Emily Harper was the woodsman's daughter on the Westwood estate and had been in love with the son of the house, Drake, since she was little and though he returned her feelings it was made clear by both their family's that nothing could come of their relationship. So Drake went to fulfill his familial duty by becoming an Knight of the Order of St. Michael and studying to defeat the evil Promethean Council while Emily learned how to live without the man she loved. Drake was kidnapped by the Prometheans and after undergoing torture and refusing to break he lost his memory before being released by the Council President, James Falkirk, and now he feels he owes his loyalty to James. Even when he is brought back to England he cannot comprehend his old life and that his savior is evil, but he does understand that he has a special connection with his nurse, the beautiful Emily, and begins to regain his old memory. However, he cannot let his old Order friends kill James and he helps James escape and together they go to the Promethean stronghold in the Bavarian alps with Emily tagging along behind them.
Drake finds her and manages to convince the Prometheans that Emily is his mistress in order to save her life but Emily is still not entirely sure that Drake has truly returned from the dark side and worries that he may truly believe in the Promethean Plot to take over the world. Drake hatches a plan to burn the top 100 Prometheans during the eclipse when they all get together to sacrifice and innocent but his first duty is in protecting Emily and he still has qualms about putting James in harms way. But when the Prometheans discover the Emily is an innocent they decide that she would make the perfect sacrifice and Drake's plans are once again thrown to the wind. He and Emily realize they would sacrifice anything for each other, including their lives, and risk everything for one night together. However, there is also a Promethean civil war going on and a big battle between James and his enemy draws Drake back into the fray just as it looked as if and Emily were going to escape. Drake's fellow agents from the order show up just in time for the eclipse ceremony and they have one last chance to destroy the Prometheans and give Emily and Drake a chance for a happily ever after free from evil.
The first thing I quickly noticed was the Emily and Drake were going to take a backseat to the Promethean plot. This has been the case in most of this series, but in this book it was particularly bothersome to me because it was far more prevalent here than in the other books and because I felt like the author was really relying on the fact that they had fallen in love previously. They spent very little time alone together, probably 50 pages in the entire book if not less, and much of that was spent worrying about the Prometheans and what little was about their relationship was about their past and not who they were now. They had a strong connection from when they were little and they were destined for each other but I did not really get a sense for this at all and felt like it easily could have been two people in a desperate situation turning to each other for comfort which doesn't equal love to me unless they can be out of the stressful situation and still have that strong connection. The promethean plot finally came to a close in the only way it could have but I think it was a mistake for Foley to leave so much to be resolved in this book because there was so little room for the romance.
Emily was flat out impossible to like because her following him to Bavaria was so incredibly stupid that everything she did from that point on was just tinged with my knowledge of how dumb she was. I know we were supposed to see it as a sign of her love that she was willing to sacrifice so much for him, but since the plot that created those problems was so impossible to like in this book, I couldn't like anything that sprang from it, including her "noble" actions. Drake was teetering on the edge of complete destruction after being tortured and losing his memory and we are supposed to see how the love of a good woman can save any man but there were so many problems with this because it didn't really seem to make a difference. There were so many times it seemed like they could have gotten away but Drake's duty got in the way or even his loyalty to James prevented him from securing her safety. He claimed she was the most important thing to him but his actions really proved otherwise and it seriously annoyed me and made it impossible for me to like him. And last but not least the writing was horrible and purply and flowery and every other page there was something ridiculous that made me want to laugh, for example this gem, "she was not prepared to take the chance of leaving this life without having poured out the fullness of her love upon him." Seriously, wtf?
Rating: Two awful characters, overly awful flower writing, a overwhelming "side" plot, and a complete lack of romance leads to a terrible romance novel.
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