2.5 stars
So continues my epic journey of torturing myself with the Darklight series. After rating the first book 1 star and ranting about it for many paragraphs, I decided it would be a good idea to pick up the almost 500 page sequel. Yes, I realize the lack of logic in my actions.
Honestly, I was decently surprised by the quality of this one. I thought the writing was better, and it didn't contain nearly as many cringy scenes and dialogues as the first one. That said, considering the first book is probably one of the worst books I've read, that still doesn't put this one high on my list.
The biggest issue with this book is all the unnecessary detail. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the entire book is filler because some key elements and questions are beginning to be answered, but do we really need to discuss every. single. thing. as a group after we just witnessed it happening? I'm so sick of having to read through paragraphs and paragraphs of dialogue that goes absolutely nowhere. It got to the point where I was skipping any paragraph longer than 10 lines, and I don't think I missed anything.
The biggest thing Darkthirst has over Darklight is that their escape and hiding gets us out of that military compound I hated so much. Even though they're still following orders/commanding a group and fighting and all the unrealistic stuff for a group of people who behave like teenagers, it read a lot more naturally in my opinion.
I was also happy to get to see a little more of the vampires in action, even if it means wanting to slap Lyra if I have to hear her describe Dorian as strong one more time. We get it. We got it the first 500 times you mentioned it.
Their relationship does annoy me to a certain extent. I didn't understand the first half of the book when they were just trying to "be friends." Actually, that's wrong. I get that they didn't want to involve a relationship while they're trying to focus on survival. That makes sense to a certain degree. What didn't make sense was Lyra's knowledge of being friends. Like, there would be a scene where Dorain would come in the room, and she'd be glad to see him, only to freak out about her feelings. So, are you not normally happy to see your friends? It didn't make sense to me, and things overall got better once they decided to embrace their attraction to each other.
So, Dorian's fine in my opinion, but now let's discuss the other unknown number of vampires involved. Starting with my first question of: how many vampires even are there?? We're always given vague indications of groups, but there are too many names to keep track of (aside from the main three that come in and out of the story.) And even though the other vampires are given names and described to us, they seem to disappear as fast as they reappear, and there's always a new one we suddenly need to be introduced to.
The actions of the vampires who are not Dorian are also pretty confusing. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad. Sometimes they can do this, sometimes they can't. They don't understand the phrase "being in a pickle," but they can tell you that they're getting "red flags." There are too many conflicting aspects of this story to sometimes take it seriously.
But, I guess we'll see where book 3 takes us because I apparently can't leave it alone until it's over.