This could have gone in a much more intriguing direction. But no, classic “chosen one” territory.

32. Dark Hearts: Magic at the Crossroads – Daniel Parker

Allison’s moving to New Orleans to live with her aunt after her mother dies and it turns out, her aunt practices Voodoo and Allison’s weird nightmares and dreams are all starting to come true. She meets twins she’s seen in her dreams and one is the cool and dateable Jean-Paul and one is Isnard, with a name so easily made fun of, it’s not surprising he comes off as bitter. But that’s all part of Isnard’s plan. See, he’s also part of a sect, the grey pig one that wears conical hats with candles in them who are very much on the evil side.

Allison is enveloped in all of the practice and community around her aunt pretty quickly. She seems to take the whole “possession” thing rather in stride. She goes right for the part where she could end up making sense of her dreams and having that endless deja vu feeling. And I mean, she’s just been given an explanation for all these strange things that have happened and why her family wasn’t getting along and she’s born into Voodoo, so it’s in her blood. But, since she’s a teenager, she also gets herself in trouble and romance easily. So easily. And this is only the first book.

 

Isnerd? Thorfy’s going with a classic letter replacement for his first choice making fun of Isnard.

 

33. Dark Hearts: Tears of Blood – Daniel Parker

Well, Allie is still lying and doing a worse and worse job of it while she’s involved with the evil twin of her love Jean Paul. Jean Paul saw through it the whole time, while her aunt Odette did not even with her sixth sense style connaissance.

And Allie is learning more about the loup garou, which I’m used to as just being a werewolf, not a werewolf with wings that has to drink the blood of children to stay immortal, so that’s new. Michelle, her best frenemy, is one and tries to show Allie the fun of home invasion to drink the blood of children, which does not go well. I mean, come on, Allie, Michelle said she wasn’t going to kill that 3 year old.

There’s some more double crossing and in the end, murder. And even though this is supposed to be a story about how great Allie is – the last of the Eustache line, that girl from New York citay, the true object of the twins’ battle, Allie is actually not very interesting compared to Michelle. Michelle is not a garden variety henchperson by any means.

 

Thorfy’s also not a garden variety henchperson. Or a garden variety guinea pig, for that matter.

 

34. Dark Hearts: Dance of Death – Daniel Parker

In the conclusion to the trilogy with a bit of an open ending, it continues to be obvious to everyone but the main characters that Michelle is the most interesting character in the entire story. She’s evil, she’s got some good in her, she has to drink children’s blood for eternal life, she infiltrated the nice Voodoo humfort without anyone realizing she was part of the evil sect and a flying werewolf for literal years, she’s a murderer, she saves Jean Paul from a fire by plunging her hand into flames to retrieve the doll his own twin made of him, she keeps showing up when someone who needs to actually do something is needed, and escapes being sacrificed when it’s clear that her doing anything for love was not going to save her.

I have to say this story has been entirely focused in the wrong place, I guess because Michelle is “the help” and not part of some longstanding important family… People need to wake up to who has the merit to have their story told and who’s riding old coattails that are just telling you they’re deserving of coverage. I never really saw any demonstrations of why I should care very much about Allie and her specialness and she’s the main character here. And we’ll never know what could have been if the main character had actually been layered and making life changing choices because that character is chasing Allie’s car. Why she’s doing that is something that would make a more interesting story.

 

Thorfinnur definitely knows a lot about having a more interesting story. A pig of many tales, some he could not tell.

 

Unfortunately, none of the characters in this trilogy have anything on the dark, fierce heart of Thorfy. He took his genes and conquered.
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