LoveVampires - the website dedicated to vampire fiction.
With vampire book reviews, information and author interviews.

Nightwalker

Jocelynn Drake

Published 2008          370 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

She rules the night…
For centuries Mira has been a nightwalker – an unstoppable enforcer for a mysterious organization that manipulates earth-shaking events from the darkest shadows.  But elemental mastery over fire sets her apart from the others of her night-prowling breed… and may be all that prevents her doom.

The foe she now faces is human: the vampire hunter called Danaus, who has already destroyed so many undead.  For Mira, the time has come to hunt… or be hunted.

The Review

Nightwalker is the first novel in the Dark Days urban fantasy series as well as being the debut novel for new author Jocelynn Drake.  The story is narrated in first person by Mira, a 600 year old vampire who has the unique talent of being able to call and control fire.  As a general rule, in most vampire mythology the vampires are usually as combustible as a dead dry forest during a heat wave and the vampires in Nightwalker are no exception – giving Mira a huge advantage over her fellow vampires.

Since Mira has the strongest voice and the largest part in the story, Nightwalker is obviously a very vamp-centric novel.  The vampires are a combination of good and bad, and while most vampires regard humans solely as food, the clever (and longest lived) vampires have long since worked out that killing people is the quickest way to have a group of angry, torch-welding humans hunting for your daytime resting place.  This doesn’t mean that the vampires aren’t scary though.  Mira is old by vampire standards but she cannot match the power of an Ancient vampire and the Ancients who rule over all vampires are the stuff that her nightmares are made of.  Her whole undead life has been lived trying to avoid their notice and potential wrath.

Times are changing for Mira though, the vampire hunter Danaus seeks her out and although she is a strong vampire it is unclear who would win a fight to the death between them.  Danaus has his own strange power which makes him both a successful hunter and a difficult target.  He brings Mira news that the naturi (evil fae like beings) are returning to the earth and he wants Mira to bring the vampires together who banished the naturi from the earth 500 years ago.

While vampires are usually the bad guys (because they prey on humans) Nightwalker actually casts the vampires as humanity’s last hope since the naturi want nothing more than to eradicate all the humans from the face of the earth and take the whole planet for themselves.  Obviously it takes a very evil villain to make a vampire look like the poster child for the forces of good and in Nightwalker, the author has given us the naturi.

After years of cute Disney fairies (who love to use their magic for good) fantasy fiction has recently returned to the classic original portrayal of faeries as beings who are ambivalent and ambiguous towards humans at best, but generally malicious and malevolent in their dealings with people.  Nightwalker takes this one step further with the naturi and these extremely evil fae beings make a worthy opponent for the vampires. 

Nightwalker is a good start to the Dark Days series.  It has plenty of fantasy thrills, no shortage of fast paced action, a realistically flawed vampire protagonist and just a hint of sexy romance.  When you throw in the exotic location (Egypt) and Danaus the sexy man of mystery who stays a sexy man of mystery even up to the closing pages of the story, I feel it safe to say that vampire fans will be hard pressed to want for more.

LoveVampires Review Rating: