of the things that are done to him and to others. He is just a boy and this will definitely leave some scars. Guida isn’t shy about letting you know that either.

Overall, I think this could be a good start to a new series. I’ll give the next one a shot to see if some of the kinks in the flow have been worked out because I’d love to see more of this world.