Night's Edge

Rating:
Summary: three strong romantic paranormal tales
Review: "Someone Else's Shadow" by Barbara Hambly. In NYC, Maddie Loveau goes to the Glendower Building to meet her roommate Tessa who works there. Maddie senses evil resides inside the edifice. Worried about Tessa, her roommate introduces her to Phil Cooper, who has a studio inside the building. Though attracted to him, Maddie wonders if Phil is the malevolence that she feels is inside this structure.

"Her Best Enemy" by Maggie Shayne. Reporter Kelly Brigham of the Burnt Hills Gazette enjoys exposing fake psychics, which she does once a week. Her current target is Jack McCain, but he continually trumps her as if he knows the ploys she uses. She assumes he is just smarter than those she exposed. As she keeps looking for fraud, the medium and the medium hunter fall in love, but not even aligning the stars could predict a happy future for this pair suspicious of the other.

"Dancers in the Dark" by Charlaine Harris. Dancer Rue May answers an ad for job dancing with vampires at Blue Moon Entertainment and Black Moon Productions. Rue gets the job. Vampire Sean O'Rourke finds he is attracted to the mortal, but believes she is hiding something. As he tries to learn the truth about Rue, they fall in love, but her actions leave her in danger from an unknown person whom is part of the troupe.

These are three romantic paranormal tales with wonderful lead characters, supernatural elements that feels natural, and a touch of romance that add up into a fine anthology.

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: So-so romance/paranormal anthology...
Review: Charlaine Harris's novella is the reason why I bought this anthology. According to Harris's web site, her novella is based on the Sookie Stackhouse series, only with different characters. I was disappointed with Dancers in the Dark. The vampires here are nothing like the ones in the Sookie novels. They are so benign they might as well be humans. Sean is a sexy enough vampire, but he is not dark and compelling like Eric and Bill. Actually, he's quite one-dimensional. (Also, Harris's description of Sean being a redhead Irish dancer reminded of Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance.) The story itself is good and quite compelling, but the ending confused me. Everyone who has read the Southern Vampire novels knows that drinking vampire blood cures fatal injuries and gives the person temporary super strength. I know this particular ending is the sort of thing that romance readers enjoy. I for one have enjoyed some endings like this in paranormal romanticas, but the ending results are not necessary if we go by what Sookie has been through. Harris should have written an original vampire romance novella, without the synthetic blood drinks and the history surrounding vampires taken from her popular series. The short story Harris wrote for the Powers of Detection anthology was far more enjoyable than this one.

Night's Edge is a romance anthology with paranormal as the subgenre. So, this book is basically tender, PG-13 rated romance with a side order of vampires, ghosts and other creatures that go bump in the night. I often steer clear from this sort of anthology. A friend of mine loaned me the Immortal Bad Boys anthology and returned it as soon as I realized that it was the usual bad boy nonsense, only with gorgeous, so-called bad boy vampires instead of humans. I like paranormal fiction to be dark, intriguing, suspenseful, erotic, romantic, and with a touch of creativity and sharp humor -- as it should be. Berkley releases paranormal anthologies not unlike this Harlequin one, but said anthologies have a slightly darker language and are very erotic. Anyway, as for the other two stories, Maggie Shayne's ghost story Her Best Enemy entertained me from beginning to end. The ending is quite abrupt though. And Barbara Hambly's Someone Else's Shadow is the best novella in this collection. This one has a bit of a dark edge and Phil is very hot. All in all, Night's Edge is a good anthology if you're in the bargain for romantic paranormal with some light suspense. However, these novellas were not compelling enough for me. I should have known this collection would be formulaic and mild at best. After all, it is a Harlequin offering...

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Anthology
Review: Her Best Enemy by Maggy Shayne is a delicious ghost story, Kiley Brigham is a columnist with a local paper who doesn't believe in the supernatural. She thinks it's a con, and spends her time debugging local psychics. Then she moves into her new house. Guess what? It's haunted.

Jack McCain is the only one she can't prove is a phony. Although she has not stopped trying for the last 2 years. So it's ironic he is the one she turns to when her house starts to try to get her attention. Her house not only changes her attitude about psychics it changes her attitude about Jack.

Someone else's Shadow by Barbara Hambly teaches us about things that go bump in the night. Maddie Laveau has to trust a suspicious man when her roommate disappears into the dark past of the Glendower Building where they take dancing lessons. A past evil has held sway over the top 2 floors that were destroyed in a fire 70 years ago. Now her roommate Tessa has disappeared.

Dancers in the Dark by Charlene Harris is set in the world of her Club Dead books, however, this is a serious tale.

Layla Rue LeMay is a dancer, she is also being stalked by the man who raped and tried to kill her when she was 17. He is now out of the mental hospital and set on seeing Layla dead.

Sean McClendon is a vampire and Layla's new dance partner. While falling in love with her he realizes she is terrified of something and makes it his business to find out what happened to her.

In the last few years Layla has avoided making friends but now she finds she has several friends, both vampire and human. And one man who loves her. She needs that love to overcome the evil.

Three great tales for this time of year.



Rating:
Summary: An Over All Excellant Read
Review: I picked this book up because I like Charlaine Harris, but came away impressed with all of the authors. These stories are light on the romance side(especially Someone Else's Shadow), but might actually give you some chills if you are reading late at night. The supernatural creepiness makes it a good read around Halloween. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Barbara Hambly! What a coup for romance!
Review: I'm a huge fan of the Barbara Hambly New Orleans historical mysteries and it was such a treat to find her in this anthology. It's fascinating to see how a "non-romance" author handles the conventions, there's a different vocabulary at work that really stand apart from the other authors. The incomparable Maggie Shane does a top-notch job and Charlaine Harris is an author I'll be interested in reading more of..

Rating:
Summary: Eh. It's was okay.
Review: I'm with the reviewers below: I love these authors. They have proven time and again that they are top notch and worth every penny. Night's Edge seemed like a hurried effort. I admit, I'm not a big fan of anthologies. I find the stories to be too quick: quick on romance, quick on character development, and quick to tie up all the loose ends created in the plot. The writing in these stories is excellent, but all have the above three problems. I initially bought this book for the Charlaine Harris story. While the concept was excellent, the story seemed to crash and burn at the end. The only thing I can say is if this is the first time you're reading anything by these three authors, be assured that their full-length novels are the real draw and these stories are just to tide us over til the next one comes out.

Rating:
Summary: Two-Thirds Excellent
Review: The lead story is almost mind-numbingly conventional.

It's not really *bad*, it's just that the only new element it brings to the classic tale of the fake psychic who discovers she isn't is a role-reversal making the guy the "psychic" and the girl the crusading reporter determined to debunk him.

Charlaine Harris's story is set in her "Southern Vampire" universe, though Sookie and Bill (or Eric) don't show up, and involves real human problems (a stalker of proven violent intent) with a supernatural resolution. For me the main character's occasional thoughts of her youth as a child beauty and talent show competitor with a classic stage mama pushing her brought to mind every picture of JonBenet Ramsey i have ever seen -- a beautiful child who would never have had a real childhood even if she had lived and whose eyes seemed to show that even at age six she had already realised it.

In any other company, the Harris would probably have been the standout.

But Barbara Hambley's piece, about the evil that lives on in a former sweatshop that was the site of a disastrous fire reminiscent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, is the absolute standout for me, not only for its superior handling of the dark elements of the supernatural, but for personal resonances because i recognise some of her sources and was caught up in her resolution of them.

Excellent book overall