Friday, August 20, 2010

Dark Flame, by Alyson Noel

Dark Flame (The Immortals)Ever and her boyfriend, Damon, are Immortals.  Ever recently turned her best friend, Haven, into an Immortal as well, and now Haven is a little heady with her new found powers.  To say it is causing some tension between the girls is an understatement.  And to make things worse Ever is dabbling in magik, and cast a spell which has accidentally bound her to Roman, Haven's new boyfriend.  Will Ever be able to right all of the wrongs that seem to have been happening lately?

This book really has me torn.  On the one hand, here I am, coming into the 4th book of a series I have never read, and jumping into this book.  And I am pretty well able to hold my own.  The book does of good job of succinctly covering the majority of the back story needed for anyone crazy enough to read book 4 of a series without having read the previous 3,  but of course not everything can be covered, so a few things are fuzzy.  All in all though, this book is pretty clear, and logical.  The characters seem well developed, and I have to admit, even though this is not my type of book, I am intrigued by the imagery in the story.  It is very imaginative.

On the other hand, this book frightens me a bit.  I mean, this is a young adult book with is glamorizing witchcraft and new age philosophy.  And not your Harry Potter Hogwarts kind of witchcraft .  I mean real life, these are actual real spells they talk about, witchcraft elements they discuss, The Book of Shadows, as well as new age things like chakras.  To me, it is a little dangerous dabbling with something so dark, which is oddly enough a big theme in this book.

The whole premise of the series is built around a character whose family is killed, so that is a very Harry Potter like theme, and she is locked into an eternal love triangle, which is a very Twilight like theme.  None of the very core themes seem very original.  It is times like this when I am glad they make kids stick to reading the classics in high school.

A touring review copy of this book was provided courtesy of Traveling Arc Tours.

1 comment:

  1. This book is heavy on the whole witch craft aspect but the 3rd book(Shadowland)is where Ever starts experimenting even though she is warned against it. Basically she is told not to practice she does anyway and it goes completely wrong which I think demonstrates that you should not toy with something you are not familiar with because it is more likely to backfire. I have to agree with the imagery and Alyson Noel's imagination. She creates a world with her words that you can visulaize perfectly. I'd recommend reading Shadowland the other two EVermore and Blue Moon I didn't like as much.

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