Dark Glitter — a review

REVIEW

After reading and not liking the previous collaborative work by these two authors, I was cautious going into this one.  However, I have liked both their individual works, and the story sounded good.  I have to say that the story was good.  The authors seemed to want to delve into the mythology of the fae and make it their own.  The story is compelling and moves forward at a fairly decent pace.  There are quite a few question marks regarding some of the supporting cast, but overall, I would say this is a solid story.

Unfortunately, there are a few things that definitely distracted and detracted from this story.  There were numerous “wrong” words, where homophones and near-homophones were used in place of the word the author wanted.  There was also no editing to smooth the transition, so sections were written with a definite Australian vocabulary and sections with a definite American vocabulary.  A good line-editor would have caught this disconnect and smoothed it out so that the book was seamless.  Also, the last part of the story was formatted poorly (centered text), but I’m not sure if that’s something that was specific to my copy.

I really liked the melding of Cajun and Irish in the beginning.  You could feel the brogue pushing through the drawl and it made Reece’s speech interesting.  Unfortunately, this was not maintained and the drawl became thicker and thicker.  Also, Reece was the only character to think with an accent.  This seemed odd and jarring (not something you really noticed until Killian, who has a French accent, gets a chapter, and he does not think ).

The hardest thing to read, though, was the MC.  I’m not sure if it was due to the split personality/soul thing they used (which was awesome when it was done well), but it was difficult to understand and keep up with the MC’s personality.  She frequently flipped between teenager and older 20s and ‘ancient’, which wasn’t a real issue.  It was the fact that the ‘ancient’ voice had the only presence during times of crisis.  The new adult voice was frequently only available as an afterthought when discussing sex, and the late teen voice seemed to show up to only show how weak the human side of her was–despite many protestations about how strong she was.  The mouthing of words that she wanted to rule equally combined with a sense of ownership over the guys…and the explicit demand that they not stray from the relationship while she tells another that she can do so if she wishes.  Well…it doesn’t sit well with me.  It smacks of a hypocrisy that I find distasteful and is a definite detractor.  I can see the final lord being added without the input of her “equal” partners and her ruling that they need to accept it, despite prejudices and dislike.

Overall, it was an enjoyable story.  I will probably add the series to my TBR list, but it isn’t one that I will be rushing out to finish.

Dark Glitter