Review: Several Night World books by L.J. Smith
I'm a vampire junkie. I have acquired a well-developed taste of exactly what I like in vampire novels, and it all started pretty early in my youth with Christopher Pike books and the like.
When I was 11 or so, I got into L.J. Smith by reading her Secret Circle trilogy, and then devouring The Vampire Diaries, The Forbidden Game, and the Dark Visions trilogy. Then she came out with the Night World series, which is basically about an underground, world-wide organization of vampires, shapeshifters, and witches, who survive in the human world by being secretive and forbidding emotional interaction between Night People and humans. This is a series of 9 young adult books - the 10th never came out - and all of them are a little over two hundred pages.
Recently, since Brooke and I went to Muir Woods (which is a place Huntress features), I decided to pick these books back up and re-read them - something I haven't done in a few years. They always change when I read them as an adult. Sometimes I think they are better, sometimes I think they are sillier, but I always thoroughly enjoy them.
I'm not going to review them as if they are adult fiction, because they're not. They are clearly meant for a younger audience (I'd say about 10-16).
- The series starts out with Secret Vampire, a story about a girl diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Her best friend (conveniently, also her soulmate) changes her into a vampire against Night World rules; the story details how she and her soulmate fight against the odds, blah blah blah.
- The second book, Daughters of Darkness - and my hands-down favorite - is about a girl who lives in a tiny Oregon town. She notices some weird happenings that coincide with the arrival of three vampire sisters. Mary-Lynnette finds her soulmate in the sisters' older brother, and chaos ensues. She also kicks her soulmate (Ash) in the shins several times, which I find amusing, because that is how I relate to boys I like as well.
- The third book: a witch girl finds her soulmate.
- The fourth book: a lost witch girl has a near-death experience and a ghost-boy makes her into a bitchy popular girl through witchcraft. She finds...her soulmate.
- The fifth book: a vampire hunter, whose mother was killed by a vampire, kills vampires...and finds her soulmate. In a vampire.
- The sixth book: a vampire's soulmate is a human girl who has been reincarnated a billion times. They are soulmates and oh by the way the name of the book is...Soulmate.
- The seventh book, Huntress, is where it starts getting more interesting again. Apparently the millennium is coming, and with it the apocalypse. The end of the world = the Night World rising. But! There's a way to stop it. Apparently four "Wild Powers" exist and if the human world is to survive, all four kids must be found, awakened, and brought over to the light. This book has the same damn soulmate thing, but it is a little more exciting.
- The eighth book is about a secret vampire kingdom/enclave in Washington. The lead vampire dude is hot. He is a Wild Power. He finds his soulmate.
- The ninth book is about a shapeshifting girl on a mission to find the third Wild Power and secure her. Along the way, she FINDS HER DAMNED SOULMATE.
- The tenth book is supposed to either sum up the whole thing, or at the very least tell the story of the fourth Wild Power, but it was supposed to be published in 2000 - and we're still waiting for it.
However, this is not to say that these books are devoid of originality, entertainment value, or engaging characters. They have all three. I love Smith's dialogue, I love how each character is defined by a particular hobby or interest, like astronomy (and one learns about it while reading), and her plots are very good for the genre. Sure, the soulmate thing gets kind of repetitive, but she does have different characters every time, and by the time you get to the seventh book, the reason she does it starts to make much more sense.
Most importantly, though, Smith always captured my imagination. I would save what little money I had for these books and re-read them constantly, then sit back and imagine that maybe all these paranormal creatures did exist. Maybe soulmates did, too, and maybe there would be someone out there without mommy issues and paranoia, whom I could tolerate for more than five minutes. (Ah yes, these were the well-developed fantasies of my youth.)
If you're a parent who doesn't mind stories of the paranormal, these books are okay for your kids, too. I believe the worst word she ever uses is "damned" or possibly (MAYBE) "shit," and although there are occasional vague references to sex, no one gets it on in full frontal text. I don't think I got them all until I was older, so these books won't exactly destroy your child's innocence. Christopher Pike books, they are not.
I would recommend anything she wrote for a teenager, and I would probably even recommend them as fun books for adults.
