Published: Feb. 08, 2012
Words: 55,956 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9781465713902

Short description

Forever is a long time. Even longer when a harrowing past won't let you be. For bounty hunter Dakota, it's the past she can't escape when she has to hunt an ex-lover. And when she takes on a second case after a thousand year old vampire and finds even more ties to her past, can she keep her carefully constructed solitude intact or will her hard-earned survival finally be tested beyond endurance?

Extended description

Forever is a long time.

The life of a hunter is a lonely one. Perhaps more for Dakota than others in her line of work. Not only is she better than anyone else at chasing down the things that go bump in the night, but her past chases her with the same tenacity.

She's built walls around her solitary existence and that's the way she likes it, but the past never sleeps. When she's hired to hunt an ex-lover for murder, it's just the first in a string of memories that will bring Dakota's past, present and future into a collision course.

And when she agrees to take on a second case and hunt down an Ancient, a vampire over one thousand years old, it unleashes circumstances onto that collision that will shake the foundation of everything she's built and force her, for the first time in a long while, to look to others.

Can she survive it, like she's survived these past four centuries? Or will the weight of it all finally crush her?

Tags

vampires, urban fantasy, mystery, paranormal, supernatural, supernatural suspense, shapeshifters, bounty hunters, paranormal mystery, paranormal suspense, dakota, female protagonist, preternatural, supernatural mystery, camerons law, adelheid, theriomorphs

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Reviews

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Review by: Alastair Rosie on July 10, 2012 :
Review of When Forever Died by Alastair Rosie.

This is book two of the Adelheid Series so I’m still finding my feet in Mia Darien’s world of preternaturals. It’s a classic detective story set in a world where preternaturals live in full view of humans, similar to the world of True Blood. The heroine is Dakota, a shapeshifter and it opens with her pursuing another preternatural who has been terrorising the local New England communities. It then moves onto the hunt for Carrie, a vampire who has gone missing, apparently preternaturals are supposed to register their presence and when they don’t it gets, complicated.
Add in an Ancient, Dakota’s shapeshifting sister, a group of reincarnated Norse deities and we’re set for a rollercoaster ride in what is a well thought out alternate world. Darien has chosen to relate the details of this world in monologue fashion using Dakota’s jaded voice. Dakota is a hunter and tired of hunting her own kind. She reminds me of those Mike Hammer detectives, she drinks too much, her relationships with her co workers and the police tinged with sarcasm. Her love interest, Moore is a good counterpoint for Dakota as she chases her ex girlfriend, the vampire Carrie.
I found it an easy read, in the style of Hammer but wondered if the book couldn’t have been longer which would have given her the option of expanding and colouring her alternate world. There are times I want to know more about particular aspects but she seems content to leave us with snapshots. Another thing that did irk me was passages rendered in German. If you’re not fluent in German you won’t read those passages. Foreign phrases and local English dialects should be limited to single words that we all know. She has however kept away from the Bram Stoker connection with vampires which has probably been done to death a thousand times over.
Overall though the book is an easy read, perfect for whiling away the time on a train. It won’t tax your brain to the point you’re constantly backtracking trying to find if you’ve missed something. I’d give it a four out of five because I really wanted to know more of the preternatural world and although there was a guide to the preternatural at the end of the book I would have preferred it was worked into the book itself as well. It would have bulked the book out a little but if it’s a good read you won’t notice the extra word length.
Looking forward to book three and will go back to read Cameron’s Law in the next few weeks.
Written by Alastair Rosie. June 2012.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Dariel Raye on July 02, 2012 :
Author Mia Darien has woven a fascinating tapestry of characters – mostly supernatural with a few humans thrown in – into a well-written, action-packed thriller perfect for paranormal, fantasy, and action lovers. Reminiscent of the great, gritty detective novels, Dakota tells her story in first person. She’s a shifter, and we meet her as a panther, chasing her quarry. Yes, she’s a contracted bounty hunter sent out to catch the supernatural bad guys, and she can shift into any human or animal form she’s familiar with.
Dakota wins me over when she catches her prey, grumbles about it, then lifts him onto her shoulder to carry back to Darien’s version of a holding cell. Throughout the story, Dakota entertains us with her irreverent, loveable personality with comments like “vampires are creepy-ass-fuckers.” Her co-workers are an interesting menagerie of weres and vamps, and Dakota thinks she’s fine without them when the story opens, but as the action heats up and the plot thickens, if you will, she realizes more and more that their help could be useful and possibly necessary.
Contracted to work on two jobs at once, both personally charged and interrelated, Dakota finds herself drawn to a human officer while hunting an ex-lover thought to be involved in a number of brutal murders. The fact that Dakota’s long lost baby sister is also involved in the murders coupled with unresolved baggage from her past, perpetuates Dakota’s evolution into, let’s say, a better socialized antisocial.
Add an ancient vampire, Amazon warrior women, humans housing Norse Gods, Thor’s hammer, and a giant snake with steel-like scales, and you have an action-packed, yet character-driven read. I didn’t want to miss anything, because new twists kept popping up. Despite the wild characters, Darien managed to keep it believable due to her subtle world-building, and Dakota’s character is so strong that she was always the star. When I had to put it down, I couldn’t wait to pick it up again. Highly recommended 4 ½ stars!
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Bookblogger on June 12, 2012 :
When Forever Died is the second book in the Adelheid series. It primarily focuses on the hunter that was introduced in the first book, Cameron's Law, Dakota. Even in the world that Mia has developed which has given the recently revealed supernatural beings the same rights as normal people Dakota is a rarity. She has the ability to take multiple animal forms and can even shift into other human forms.

The best thing about the fact that Dakota is so unique and powerful is that she doesn't miraculously develop new skills that allow her to escape any situation. That is something that I find fairly often in books and it drives me crazy. Despite the fact that she has such a greater kind of power than most of the other preternatural citizens she is still flawed and bad things still happen to her. Another nice aspect of this book is that it works pretty well as a standalone novel. You can have a greater appreciation for the book if you have read Cameron's Law (and at the time of this review it's free so why wouldn't you?), but this would still be an enjoyable book if you hadn't.

The pacing of the book is done well with some occasional flashbacks to enrich the backstory of the main character. Since she has been alive for around two thousand years there is a lot of story to cover.

Mia has done an excellent job once again of making her characters into people first and creatures with amazing powers second. Dakota is haunted by her family past as well as a past relationship in this book and struggles to deal with both them as a normal person would. There is a hint of romance in this book once again, but it weaves into the story without overpowering or slowing anything down. This is one of the best paranormal series I have found this year.

Review copy provided by the author.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Ursula K Raphael (AstraDaemon) on Feb. 16, 2012 :
This book is part of the Adelheid series, and it takes place chronologically after Cameron’s Law, but it is not necessarily a sequel. This time the POV comes from Dakota, the Hunter who made a few appearances in the previous book. While I felt that the character Dakota lost some of her edge that she projected in CL, I still thought the story was a fantastic mystery-thriller filled with supernatural beings. With all the different species in the world that Darien created, I’m glad she is continuing this series, and I like how each novel can function as a stand-alone.

Darien did a great job tying Dakota’s two separate cases together with her flashbacks of past centuries, and I loved the extra angle with the reincarnated souls. The use of mythology was incredible. I thought this story went deeper with the secondary characters than the first novel in the series. I just wish the ending had been a little longer - it seemed a bit rushed…almost too neat & tidy considering all the obstacles Dakota has to overcome in this story. I would have liked to specifically see more about her reunion with a long lost character from Dakota’s distant past - even if it was an explanation of where that person had been during the centuries they spent apart.

I would love to see the next book center on the werewolf secretary, Madison...I’d like to see her POV after reading about Sadie and Dakota at the Stanton Agency…maybe even Vance too. I’ve enjoyed the main characters being strong women who don’t need a male character to rescue them, but I think it would be interesting to have a Vance’s take on the women who provide the agency’s paranormal services.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

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