Here we have a vampire society protected by an elite group of warriors who fight against the vampires that have given in to the "dark side" and become slaves to their blood thirst (the Rogues). They are wedded to their jobs as essentially killers, so of course they absolutely, positively, will never, ever, allow themselves to get involved with or care about a woman, because that would get in the way of their noble mission. So, of course, the novels chronicle the various warriors' futile struggles against destiny and true love. This first one focuses on the group's leader, Lucan Thorne, who is quite a prickly character (ha, ha, ha!). 
 There are some differences here, though, and some new takes (or at least new to me) on the whole vampire mythology. First, in Adrian's world, vampires are aliens. Yes, you heard me, aliens. I still haven't decided exactly how I feel about that part, but at least it's original. I mean, is it any less believable that some of the other explanations? The first of them crash-landed on earth and were responsible for wiping out entire civilizations (ever wonder what happened to Atlantis?). They came to realize that they could mate with human females (because all of the vampires in this world are male), but only certain, extra special ones with a certain birthmark. Lucan is among the first generation of such a union, and with other warriors he was responsible for reigning in the chaos and figuring out how to co-exist with humans without slaughtering them. The special females are called Breedmates and usually have some sort of special, extraordinary ability. They don't get turned into vampires, but they share blood with their mates, and that keeps them young and virtually immortal (unless, of course, their mate dies and they don't re-mate, which means that they then would age normally), yet fully human. (Yay, they can still eat chocolate!) There is, however, apparently an equivalent to divorce in their society (you'll see what I mean when you read this book). 
 There was an awful lot of growling and grunting throughout this book. One thing Adrian does emphasize is the animalistic nature of the vampires. They are not sparkly. They are not gentle. They are, underneath it all, killers, whether that killing is for the greater good (the warriors) or just for kicks and to slake their thirst (the Rogues). There is a very thin line between the good guys and the bad guys here, and sometimes those lines blur. To me, that's a little more realistic. I definitely plan to read the rest of the novels in this series because it was just different enough to spark my interest.