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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780786943173
ISBN number: 0786943173
Label: Wizards of the Coast
Manufacturer: Wizards of the Coast
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 308
Printing Date: March 13, 2007
Publishing house: Wizards of the Coast
Release Date: March 13, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 764558
Studio: Wizards of the Coast
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Product Description:
Desperate to escape the terrors of Ravenloft, Marguerite came to Lord Donskoy's castle full of hope for the future. Instead, she found herself betrothed to a mysterious purveyor of flesh whose secret past, like the dead, refused to stay buried. Now Donskoy's marriage has invoked a dark curse, and Marguarite into a web of fear and passion. Original.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is a really old fashioned, creepy campaign novel for Ravenloft, as they reissue old 1900s TSR novels, concentrating on Ravenloft with the 1990s novels. A lot of this stuff is hard to find and out of print.
Rated by buyers 
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To Sleep with Evil by Andria Cardarelle is the fourth book in the recently re-released Ravenloft line. This book was very first published in September, 1996 and now has a new cover design as Wizards of the Coast seeks to get the Ravenloft line back where it was. The Ravenloft setting has been described as a gothic horror setting that is much darker than either the Forgotten Realms or the Dragonlance setting. I believe, when this book was written, it was the very first published book my Ms. Cardalle which is the pen name of author Andria Hayday.
The plot of this book is rather simplistic and linear. It's about a young woman who is betrothed to a man. He desperately wants an heir to his name and holdings. However, as the story progresses more and more is revealed about who he is and who he surrounds himself with. As the young woman discovers these things she seeks a way to keep herself safe. I would like to go more in-depth about this plot, but quite honestly, that's really all there is to the plot. At best the plot is mildly interesting; at its worst it is a slow ponderous foray into a cure for insomnia. It's just not that interesting of a book. It almost seems to me that the author had enough material for a short story and stretched it to fill 308 pages to make a novel.
The characters in this book are mildly interesting at times. However, those times are few and far between. The character Zosia, is the cliché character that supplies information and is all knowing. The character, Lord Donskoy, is the evil leader of a band of ruthless killers. The character Marguerrite, is the clichéd maiden that does her best to survive in challenging circumstances and somehow develops extraordinary skills to discover things and survive where countless others have not. The most interesting character is Ramus, yet he only appears in about 30-40 pages of this book, leaving the rest of the book to flounder through until the subsequent point he surfaces. Simply put the characters in this book are bland and uninteresting. Attentive readers can guess major, and minor, plot points within the very first 20 pages and know how the book will end.
After finishing this book, I am still trying to figure out the reason behind Wizards of the Coast re-releasing this book when it so obviously falls short of the mystique of the Ravenloft world. This entire novel seems amateurish in scope and what it accomplishes. Ms. Cardarelle obviously has some talent, her descriptions of scenes were well done, yet in the end the story and characters were just not enough to warrant a full length novel or a place in the halls of Ravenloft. Fans of the Ravenloft world, and for that matter fantasy in general may be best served by skipping this book all together.
Rated by buyers -
To Sleep with Evil by Andria Cardarelle is the fourth book in the recently re-released Ravenloft line. This book was very first published in September, 1996 and now has a new cover design as Wizards of the Coast seeks to get the Ravenloft line back where it was. The Ravenloft setting has been described as a gothic horror setting that is much darker than either the Forgotten Realms or the Dragonlance setting. I believe, when this book was written, it was the very first published book my Ms. Cardalle which is the pen name of author Andria Hayday.
The plot of this book is rather simplistic and linear. It's about a young woman who is betrothed to a man. He desperately wants an heir to his name and holdings. However, as the story progresses more and more is revealed about who he is and who he surrounds himself with. As the young woman discovers these things she seeks a way to keep herself safe. I would like to go more in-depth about this plot, but quite honestly, that's really all there is to the plot. At best the plot is mildly interesting; at its worst it is a slow ponderous foray into a cure for insomnia. It's just not that interesting of a book. It almost seems to me that the author had enough material for a short story and stretched it to fill 308 pages to make a novel.
The characters in this book are mildly interesting at times. However, those times are few and far between. The character Zosia, is the cliché character that supplies information and is all knowing. The character, Lord Donskoy, is the evil leader of a band of ruthless killers. The character Marguerrite, is the clichéd maiden that does her best to survive in challenging circumstances and somehow develops extraordinary skills to discover things and survive where countless others have not. The most interesting character is Ramus, yet he only appears in about 30-40 pages of this book, leaving the rest of the book to flounder through until the subsequent point he surfaces. Simply put the characters in this book are bland and uninteresting. Attentive readers can guess major, and minor, plot points within the very first 20 pages and know how the book will end.
After finishing this book, I am still trying to figure out the reason behind Wizards of the Coast re-releasing this book when it so obviously falls short of the mystique of the Ravenloft world. This entire novel seems amateurish in scope and what it accomplishes. Ms. Cardarelle obviously has some talent, her descriptions of scenes were well done, yet in the end the story and characters were just not enough to warrant a full length novel or a place in the halls of Ravenloft. Fans of the Ravenloft world, and for that matter fantasy in general may be best served by skipping this book all together.
Rated by buyers -
Marguerite is a young woman escaping the land of her birth, Darkon, after being attacked by a vicious vampire who has become obsessed with her and murdered the man she loved. Her parents, in an effort to save her from her stalker-vampire, broker a deal to betroth her to a total stranger; a somewhat wealthy lord in a far away land. The Vistani, a.k.a. gypsies, drug her and take her through the mysterious mists to the land that will be her new home. The gypsies drop her off on an abandoned looking road in the middle of a dark forest since they refuse to take her any further. With the foreboding cryptic comments of the gypsies hanging in her ears, she is picked up by two servants of her betrothed, Lord Donskoy. The crusty and creepy servants take her to the decrepit decaying castle that is her new home. She meets her betrothed who, while twice her age, appears to be nice if somewhat moody. Once settled into her new home, Marguerite befriends Zosia the cook who is an old Vistani witch and Yelena the mute girl who is her personal servant. She also befriends a strange gypsy man, Ramus, who lives in the surrounding forest and helps her home one day when she is lost.
The day after she arrives Lord Donskoy declares the marriage will take place the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile, Marguerite discovers the presence of her betrothed's mistress, Jacqueline Montarri, on the eve of her wedding in the castle, and also at the wedding and reception. She assumes that her new husband will set aside his mistress once the marriage takes place. But he does not. After the ceremony and the consummation of their marriage, Donskoy insists on strange bizarre rituals to discover if Marguerite is pregnant or not. He is determined to have a son, no matter what the cost. When the tests continually reveal she is not pregnant, Donskoy grows furious and strikes her. He vows that if she does not conceive soon, he will put her aside and sell her off to other lords he knows in favor of a more fertile wife; hinting that he might even kill her to be rid of her. Fearing for her marriage and her life, Marguerite is jealous of the attraction she senses between her husband and Jacqueline.
Consumed by unease and jealousy, Marguerite comes to depend on her friendship with Zosia. After several disturbing events, such as the apparition of her husbands deceased very first wife, and signs of a gypsy curse, Marguerite begins to suspect something is very wrong with Donskoy and his strange household. One night she follows Donskoy, his mistress, and his deformed 'acquaintances', into the dark forest. She witnesses them slaughter inoccent stranded travelers, reveling in the bloodshed. Horrified, she unintentionally reveals her presence and her husbands hounds hunt her down. Now on the run, she knows she can't go home, believing Donskoy will kill her for what she has seen. She decides to leave, but finds she cannot. When she enters the mists and comes out the other side she finds herself even closer to the very castle she is trying to flee from. It is then she finally believes what others have implied, that the mists are magical and prevent anyone except the Vistani (and those of powerful magic) from leaving. In order to leave she must have a gypsy guide so she seeks out Ramus, who instead of helping her escape as she thought, bespells her so that she agrees to lay with him and conceives a son. He tells her that her husband is cursed, and as such cannot ever sire a child, in order to help her and spare her life of her husbands rage, he begets a child on her that will be passed off as her husbands. He tells her she must return to Donskoy, who won't kill her now that she bears his child. Then Ramus disappears leaving her no choice but to return when Donskoy's servants find her.
She soon falls seriously ill. Her pregnancy is far from normal and her belly swells more quickly than it should. Only five months along she births the child, who has monstrous claws and grey scarred hands. Then, this is where the book is a bit confusing, the baby turns into a shadow monster that takes on the form of a serpent and kills Donskoy. With the evil Lord Donskoy dead Zosia sends a now insane Marguerite off with a caravan of gypsies to return her to her home land of Darkon, where all her memories of her former life are erased and replaced with an entirely new identity.
And thats where the story ends, just as it was getting interesting. We're never told what happens to the baby/monster/shadow serpent that Marguerite bore. We don't know what happens to Ramus, the child's true father, or if the curse he is under is broken too. We don't know what happens to Zosia, Yelena, or the others left behind at the castle. The evil Jacqueline Montarri, presumably, is left now completely in charge and free to wreak evil wherever she wants without Donskoy to restrain her.
I don't mind a book with an unhappy ending, in fact I find it quite ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
This book takes way too long to grab a reader into it. The characters are kind of interesting, but sometimes it seemed the author was having problems trying to figure out what the character was doing,which could of been better, without trying to give away too much. The ending was fairly well written, although predictable, but again it just takes too much time to get here. This is one book in the series that I would not take the time to go back and re-read it.
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