Night World by L. J. Smith
"Night World” is a 9-book series (there’s a mythical 10th book that may or may not eventually be published) about a reality where witches, vampires, and shapeshifters coexist in a secret society with only 2 rules: 1. Don’t tell humans we exist, and 2. Don’t fall in love with humans. Naturally, most of the books are about members of the Night World falling in love with humans. Specifically finding their “soulmate,” in all the concept’s cheesy glory. To be fair, it’s supposed to be extremely rare for soul mates to exist, and implied that so many are occurring at once for a specific reason. Unfortunately, see: mythical 10th book.
The shape shifters are basically 2nd class citizens here, and I cringe a bit at their portrayal, though one of the best books in the series is about a shapeshifter. The witches and vampires, however, are descended from the twin daughters of Hecate, Hellewise and Maya. The vampires come in two varieties: the lamia, who are direct descendants of Maya and can have children and choose when to stop aging (part of me wishes they‘d been called Empousai, but oh well…), and the “made” vampires, who are humans who were turned into vampires. The main villain of the series, Hunter Redfern, is the head of the most powerful lamia family. Hunter has never recovered from when he made a contract with a witch for heirs, expecting sons, and now his entire clan is descended from his half-witch daughters. (Like other LJS mythologies, it’s a very matriarchal mythology.)
The first 5 books are connected but largely independent, with the sixth book kicking off the main metaplot of the series, that carries into the other 3 books, which can also be read alone, which center around finding four “special” teens who will avert doomsday. Most of the books are variations of YA vampire romances.
This, basically, is how the vampire romances go in Night World:
Hero: Hello, I am a vampire (possibly an actual teenager, possibly centuries old) who has been raised since birth to view humans as Lesser Beings. And lunch. But I probably don’t engage in much random killing!
Heroine: Hi! I am a gutsy human who may actually be a vampire hunter or half-vampire! I am suitably unimpressed with your vampire badboy antics.
Hero: Probably, I don’t like you to talking back to me much (yet) but we are Soulmates so you are my true love for all eternity. I just have to figure out what to do about that thing where you are a from race I’m supposed to think is inferior.
Heroine: You are an idjit and I am leaving now even if I’ve started to notice you’re not quite the douche bag I initially thought you were.
Hero: I know! I’ll turn you into a vampire and that’ll solve everything! If you’d just tilt your head a little to the left…
Heroine: Bring those fangs any closer and I will stab you with this pencil.
Hero: No, really, you’ll thank me la- *gets stabbed with pencil* YOWTCH! Right, “no means no.” Vampires can get lead poisoning, you know!
Heroine; You are a big, alpha male baby.
Hero: But you’re still human and I have a lifetime of bigotry to overcome!
Heroine: *whaps over head with Nancy Drew books* Excuse me, I must go save the world while you have your little moral crisis. Oh, by the way, you’ll probably want to reconsider things if you don’t want to spend the rest of eternity celibate.
Hero: I think I am actually starting to like humans. In fact, I think I’m going to go join that little group that thinks humans are people too and work on my deprogramming now.
Which…sounds kind of bad, but is usually pretty awesome in practice? Likely because the heroines really are completely “oh, hells no” to it and pwn the vampires repeatedly (sometimes, Hunter Redfern shows up and kicks their egos around for a while, too) and are very much not going for the badboy vampire antics unless there’s some serious redeeming going on. Also, unlike most vampire romantic interests who get “redeemed,” LJS’s vampires aren’t just giving up something they really like for now or behaving for a bit, they’re actually changing their world views with no expectations of getting anything in return. It also isn’t always resolved by turning the heroine in a vampire. In fact, most of the books leave it questionable as to whether or no it will happen, and the romance itself is rarely resolved beyond “well, they love each other but things are complicated and they don‘t even know if they‘re going to stay together. They may decide after they take care of the apocalypse, and after he‘s done some serious amending of the things he‘s done in the past.”
Individually, the books are mixed. There are 6 I like/love to varying degrees, 2 I didn’t like as books, but that had other elements I really liked, and then one that I found boring and that used tropes I dislike, and I didn’t finish it.
The nine books are collected into three omnibuses.
First Collection:
Secret Vampire: This one is probably the most direct human/vampire romance, and one of those things that helps prove that Twilight could have been decent with a less faily writer. Poppy is a senior in high school who learns she is dying of cancer. Her best friend, James, is a lamia who largely thinks she’s the sole exception to humans being lesser beings. James decides the best way to deal with the situation is to turn her into a vampire. Unlike other heroes in the series, he actually asks first, only to initially get an “OMG WHAT NO!?!?!?” in response. He also listens. I can only assume it’s because Poppy’s already had years to work on him. It’s considerably less involving than other books in the series, but fun. The “teen decides she wants her vampire boyfriend to turn her into a vampire’ trope works way way better when she’s 17 and has just learned that she’s going to die in two weeks. I also think Poppy handled her potential death a lot better than James did, and I loved her brother completely flipping out when she died, even though he knew she’d become undead after. Also, one of the first things she does when she becomes a vampire is jump out of the car at a stoplight and latch onto a random jogger because she’s so hungry. That’s just so not the norm for teen vampire stuff.
Daughters of Darkness: Rowan, Kestrel and Jade are three sisters in the Redfern clan who runaway from home to find their aunt and hide with her because their father wants to separate them and make them get married without any input from them. When they get there, their aunt is dead, and when a neighbor, Mary Lynette, spies them burying the body in the backyard, she thinks they did it. Mary Lynette’s motto in life is “What would Nancy Drew do?” (Canon! I do not make this up!) and so she starts spying on them, only to come across their brother, Ash, who’s been sent to bring them back home. They hate each other. Naturally, they’re also soulmates. Ash proceeds to be a bigoted douche. All four girls proceed to repeatedly pwn him and tell him he’s a bigoted douche. Ash reconsiders. I grow very concerned as I realize I adore Ash. Somewhere along the way, Jade and Mary Lynette’s brother (I forget his name) realize they’re soulmates, providing us with the only proof we have that female vampires also go “oh, I’ll just fix this by making you a vampire, too.” I knew I’d love the series forever when Mary Lynnette effectively sent Ash packing until he got his act together, and made it clear that she wasn’t giving up her goals for her future just because a hunky vampire had started hanging around.
Spellbinder: The first non-vampires book. Blaise and Thea are cousins who grew up together and keep getting kicked out of human schools because Blaise doesn’t play nice with humans and likes to make human boys obsessed with her. They’d probably get in more if they weren’t also the effective heirs to the Harman family, which is the head family of the witches. Blaise decides to make her new toy be the boy who just happens to be Thea’s soulmate. When Blaise learns about this, she decides he must be destroyed because her precious and beloved Thea can’t be stuck forever with a lowly human. It’s very Secret Circle-ish, and I almost wonder if I love it and Blaise as much as I should, especially since Blaise doesn‘t seem to change her views much by the end. I suspect, though, that a lot of my acceptance has to do with the fact that a lot of her harmful acts and expressions of bigotry are directly related to the fact that Thea’s soulmate could get her killed, and at best could result in their being separated, possibly forever. In addition to his being a lesser being, of course.
Second Collection:
Dark Angel: This is the one that I found too boring to finish! Nice girl-next-door thinks she hears a kid crying for help in the woods, then falls through the ice covering the lake when she tries to find him. She gets rescued by what she thinks is her guardian angel, who then proceeds to give her a makeover and coach her into shunning her friends and the things she likes and reject being nice to be a generic popular mean girl (played completely straight). Oh, and win over the guy who never realized she existed before she was generically fashionable and pretty. Pretty much every annoying makeover trope ever in the 3 chapters I read. I’m sure his girlfriend ended up evil and mean, too. Thankfully, there’s nothing in it that actually impacts the other books.
The Chosen: This is the only book in this omnibus that I actually really like! Rashel’s mother was killed by a vampire in front of her when she was wee, and then the vampire disappeared with her younger brother. Now she dresses like a ninja (so specified in the text) and hunts vampires alongside other teens who have lost loved ones to vampires, and they capture Quinn, Hunter Redfern’s errand boy, who they think is responsible for the disappearances of a number of young women in the neighborhood. Naturally, Quinn and Rashel are Soulmates. Except that Rashel really hates vampires, and Quinn actually is one of the ones responsible for the missing girls. I actually kind of love that he’s guilty, instead of a poor, misunderstood woobie. His reformation includes Rashel kicking his butt and pwning him a lot, multiple women pwning him and his cohorts and escaping, and Hunter Redfern showing up and pwning him too, and tossing in some emotional abuse. Like Ash, I feel I really shouldn’t like Quinn or Rashel/Quinn, but I do! And there are old school Buffy references! And Damsels in distress saving themselves! (And letting the guy come along so he won’t get killed, too.)
Soulmate: This book! It is…the so-called romance is just so downright creepy. So, Thierry is the first made vampire, turned by Maya herself because he kept leading on both sisters and she decided to put a stop for that. He runs off and gets soul mated to a girl in a nearby village (The first soulmates? I can’t recall if it was actually stated.) who is promptly killed by Maya, who is a touch territorial. Girlfriend is then reborn umpteen times only to have Maya kill her each time before she turns 17, and her current incarnation is Hannah, whose subconscious has started warning her. This would be an interesting story except that Thierry is involved. Thierry introduced himself to Hannah with something along the lines of “Hi! I have been your true love forever and ever and we are eternally destined to be together. I know this and your protests that you only know me as the guy who will inevitably cause your death are pointless, as is actually getting to know you. I will now turn you into a vampire despite your absolute terror and repeated protests.” And then she stabbed him with a pencil and ran away. That’s basically their entire relationship, and I’m certain fandom likes to go on about how Hannah just needed to understand what it was like to be alone for thousands of years when a strange man told her they were destined to be together forever and then started trying to bite her neck. HOWEVER! This is also when we really start learning more about Circle Daybreak, the “let’s get along with humans!” group, and, more importantly, where all the history and mythology of Night World, particularly Maya and Hellewise, is contained, and on that level, I adore it. Even though I just spent the whole time going “Ew, Thierry, ew! Why can’t I just have a book about Maya and Hellewise?”
Third Collection:
Huntress: Jez (Short for Jezebel! ILU LJS!) is the leader of a vampire gang who runs away to find her mother’s family when she learns her mother was human, and her parents were killed by vampires for their illegal marriage and kid. (And her father was a Redfern, causing Hunter Redfern’s racist little veins to bulge.) When Circle Daybreak learns that her old second-in-command, Morgead, knows where to find a Wild Power (one of those destined apocalypse averters) she goes back and takes command of the gang back to find it. It…there are no words for how badass Jez is. Or how much she owns Morgead, who may have a bit of a Complex there. I cannot discuss it without just *handflappy* Half-vampire vampire hunter with a motorcycle! Who leaps through fire! And jumps off buildings!
Black Dawn: Oh this book. The entire plot hinges on a secret underground kingdom. Specifically, Our Heroine, Maggie, stumbling across it while looking for her brother, who supposedly died while out in the mountains with his girlfriend. Our Hero, Delos, is the emo prince of the kingdom. He is also that precious and beloved non-witch-tainted male heir Hunter Redfern has been craving for about 500 years. Too bad Delos hates Hunter’s guts. As a book, I rather dislike it, but then we have Hunter Redfern getting in in the patriarchal butt and more women working together and I laugh at the shamelessly emo prince. Also, I love that Maggie actually uses the Soulmating to shamelessly manipulate Delos into getting what she wants. It’s all: Delos: “We can do nothing life is bleak and empty we should just passively let life toss us around.” Maggie: “You are a twit and I shall now go join the anti-Apocalypse group because I cannot fight myself, but you will come right along behind me.” Delos: “…I should have kept you in the dungeon where you were safe!” Maggie: “Idiot.” Delos: “I cannot deny that, so I will incinerate enemies instead!”
Witchlight: The only shapeshifter book! Keller is a mercenary-ish shapeshifter who works for Circle Daybreak because they raised her after her mother abandoned her in a cardboard box. She is all alpha and the fun kind of manpainy, and is sent to guard the pure and angelic Wild Power, Iliana, who does not know she is a witch. Then she falls in love with Galen, who is supposed to marry Iliana and is all sweet and gentle, and…uhm…basically there for an Official Love Interest. (Ok, he is darling, but the book is seriously Keller/Iliana, much like Secret Circle is very Diana/Cassie.) Ok, this book essentially ends with Keller and Iliana married and agreeing that it’s ok that they’re both in love with Galen. I kid you not. See Huntress and *handflappy*.
And now I have read all of L.J. Smith’s 90s goodness, and loved almost all of it! I don’t know if I can go back to contemporary gothic YA. I have the first of the new Vampire Diaries books, but I understand that it’s not exactly good and often faily. And possibly someone else using the penname, anyway.