A review by kblincoln
Darkness Fair by Rachel A. Marks
4.0
I still like Aidan. The complicated world of ghosts, wraiths, demons, and various levels of angels is still interesting to explore (although the most interesting developments about Aidan, his sleeping sister Ava, her parentage, and the fate of the demon gate doesn't happen until the very end), but this book didn't hold my attention as well as the first.
The perennial problem of the second book in a story arc focused on discovering demons and angels and stopping them from taking over: you don't need two books to discover, and so sometimes the middle book gets a little soggy.
Aidan and his LA Paranormal friends spend a lot of time going hither and thither to and from the cave where his sister is bound in a coma like sleep trying to protect his sister from being discovered by demons. And Aidan's love, Kara, who was unapologetically brash in the first book, morphs into a bleeding damsel in distress.
Sid, who was cool, mostly disappears from this book, replaced by Eric-the-Angel who appears just in time to give Aidan tantalizing snippets of information before disappearing again.
So a tad frustrating. The actual ghost-busting scenes were fun, gross, and a cool way to show off Aidan's powers.....but slightly unbelievable in the context of Aidan frantically worried about his sister and Kara, etc. They were side bars that sometimes required too much suspension of disbelief on my part.
Then I got to the end, as I mentioned above, and the book too off running again. I love it when authors spend entire books making you worry about an event happening: and then that event happens anyway and its so much dire than you ever imagined. Alot of Aidan's worst fears materialize and he seems poised to lose his sister and probably a large portion of L.A. as well.
The perennial problem of the second book in a story arc focused on discovering demons and angels and stopping them from taking over: you don't need two books to discover, and so sometimes the middle book gets a little soggy.
Aidan and his LA Paranormal friends spend a lot of time going hither and thither to and from the cave where his sister is bound in a coma like sleep trying to protect his sister from being discovered by demons. And Aidan's love, Kara, who was unapologetically brash in the first book, morphs into a bleeding damsel in distress.
Sid, who was cool, mostly disappears from this book, replaced by Eric-the-Angel who appears just in time to give Aidan tantalizing snippets of information before disappearing again.
So a tad frustrating. The actual ghost-busting scenes were fun, gross, and a cool way to show off Aidan's powers.....but slightly unbelievable in the context of Aidan frantically worried about his sister and Kara, etc. They were side bars that sometimes required too much suspension of disbelief on my part.
Then I got to the end, as I mentioned above, and the book too off running again. I love it when authors spend entire books making you worry about an event happening: and then that event happens anyway and its so much dire than you ever imagined. Alot of Aidan's worst fears materialize and he seems poised to lose his sister and probably a large portion of L.A. as well.