The dawn after the dark? (Night World 3: Spellbinder - L. J. Smith)

Member Name: kaitlinsmummy

Product:	Night World 3: Spellbinder - L. J. Smith
Date:	17/07/09 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The so called final trilogy of stories.

Disadvantages: The last story let the rest down.

After being quite impressed with the previous two volumes of the book I will now review, I was quite looking forwards to reading the third, and at present last volume of the series.

The book I will now review is - "Night World - volume three"

After the second volume uncovered a seemingly new phenomenon of Night World members suddenly finding their "soul mates" among the humans I did begin to wonder why the writer was making such a big deal about it, thankfully the third volume concentrated on explaining the exact reasons behind the previous 6 stories spread between the two books.

For anyone unfamiliar with the books the basic premise is this -

The Night World is an underground organisation that holds within it's perimeters the identity of any vampire, werewolf, shape shifter and witch on the planet. Within these perimeters they are governed by the Night World council, this is made up from leading members and figures from the afore mentioned groups.

There are two rules that these creatures of the night have to follow, never reveal the Night World to a human, this rule, if broken will result in death, the second rule being never to fall in love with a human.....hence the two previous books.

This book comprises, like the two previous books, of three separate stories, all revolving around a selection of the afore mentioned creatures.
This particular book goes a little way to explaining the emphasis on the "soul mate" theory, this was an unusual thing as far as the creatures were concerned, but due to an ancient prophecy, that at the millennium the dark will rise again and the age of man will be no more, new and more powerful abilities were appearing within the creatures and the soul mate theory was thrown into disarray, thus causing the coupling of the night world and humans.

This book concentrates on the Night Worlds, well the one's that are quite happy to live alongside humans, only saviours.....the wild powers.
These are four beings, a human, an infant witch, a vampire and one from a long forgotten land of kings, that have the power of blue fire and must be found and united in the face of their enemies at the break of the millennium.

Huntress - Jez Redfern is a leader of a group of sadistic vampires, more than happy to torture and kill humans for fun and food, after having an epiphany during one of her hunts she finds that she has an overwhelming urge to protect and serve humans, but can she resist her desire for blood, and will her gang take to her new life, as with her gang it's blood in, blood out.......

This is great story to start with, it gives you a basic overview of the wild powers, but the stories do not concentrate solely on that subject, also covering the ever changing morals and ideas of the Night World members to fit in with the blurring lines between their world and ours.

Black Dawn - Maggie's beloved older brother goes missing. When his girlfriend Sylvia arrives at the house with the police distraught, saying that Miles, an accomplished climber, has slipped and fell to his death the family are overcome. When Maggie notices that Sylvia seems more concerned with her mismatch socks Maggie smells a rat.
After following her home, Maggie finds herself in whole (other) world of trouble. Will she survive to find her brother, or will the one person who she feels she has fallen in love with be her undoing and end with her death......

Again this is a great story. This story takes the characters from the everyday to the ancient and mythical, due to the venue which I will not disclose as this will give the entire story away, the characters seem to be more vicious and there are some quite sadistic scenes, so considering this is a book aimed at young teenagers I would seriously consider how this book may affect them.

Witch light - Keller is a shape shifter that was abandoned at birth by her mother, due to this fact she was brought up within the confines of "circle daybreak" an organisation within Night World that encourages the bonds between there members and humans, this of course sets them at odds and against the rest of the Night World.
This being the case they have to have their own designated security force, which is what Keller does...and well!
After being sent on a job with her band of fighters to recover a wild power she meets the dashing Galen, but he can never be hers.
Will she recover the wild power and resist the advances of Galen, or will the king of all creatures destroy them with a swish of his tail.......

I have to say this story was a little weak, personally I thought there was so much more that could have happened within the story due to the diversity of the characters, instead the story was insipid and slow until the last couple of pages and then raced through so quickly I almost lost track. The other thing is the newest character introduced, this is a particularly nasty one which the story states as underfeatable, yet time and time again the weakest character manages to put "wards" up to keep the monster from entering certain buildings, I know this will be a silly thing to write, but after the attention to detail in the previous two stories this one seemed almost unbelievable, and by this I mean that even though I know this is a work of fiction, it is believable enough to immerse yourself completely, I just really struggled with this one.

This book was bought for the very reasonable price of £4.00 from Asda.

For more information visit - www.asda.co.uk or www.hodderschildren.co.uk

Thanks for reading x

As an after thought, the book I have reviewed doesn't have the same front cover as the picture shown, though I have noticed a variation of covers from book to book.

Summary: See review.