#1 Darkness Of Light (Darkness Series Book
1) by Stacey Marie Brown [Kindle Edition]
DARKNESS OF LIGHT is a Mature YA(16+)/New Adult Paranormal
Romance.
**Warning: The Darkness Series is not YA, but a NA Series.
Freak. Witch. Crazy. Schizo.
Ember Brycin has been called them all. She’s always known she’s different. No one has ever called her normal, even under the best circumstances. Bizarre and inexplicable things continually happen to her, and having two different colored eyes, strange hair, and an unusual tattoo only contributes to the gossip about her.
When the latest school explosion lands her in a facility for troubled teens, she meets Eli Dragen, who’s hot as hell and darkly mysterious. Their connection is full of passion, danger, and secrets. Secrets that will not only change her life, but what and who she is—leading her down a path she never imagined possible.
Between Light and Dark, Ember finds a world where truth and knowledge are power and no one can be trusted. But her survival depends on finding out the truth about herself. In her pursuit, she is forced between love and destiny and good and evil, even when the differences between them aren’t always clear. At worst, she will incite a war that could destroy both worlds. At best, she will not only lose her heart but her life and everyone she loves. Once the truth is out, however, there will be no going back. And she’ll definitely wish she could.
**Warning: The Darkness Series is not YA, but a NA Series.
Freak. Witch. Crazy. Schizo.
Ember Brycin has been called them all. She’s always known she’s different. No one has ever called her normal, even under the best circumstances. Bizarre and inexplicable things continually happen to her, and having two different colored eyes, strange hair, and an unusual tattoo only contributes to the gossip about her.
When the latest school explosion lands her in a facility for troubled teens, she meets Eli Dragen, who’s hot as hell and darkly mysterious. Their connection is full of passion, danger, and secrets. Secrets that will not only change her life, but what and who she is—leading her down a path she never imagined possible.
Between Light and Dark, Ember finds a world where truth and knowledge are power and no one can be trusted. But her survival depends on finding out the truth about herself. In her pursuit, she is forced between love and destiny and good and evil, even when the differences between them aren’t always clear. At worst, she will incite a war that could destroy both worlds. At best, she will not only lose her heart but her life and everyone she loves. Once the truth is out, however, there will be no going back. And she’ll definitely wish she could.
Cover:
I absolutely love the
artwork on this cover! It’s colourful, with mysterious dark purples and blues for the
top half of the cover, surrounded by rock in the background. The bottom half
has a yellowy greeny colour, the sort of colour a cat’s eye would have. If you
really analyse the cover, like I do since I like analysing stuff, if you notice
the work ‘Darkness’ it’s all in block capitals and it’s on a plaque which you
would show off like an award or something else prominent. The “plaque” also has
vines swirling around it, which gives me the impression that whatever this
“darkness” is, it will trap you – the swirl has curves in it which shows a
specific art. But which? Moreover, the words ‘of Light’ are in a flowery kind
of typeface and glows a little, which shows that it’s for good and the good is
nice. But if you notice in the back of ‘of Light' there’s a forest and there’s
a pathway to whatever is glowing in the distance – if you look really hard, it
looks like a grand beginnings of a castle. But I'm not too sure. If you notice
the overall look of the cover, which do you see more: dark colours/ shadows or
light colours/ glowing? Continuing on the subject of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ and
also the colours, notice that the girl’s face, Ember’s, has one dark eye and one
light. But once having read the book, looks can be deceiving …
Book review:
As soon as I started
reading the book and was a few pages into it, I knew I was going to like it. It
was straight into the action department! As some of you know I love my action!
It’s the Masquerade ball at Ember Brycin’s school and she’s out with her two
best friends: Ryan and Kennedy. Ember lost a bet to Ryan, and her consequence
is to go to the ball – but even though she’s not looking forward to it, she
suddenly sees her crush, Ben. But she doesn't get to talk to him long because
Kallie Parson comes in and ruins it. It wouldn't be secondary school without a catfight/ bully now would it?
They get into a
little heated argument and as soon as Kallie starts b**ching about Ember’s
friends, Ember gets seriously angry – and nobody wants to get our lovely Ember angry. Especially
when bulbs start to burst and mini fires start from the resulting lightning. As
you can guess, everyone is in hysterics and run out of the gym door. When Ember
calms, she finds that she’s on the floor of the gym on her own – then she hears
the fire engines.
As she’s being
checked by the paramedics, Sherriff Weiss and Principal Mitchell interrogate
her.
Soon after, she walks
around the school to cool off and suddenly – out of nowhere – a pair of blue
eyes comes into view after whispering her name. Blue Eyes’ features are
distorted and very hard to see in the dark. Even with that, Ember thinks she
knows him from somewhere, that he seems rather familiar – but she thinks this
is all a hallucination and quickly dismisses it and plays along. However,
something he says sends chills her spine, also mine. ‘You are starting to become harder to hide from her.’ Eerie? I sort
of trust Blue Eyes because of that message. Ember is confused and scared, but
as they talk, I noticed that Blue Eyes said ‘Cinaed’.
What is ‘cinaed’? I’ve read this sort of writing before in some books and I
think it was Gaelic, I wasn’t sure. I know what you are all thinking: Why not Google translate it? Well, no. I’m not going
to do that because it’s going to ruin the fun of the book isn’t it? It would
totally ruin it for me and wouldn’t have kept the mysteriousness of it all.
Later on, after that
freakish moment of hallucinating Blue Eyes, Ember goes home to take a nice,
long, relaxing bath. She checks her bandages from the electrical explosion from
school and finds that she’s completely healed – where she should have nowhere
nearly healed since the cuts were deep.
Ember freaks – I
would too!
That is sooo not
normal! (Or if you read a lot of this genre, you’re used to it).
In Chapter 5, while
in the police station (busted!), Ember sits down with a cup of coffee. She
looks over to the guy nearest to her with a magazine and wearing a hoody. For
some unknown reason to her, her skin starts to prickle – signs of her powers
coming to rise to protect her – and feels that there’s a threat nearby. As she
keeps on looking at him, he starts to fidget. All she wants to know is what his
face look like, but with his hood up – she can’t. Suddenly a policeman comes
over to this guy and takes off his cuffs from the arms rest. Noticing that they
both know each other, the receptionist tells him that he knows what to do.
Odd …
The guy turns his
head ever so slightly towards Ember. We get to see part of a strong chin, part
of his lips which looked like they were pulled up to a smirk – cocky bastard –
and …
Piercing green eyes.
Which takes our
breaths away.
H.O.T.!
Once Mark, Ember’s
step dad, had finished his conversation with Sherriff Weiss and Principal
Mitchell about Ember going to Silverwood for “troubled children”, they both
head to his truck to go home. Before Ember climbs into the truck, she feels as
if she’s being watched. By a black Harley motorbike, stands the guy from the
police station with his ‘pair of electric
green eyes looked back into [hers]’and noticed that ‘the way his eyes glowed reminded [her] of[ her] own.’ She got an
evil feeling and shivered as ‘fear filled
[her] knowing he knew [her] face.’
The next day, after
seeing Green Eyes, Chapter 7 leads us to see Ember out in the trees by her
house, hoping to clear her mind of these hallucinations. Her peace of mind doesn't stay for long as suddenly the wind picks up. Whispering her name, a
muscular man stands before her in ‘black
leather pants and a black fitted shirt, which hugged every muscle to
perfection’ on his body.
Oh. My. Days!
Muscular men and leather trouser and fitted shirt absolutely DOES it for me! I'm in! I just want to take him away and make him mine!
OK … might have gone
too far there … Ho hum.
His looks don’t stop
there ladies and gents, it is also partnered with ‘black hair and alluring smile.’ Well, what would we do without an ‘alluring smile’ hey? Every book has
one! And guess what?
He has a name!
Torin!
Odd name and it originates
from (yes, I did some research) Gaelic and means ‘chief’ and may have roots
meaning ‘thunder’. Hmm, rather interesting.
Silverwood is where
we are next, and is where strange and weird things start to occur…
With Ember going to
Silverwood with a community service punishment in tow, the head mistress of the
school, Mrs Sanchez, introduces Mark and Ember to Silverwood and explains the
schedule and things like that. When Ember goes to her first Outdoor session,
2-4, she suddenly feels very hot and looks behind her.
There’s a guy coming
towards her with a slight limp in his step. They lock eyes. ‘Two deep scars’, ‘dishevelled, rough bad boy’, ‘animalistic
quality’ and ‘his eyes shone
unnervingly bright’. Is there more I need to say? Guess what? It’s the guy
from the police station! Green Eyes!
But jealousy turns
Ember’s mood as a girl walks towards him and she notices ‘something unreal
about her’ too. With that, she has ‘beautiful,
long, red hair, light blue eyes, and porcelain skin’. Is it me, or am I
thinking of Princess Merida from Brave?
These two are in
their earlier 20s and they do have names. Green Eyes is called Eli Dragen! Oh
my days, talk about a sexy name! Eli Dragen is a bad boy! Just to prepare you,
so you all don’t faint because he is soo sexy.
The lovely Princess
Merida’s name is Samantha (Sam) Walker. Now, since this is a supernatural book,
I thought I was being clever and try to suss their powers out. So I thought
that, since Eli’s surname Dragen sounds and looks a lot like “dragon”, his
power was something like the element of fire, or he stemmed from The Dragon or
something like that. With Sam’s surname, Walker, I thought it seemed that she
would have the Earth element since “walk” is within her surname and likes to
walk through forests.
But soon later in the
book, we start to hate these people (read the book for the reason why).
WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?
WHY?
Not fair! *sulks and
crosses arms like a petulant child*.
Later, Ember meets up
with Kennedy and Ryan at a café to hang out.
It happens again.
Our favourite person
of the year, Kallie Parson, comes over to their table and starts to bully them.
Ember gets very, very angry and suddenly all the lights burst and the boiler
explodes. But the weird thing is, is that Ember is completely calm and likes
the destruction that surrounds her …
Is this good or bad?
After that fiasco and
a few pages later, Sherriff Weiss, whom is after Ember and Eli, decides to add
two more days of community service to Ember’s sentence and to Eli’s from a
previous crime.
But the catch is,
they have work together to teach a fun ropes course to troubled teens. As you
can probably guess, they hate it and, since Eli is an instructor at Silverwood,
he tries to talk Mrs Sanchez out of it. But no, this old lady isn’t head
mistress for nothing, and sticks firmly to her plan. She even goes to say, ‘And I have a feeling you and Eli will work
really well together.’
Ha! Now that’s a joke!
Eli + Ember =>
work well together?
More like:
Eli + Ember =>
sexual tension + arguments + hot and cold attitude
Now that’s more like
it.
This is the part I
was acting totally like a teenager, which I am. The ropes lesson for these two
was very hot and steamy! Not X rated or anything. After all, this is 16+ book,
but I do admit that I squealed like a school girl and giggled. So what? Sue me
for having this reaction, I am after all a hopeless romantic.
After the steamy
ropes lesson, Kennedy and Ryan pick up the sexually frustrated 18 year old.
They both look and gawk at Eli, who is casually leaning on his black Harley. My
favourite line of Ryan’s is that he says ‘Now
there’s a Happy Meal I’d like to order.’ OMDs!! I laughed so much! As Ryan
continues to spout these types of remark, I fall in love with him.
I don’t blame them
for gawking at sexy Dragen.
But something strange
happens …
Kennedy just looks at
Eli blankly and mumbles, ‘He’s dangerous
and very dark. Death surrounds him…’. Well, I thought that was a bit weird
and thought I would file that incident away in my detective hat for later –
having a feeling it would come up again.
Ryan and Kennedy quiz
Ember about the lovely Dragen and that Ryan would defiantly have him. However,
once Ember mentions his name, they both go quite. I was a bit confused at this,
so was Ember, but Ryan and Kennedy explained that our lovely Dragen is part of an
MC (motorbike club), called The RODS, aka The Riders of Darkness. A very
dangerous group according to Ryan, since his father works at the police station.
He says that they are into some nasty habits.
Hmmm … more secrets
from Mr Dragen.
After a hectic day of
their first ropes course lesson to 10-12 year olds, as Eli and Ember are about
to leave Silverwood, a strange person comes into view at the gates. ‘He smiled at [her], but something in his
eyes told [her] he was anything but friendly.’ Well, this strange man, Lorcan, calls Eli
‘brother’. So we have a good brother and a bad brother. How interesting …
Being a nice
gentleman, he introduces himself to Ember by saying that ‘it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’ Not creepy at all with a
smile like that mate. As both brothers start to have a “civilised” conversation,
it quickly grows heated, as Eli starts to get superior. He suddenly spits out, ‘Are you willing to give it all up? Get your
head on straight, brother.’ Ember obviously freaks out and after the day
that’s she’s had, she’s about to blow. She gets really annoyed that Eli won’t
answer her questions so she starts to walk off. Eli gets on his motorbike and
comes after her since she won’t stop and shouts ‘Ciach ort!’.
We've seen that
somewhere, haven’t we? Talon …
As the book
progresses, more events take place. I don’t want to get into too much detail
since some people would probably like to read the book and I don’t want to
spoil the fun.
Later on, Ember
starts to get fevers, which is unheard of since she doesn’t get ill, and gets
more terrifying nightmares. With all this power, she starts to destroy more
things. As she continues to cause havoc, the darkness in her is very dominant
against the light, which is a cause for concern.
Sam isn’t just a
jealous beach, she tries to kill Ember.
At a campfire party,
Eli and Ember have an argument which doesn’t end very well, with Ember running
for her life when a creature appears and shreds her calves like mincemeat.
Where’s Eli?
He’s got distracted
by hunting someone that was disturbed in the woods where they were.
But it’s a trap.
In the next chapter,
Ember is in the infirmary and while she is unconscious – since losing a lot of
blood – Eli makes a blood transfusion. This is forbidden.
Then, Ember is told
that the worlds of Fae, of Celtic and Irish fairy tale stories of Tuatha Dé
Danann, are actually all true.
Welcome to the Otherworld.
Ember is an
“abomination” in everyone’s eyes and the group of people: Eli, Cole, Jared,
Owen and Cooper run tests on her blood since her and Eli’s blood are mixed. As
they run the tests, they all tell Ember of the Otherworld. But before they could
get into the really good stuff, she is kidnapped and is put in a cell made of
iron – which is allergic to the Fay.
She has been
kidnapped by the Queen of the Seelie Court. Yet again, our lovely gentleman
shows himself and tells Ember of who she really is and what he and his brother
are.
Ember is a Dae. ½ Fay
+ ½ Demon => Dae.
Lorcan and Eli =
Death Dwellers. They are very cat like and incredibly dangerous.
The Queen releases
Ember. She wants Ember to do something horrific. Ember obviously refuses, like
anyone would, but the Queen has a surprise and brings out her father, Mark.
Then she starts beating him up. Ember shouts out for her to stop,. The Queen
does and Ember agrees to do whatever the Queen wants her to do.
This means destroying
Seattle.
Since Ember’s powers
are just beginning to appear, the Queen wants the best effect on the city. She
provokes Ember’s anger, since her powers work best with strong emotions, and Ember
screams as the city before her reduces to rubble.
Ember is horrified
and is sick with herself for doing such a task, but she was forced. With sudden
determination, she tries to run away from the Queen’s grasp. But before she’s
able to get away, she pauses at Mark, who is barely conscious but his eyes tell
her to go. Torin appears and promises to protect Mark.
Then Ember runs.
I absolutely LOVED
this book! It has everything that I wanted in a book. Adventure, romance,
infuriating hot bad boy, suffering, supernaturalism and humour.
LOVE LOVE LOVE!
The book on Kindle is
77p and is approximately 301 pages.
I would give it 5/5!
I know, I’m not that hard to please, but this book is AMAZING and would so
totally recommend this book!
Book 2: Fire in the Darkness by Stacey
Marie Brown
Katie x
