This first book in the new Darkwing Chronicles by Savannah Russe is certainly well worth reading. Great characters, a terrific new approach to our bloodsucking friends, a blooming romance and a delicious new career for Daphne, a 500 year old Vampiress.

Daphne who has existed for 500 hedonistic years, is brilliant, beautiful, and fluent in several languages and, she has just been drafted, well blackmailed is more like it, to work for a secret government agency as part of an all vampire division. With their survival skills, superior strength and Daphne and her Vampire fellows are tailor made for a very dicey covert job involving tracking and capturing a very dangerous, sadistic terrorist.

What seemed like a routine job turns into something much nastier as Daphne discovers that money is not all this terrorist is after. When she learns that the artifacts Bonaventure, the terrorist, is after are linked to very evil, very black magic, it becomes even more imperative she stop him, and that he may not be all human after all.

When Daphne finds herself being tailed, she assumes its part of the do or die threat from the government, but she soon finds out that the sexy agent Darius is not in fact part of "her" department, but rather a rival covert agency, one who's job it is to hunt and kill vampires. With a growing attraction between them, and some very nasty terrorists, not to mention the thoroughly evil Bonaventure, Daphne will need to keep hers wits about her if she is to survive and find a way to change Darius's mind about the disposition of ALL vampires before he finds out about her.

This is not a happy ever after story, but rather the start of what certainly appears to be an engrossing series. With sexy, powerful characters, an interesting story line, this series should continue to lure readers down sultry, dangerous, spy filled avenues.

She was the mistress and unwitting slayer of Lord Byron. For more than four centuries, Daphne Urban has walked the world's night, existing, but not truly living. Love is too dangerous and eternity is rapidly becoming an exercise in monotony.

Monotony would be welcome, however, when her world is turned upside down and she is conscripted into service for the US government as part of a highly secret team of vampires, along with a ditzy blonde Southern Belle and a shallow, gay vampire searching for his big break on Broadway. Perhaps the madness of the plan is its genius.

Sent to prevent a dangerous man from gaining artifacts that could lead to worldwide destruction, the three's mission is soon complicated when Daphne is contacted by another governmental agency operative. Darius della Chisea has no idea she is a vampire, just that she works for another branch of the service, and he wants to work with her for reasons of his own.

Though Daphne finds him extremely attractive, something she's not felt since accidentally killing Byron, there is a large drawback, Darius hates vampires, and does enjoy killing them. Romance is of secondary or even lower importance. First, she has to save the world. Highly classified mission or not, Daphne may have to resort to the most trusted method of accomplishing the impossible, calling in her mother, Mar Mar, an ancient teenaged hippie.

Inevitably, comparisons to Buffy, La Femme Nikita, Alias, early Anita Blake, and Rachel Morgan's various series can be made. However, those comparison's only go so far. The Darkwing Chronicles promise to be unique; exciting, fast paced, funny and just plain fun. It has everything, humor, action, mystery, and a bit of romance. Let's hope the wait between books is not long.