One night of drinking is all it took to change Max’s life forever. Tricked into a role of servitude by her college roommate, she is transformed into a Shadowblade, a being who burns in the sunlight but has the abilities of the Six Million Dollar Man on crack. Her daytime counterparts are Sunspears. Darkness is deadly to them, making both warrior classes necessary to protect Giselle, Horngate’s witch.

Since she became a Shadowblade, Max has done everything in her power to stay alive so that one day she can kill the “witch-bitch” who took her from her family. She gets the opportunity to leave Giselle and the rest of the coven when she rescues a Hag from another witch’s team of Shadowblades, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Horngate is her home whether she likes it or not.

Bitter Night by Diana Pharaoh Francis isn’t about vampires, werewolves, or zombies. The creatures are much scarier than that: witches that can bind a human into eternal slavery, angels who are compelled to serve Divine masters with a vendetta against humanity, and creatures that weave webs of things much thicker than silk.

Max is a perfect mix of early Anita Blake, Cat Crawford, and the Energizer Bunny—no matter how badly she gets hurt or what limbs she’s missing, she keeps going and going and going. Either she is the most loyal character I’ve ever read or the most masochistic; I haven’t decided. Her bad attitude and snarky comments hide the pain and betrayal of living thirty years with the woman who tricked her into becoming a killing a machine. She is complicated, raw, and endearing. I instantly loved her.

Alexander, however, took a while to get out of the “oh hell, not another whiny male lead” category. Never fear, because he did eventually fulfill his role as Hero Figure. His aversion to contractions grated on my nerves, but that’s a personal pet peeve, not a condemnation of the author’s abilities. Out of the multitude of love interests in this book, I think he’s my favorite. Max seems to genuinely like him, whereas she’s mainly uncomfortable around other ones.

One of the downsides of reading Advanced Reader Copies is that now I have to wait even longer to find out what happens to these characters. The pure addictive quality of the author’s writing earns Bitter Night 5 tombstones.

Book Stats:

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (October 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416598146
• ISBN-13: 978-1416598145

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(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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