A Whole Lot of Midnight

So I finished reading the Lara Adrian "The Midnight Breed" series of books to date (new one expected out in early 2012).
Kiss of Midnight (1), Kiss of Crimson (2), Midnight Awakening (3), Midnight Rising (4), Veil of Midnight (5), Ashes of Midnight (6), Shades of Midnight (7), Taken by Midnight (8), and Deeper than Midnight (9). Do you get all the Midnight in them and hence the title of this post?

This is a mythology I can understand. I have always liked the idea of a one perfect mate with a bond but also know the frailty of emotions and think that a lot happens especially over particularly protracted lifetimes to screw up a perfectly good relationship. And to leave that person mate-less if something happens just seems cruel.

Lets face it, it only takes seconds to screw up a relationship and here we are giving these vampire characters hundreds of years. And they are warriors. You can't tell me a few years of killing people doesn't knock a few screws lose in the emotion department. So wrap that up with finding a woman who has a special birthmark, may or may not know what means, your a starving vamp looking for your next meal and if you drink her blood, she is mated to you forever, yippee skippy. No chance for a misunderstanding there. We are talking cargo loads of prime baggage here. It may not be Louis Vuitton but beat up American Tourister is just as heavy.

So now in this series, the characters can have these bonds and still screw them up. They can attach themselves to the wrong person and well, with no divorce, you just have to hope that person dies or if you are a bad person, take matters into your own hands. This, I understand. My psyche isn't stretched to believe betrayal, deceit, lies....wait....how sad is that. Even my fantasies can't be fantasies. I am going to go read something with a lot of sex in it now to try to hide my shame.

Poly-what?

Poly-amorous relationships. That's right I said it. And who would have thought that this topic would bring up a very passionate discussion at the last book club meeting. Can I just tell you, little did I know that little old me would be one of the more "wild-n-crazy" girls in the bunch. Well, I knew...but we wont go into that now.

Anywho.... we had a great call with author Lauren Dane during book club who has 2 good series that I have read, Chase Brothers and Cascadia Wolves. And she had told us about a new witch series she has coming out which, of course, I will be reading.

After the call, we started talking about what everyone is reading and of course, me being the controversial one, I was reading Bianca D'Arc's Dragon Knight Series. Much to my surprise, none of my very smart and well read friends at the table seemed aware of this interesting series. Being the paranormal dragon lovers that some of them are, I was shocked.

Well, in this series the mythology contains quite a bit of poly-amorous mating. For those of you who haven't figured this out yet, we are talking about 2 guys and a girl- menage marriages.

In the Dragon Knight's series, a dragon selects his partner knight and they bond and communicate telepathically for life. The dragon's are forbidden to mate until the knight has a wife because the dragon bond flows into the marriage bond. So dragon/knight meets dragon/knight they decide that the 2 dragons decide they are mates. Well now, they have to find a mate for the knights. There are very few women who have the power to communicate/bond with the dragons much less live with the dragons/knight lifestyle so they find one and end up sharing. If anything happens to one of the knights or dragons, it is the other half of the partnership that is responsible for taking care of the family. I get the arrangement. Not saying it would work for me but I understand the mythology.

So as I am giving them a bit of the mythology, suddenly off we go into conversations about
a) Is brothers being in a poly-amorous relationship a little too incestuous? We were a divided group on this topic.
b) In a mythology with no divorce, what happens if you bond with the wrong knight or girl? These people live for hundreds of years, that could be a long time to be stuck with the wrong partner, especially if along the way, you find the right one.
c) In this mythology, the knights are psychically linked to their dragon who becomes psychically linked to their dragon mate who is linked to the other knight. What about the girl in all this? She can talk to the dragons in this mythology which makes her an eligible mate because not all females can but what if she is not included in the psychic link. A girl could feel left out.
d) Suppose one 1/3 of the menage dies in battle. Is the rest of the family supposed to stay a couple now or are they supposed to go find a new 1/3 because that is the culture? Is it okay to stay just a couple?

Needless to say, what a fun conversation. Too bad we didn't have more time and more wine. We could have really let our minds go and it is all fantasy...right.