The night world for a day walker. (Night World: Bind-up v. 1, Bks. 1-3 - Lisa J Smith)

Member Name: kaitlinsmummy

Product:	Night World: Bind-up v. 1, Bks. 1-3 - Lisa J Smith
Date:	06/06/09 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A nice magical read.

Disadvantages: The first story was a little weak.

If you are familiar with my previous reviews you will be aware of the fact that I love vampires, anything gothic and dark draws me right in especially books.
So on a recent shopping trip to Asda I was pleased to see, nestled up against the Twilight books the book I will now review.

The book I will now review is - "Night world, volume one, by L. J. Smith"

This book is stated on the front page, to be the "New York times best seller", so that was the first draw, the fact it was only £4.00 was of course the clincher!

The book comprises of three separate stories, though within each story you will find that a character mentioned in a previous story ends up being the main character of the next.

The basic premise of each story is based around the so called "Night World", this (as the book states), is not a place or actual world, but a number of people who have supernatural powers and abilities.
These people include witches, vampires werewolves and physics'. There is only two rules that members of this world have to abide by, firstly you must never make this world known to any human and secondly you may toy with a humans affections, you may even kill them but you must never fall in love with one....... Yes, you can probably see where this books going can't you!

Each story centres around these fundamental rules being broken.

Secret vampire - Poppy finds out she has an incurable cancer and only has a few months to live, her best friend from nursery through to now decides to try to help her, but will she have the courage to see it through?

This is an easy read as far as these sort of stories go, though it wasn't particularly brilliant. As with the Twilight series of books this book is aimed at the teenager, so there is no sex or bad language to speak of, in fact the only real violence to mention is a murder in story three, I do feel that this was not the best story to start with though, I almost gave up reading the book upon completing this story.

Daughters of darkness - After Mary Lynette hears of her eccentric neighbours three young nieces impending visit, she is horrified to find herself in a "rear window" type situation, can she get to the bottom of the so called "murder" of her neighbour Mrs Burdock, or will she uncover a much scarier secret?

Ok, this story was much better. After reading the first story I was introduced to the character of Ash, a renegade vampire with a real dislike of humans, even going as far as calling them vermin. This story features him much more than the first, with his three younger sister being central to the story, this one shows him in a much different light and highlights the similarities between the night world and humans, instead of highlighting the differences, this is a much better read.

Enchantress - Blaise and Thea are more than cousins, after both their parents are killed on the same night they have been brought up together, so they now consider themselves sisters. The pair of them are the last of the "Harman" line, these are the last two female witches in the most important of families, the royalty of witchcraft you might say.
The two are as different as chalk and cheese though. Blaise is beautiful and alluring, she is likened to Aphrodite herself, enjoying nothing more than driving men insane, making them fall in love with her then breaking their hearts.
Thea is the quiet studious one, after Blaise gets them expelled from their 4th school in a year there instructions to "behave or else" from the top witch/grandma, seems to be a truly uphill struggle especially when Thea breaks a fundamental rule.......and falls in love with a human, will she walk away or will she stay and face death from the Night world council?

This book definitely saved the best for last, this story reminds me of the film practical magic, with the one sensible sister and the flighty sister who never seems to think before getting involved with a male, there is plenty of magic and even a few references to previous characters, the story also doesn't end the way you except it to, so there is a nice twist at the end.

This is a nice enough book with the last two stories more than making up for the poor first one.

As mentioned earlier this is available to buy from Asda for the sum of £4.00, this is the first in a number of books from this author, all centred around characters from the Night world.

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

Thanks for reading x

Summary: See review.