Book Review: Night Glimmer by Stephen Weagraff
Night Glimmer is an interesting take on the vampire world. It takes the myths of witches, vampires, and werewolves, but gives us insight into the origins and everyday lives of the beings in this society. There were moments of excellent description, beautiful images (I will forever remember the butterfly on the window), and a lot of cute humor. While bits got a tad cliche, I liked the read. I do, however, hope I have an older version and that the editing errors have since been fixed.
The Details
I got a review copy back in January — I'm so sorry for being so slow to review it, I'm usually better about this :/ — and I noticed that there are 2 editions to this book. I'm not sure if I got the older copy of the novel, but there were tons of typos. Sometimes there were wrong words, sometimes duplicate words, sometimes punctuation errors (a period and then a comma), but it was very distracting and often kicked me from the story. That could be just my issue, since there have been reviews already and no one else commented. If I have the older copy, my concerns with editing might be outdated, but I can only review on what I received.
The story itself had an intriguing start, though the sudden (and only) shift from third to first perspective caught me very off-guard. After this shift, though, we stay in the first person and aren't throttled out again.
We know from the beginning that our MC is special, and that's great. We see his struggle with who and what he is, as well as the constant battle he has to find an internal balance with himself. That was lovely. I remember thinking that bits were cliche, but can't recall them now. They were smaller details, mostly about the vampire culture and being turned. Must not be that important if I can't recall them.
The story builds well overall, though it does slow down a bit about 2/3 of the way. Then it picks up, though, and we're off again. The climax was well done; though some of the villain's dialogue seemed forced, the rest I enjoyed. The resolution was impressive, and the secrets revealed well.
The last paragraph, though, annoyed me. I can appreciate a good cliffhanger, but there's a difference between a cliffhanger and a metaphorical snowball to the reader's face. No one's going to smile and say, "how clever! Throw another one at me!" as the snow melts and drips down their neck. I felt like it was thrown in the last few lines and I needed more development for me to understand the reasoning behind what happened (Sorry I'm being so vague. I'm trying to avoid spoilers). Maybe this is just me. It was a neat development, but I needed to know the reason behind it to believe it.
I was annoyed, too, that the women didn't play as much a role as the men did in the trials that built to the climax…especially since the women were as bad ass as the men (mostly). They seemed like cheerleaders, standing in the background except for a rare occasion or two when the men had no clue. It really got to me that they took such a backseat.
I couldn't do this paragraph without spoilers, so screw being vague.
That said, Tess & Aidan's banter was almost always adorable. While the love between them seemed to grow too quickly for me to believe, they didn't waiver in it. It was wonderful to see their love grow, and I really liked that he gave her a choice to be in his world. That was really refreshing and it was a big "FINALLY!" moment for me that the MC let the love interest actually have a say in whether or not she wanted to be in the action, rather than just "protecting" her the whole time. Loved that.
I think readers who adore vampire fiction will really like this book. There's a fun set of trials which lead to the climax, a lot of action, lovers' banter, and crazy snowboarding flips. Check it out if that sounds up your alley.
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