Review: Dark Light of Day by Jill Archer
Dark Light of Day by Jill Archer
Noon Onyx #1
Noon Onyx grew up on the banks of the river Lethe, the daughter of a prominent politician, and a descendant of Lucifer’s warlords. Noon has a secret: She was born with waning magic, the dark, destructive, fiery power that is used to control demons and maintain the delicate peace among them. But a woman with waning magic is unheard of, and some would consider her an abomination.
Noon is summoned to attend St. Lucifer’s, a school of demon law. She must decide whether to declare her powers there…or to attempt to continue hiding them, knowing the price for doing so may be death. And once she meets the forbiddingly powerful Ari Carmine—who suspects Noon is harboring magic as deadly as his own—Noon realizes there may be more at stake than just her life.
Armageddon had come and gone with the demons being the victors. The survivors worship the demons through rituals and sacrifices in order to survive. The demons in turn are held under a very strict set of rules that keeps things from degenerating into death and chaos again. These rules are upheld by those with waning magic, which until recently was only seen in males. But Noon Onyx is the exception to that rule. For years she has tried to hide her secret, but now that she is being forced to attend St. Lucifer's demon law school, she may not be able to hide for much longer. The deadline to declare her magic is looming around the corner and if she doesn't declare she will face deadly consequences.
Dark Light of Day was a rather frustrating read for me due to the incredible amount of obscure names for everything. There were just so many different odd names and titles for things that it became rather overwhelming and hard to follow. I realize that it isn't our world, so things would be different, but I just think things went a little too far in that aspect. I mean, every single thing had a odd name from the people, to the town, and all the different subjects in their school, and honestly my eyes started to cross rather early on. At first I tried to keep everyone and everything straight, but it soon became apparent that wasn't going to work so well and I wound up feeling rather detached from the story in general.
I have to be honest that I'm not the biggest fan of Noon. I realize that she's rather insecure due to the oddity of being the only female with her type of magic and that couldn't have been easy to grow up that way. However, she came off as rather petulant and immature which quickly grated on my nerves. Even though she was supposed to be in her early twenties, she came off as much younger and immature. In fact, I'm not really sure what the love interest saw in her, and as a result I had a hard time finding it to be realistic. From the start she had fears that he was only interested in her because she was an oddity, which was another source of her constant fussing. Even though it seemed like her worries were unfounded, in all honesty I would have found that to be more believable than the overwhelmingly quick love and mushy stuff on his behalf. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against fast moving love, but I have to actually care about both of the characters to believe in it.
In the end, I'm rather disappointed with Dark Light of Day, which is a shame since it had such an interesting premise and so much potential. That being said, I'm intrigued enough to give this series one more chance since by the end of this book, Noon did seem to start to make a turn around in her behavior and acceptance of who she is, so perhaps the next installment will be better.
(Recevied a copy from the publisher)
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