Darkness Before Dawn
Author: J.A. London
Series: Darkness Before Dawn (#1)
Publisher: HarperTeen
How Received: publisher copy
Only sunlight can save us.
We built the wall to keep them out, to keep us safe. But it also makes us prisoners, trapped in what's left of our ravaged city, fearing nightfall.
After the death of my parents, it's up to me--as the newest delegate for humanity--to bargain with our vampire overlord. I thought I was ready. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the monsters. Then again, nothing could have prepared me for Lord Valentine . . . or his son. Maybe not all vampires are killers. Maybe it's safe to let one in.
Only one thing is certain: Even the wall is not enough. A war is coming and we cannot hide forever.
Got to page: 34
I find that I am unable to read with my brain turned off, so to speak, no matter how tired I am. Over Thanksgiving break I woke up uber-early and uber-tired, still recovering from being sick, and just wanted a book I could zone out to. I figured Darkness Before Dawn would do it. Generic enough, and I liked the premise, and paranormal is always fairly easy to read.
Except I paid attention to details, like I always do, and so I inevitably put it down without ever really getting into it.
I had two massive problems with Darkness Before Dawn: info-dumps and world-building. I could have handled the first if not for the second.
Now, within the first 34 pages of the book, the writing goes something like this: Infodump, description, dialogue, action!, infodump, description, dialogue, action!. Both formulaic and unnecessary for the plot at the time. A lot of what we were learning could have been discovered later. (And it's another prime example of an unnecessary prologue.)
But within the infodumps there were snippets of worldbuilding that didn't make sense. The vampires run the whole place and humans donate blood? Okay. Humans are getting lazy after a long time? Makes sense. Humans are also rising up and fighting vampires kind of? Oooookay. Cellphones still work but movie theatres don't, despite the fact that vampires would have wanted to keep humans complacent?
What?
And then, of course, an attempted rape of her friend by somebody at a party is thrown in as a plot point, and though it showed that humanity is still terrible, I hate when something like that is thrown in there for no other reason than to have it. It could be argued that it was necessary, but... they could have gotten into a fight? Gotten massively drunk? I don't know. Hmm.
Final Comments: Pick up Julie Kagawa's The Immortal Rules instead.
Have any of y'all read it? What did you think?