Darkangel (Book One of the Darkangel Series) Book

Aeriel was bought at the slave markets as a baby and raised alongside her young mistress, Eoduin, the beautiful daughter of the town syndic. Now nearly a woman grown, she accompanies Eoduin in the climb up the mountain to collect hornbloom nectar for Eoduin's cousin's wedding - the tradition being that you are not married until the bride and groom have shared the bridal cup, and the bride's cousin must collect it on the day.

But when they reach the mountaintop, the Darkangel flies down, all pale luminescent beauty and a dozen black wings, and snatches Eoduin, carrying her off to make her his bride. No one in the town believes Aeriel - the Darkangel is just a story, after all - and some even accuse her of causing her mistress' death. Knowing that Eoduin's father means to sell her, she goes back to the mountain, hoping the Darkangel comes again so that she can kill him.

When he comes, the Darkangel is too strong and beautiful to kill, as cruel and selfish as he is. Instead he takes Aeriel back to his home, an abandoned palace carved out of the side of a mountain, to spin clothes for his thirteen brides. His brides are all indistinguishable, fragile wraiths, their hearts cut out, their blood drunk, their souls collected into little vials that hang from a necklace around the Darkangel's neck.

When the Darkangel has acquired his fourteenth wife in a year's time and collected her soul, Aeriel learns, he will take all the souls to his mother, a water witch, and become a full-fledged vampyre with his six brothers. Together the vampyres will carve up the world and rule absolute. Only Aeriel can stop him, but to do so she will have to escape the palace and find the starhorse, one of the wardens of the land created by the Ancients, those who first arrived and made the air and atmosphere, the plants and animals, before sealing themselves inside their domes, forgotten in all but name.

Even though the vampyre is a monster who must be stopped, Aeriel doesn't want to kill him, doesn't want his beauty and majesty to leave the world. But time is running out, and the stakes are high. Soon Aeriel will have to make the hardest decision of her life in order to prevent the vampyres from taking over the world.


The prose of this book reminded me of Alphabet of Thorn: they both have that fairy-tale quality, a slight distance between voice and character even though, especially here, you only get one perspective (Aeriel's). I don't know if there's a word for it, and it's hard to describe. It creates a certain tone, a kind of mythological or biblical tone, a flavour that works especially well with Fantasy and works very well here.

Aside from the sad fact that there was at least one typo on almost every single page (surely, Little, Brown & Co, when a book has been out for more than two decades, you'd have plenty of time to fix these glaring mistakes?), it's well written, with a controlled, measured pace that only adds to that fairy-tale quality. Aeriel is a sweet girl, the Darkangel an almost sulky, petulant teen who whines about how ugly his wives are in one breath, and threatens to strangle Aeriel in the next. He does have charisma, and even though Aeriel is in his thrall you can understand why she'd want to save him.

The other main character in the story is a duarough, a little man called Talb who turns to stone if he's caught in the sun. He lives in the caves beneath the palace and helps Aeriel against the Darkangel. Every fairy-tale needs a fairy godmother! and Talb fits that role. There is the Lorelei, the water-witch who steals little boys and turns them into vampyres, and a quest story that's pure Fantasy. Then we have Narnia-inspired beasts: magnificent talking animals who guard their part of the land with wisdom and fierce pride; and a dash of science fiction in the story of the Ancients. There's plenty going on here but it never loses its quiet, patient tone or measured pacing. Despite the variety of characters, the plot is simple and straight-forward, with no real surprises.

The only part I found lacking, which undermined the story, was Aeriel's love for the Darkangel. Even though she qualifies it as love "in a way", I thought she pitied him, felt compassion for him, and believed in the "spark of good" that still lay in him - maybe that is love "in a way", but there was so little interaction between the two that it was hard to see how she could develop these feelings for him, good girl or no. I don't like it when stories take emotions like these for granted, and don't spend time on developing them for the reader - it smacks of mere convenience for the plot's sake.

I never really understood the measures of time - Solstar is both "daylight" and the sun? I think the world might be a moon - they refer to Oceanus, a planet they guide by, which might actually be Earth. They say "day-month" and I was never sure if they actually meant months or not. It was so confusing it was distracting because I was trying to figure it out. An author's note would have been helpful.