'Darkness is coming for the city that never sleeps. A vicious vampire attack at New York City’s most popular nightclub puts the world’s biggest rock star in a body bag, and paranormal investigator Sidney Lake is on the case: at the top of the NYPD’s suspect list. Inconvenient, as Sidney is miles from Manhattan, hiding from the memories that haunt her. Too bad distance won’t stop the Darkness from chasing her down. . . Now she has no choice but to return and find out who—or what—has been wearing her face.
'Two millennia ago, Dimitrius Roman made a sacred oath, one he has battled and bled to uphold ever since. However, his faith is put to the ultimate test when a long forgotten foe emerges, threatening to destroy the sacred bloodline of the Goddess. With Sidney on the verge of coming into her true power, Dimitrius must face the unforgivable mistakes of his past in order to fulfil his vow and help Sidney as she confronts the ancient evil determined to end them both.
'With the long-held promise of the Goddess finally within reach, Dimitrius and Sidney must dig deeper than ever before to overcome their own demons, and rise above Darkness once and for all.'
Air & Darkness is the second book in the Tides of Darkness series, following on from 2016's Darkness Shifting, as well as last year's prequel novel Darkness Loves Company. Whilst this book is a direct sequel to the first, taking place only a few weeks after the closing moments of the first book, it incorporates a number of elements introduced in the prequel novel.
The story begins with our heroine, Sydney Lake, having hidden herself away from the world in her remote cabin, using her time away from New York and the various monsters and dark forces that make it their home, to try and get to grips with the loss of her lover, Mitch. However, those same dark forces refuse to give her the time she needs to grieve as her new home comes under attack from vampires.
At the same time Dimitrius, the two thousand year old immortal pledged to protect and follow Sydney, is playing host to one of the worlds biggest pop stars in his club. When she's found dead amidst a power cut the club becomes a crime scene, and Dimitrius a suspect; along with Sydney, who witnesses saw at the club. Dimitrius realises that the same force that killed the singer impersonated Sydney in an attempt to implicate her, making the both of them targets.
With Sydney having to return to New York following the attack she, Dimitrius, and their allies will need to try and figure out who this mysterious foes is, and how to stop them before the police decide that one of them is responsible for the murder.
Air and Darkness feels very different to the other two books in this series. Whilst the first book and its prequel featured a lot of the supernatural world, and small parts about Dimitrius and his history it was largely focused on Sydney and the cases that she was working on as a paranormal investigator. These other elements, especially the connection she and Dimitrius share were often secondary to the main thrust of the story. Here, however, it very much becomes one of the central themes of the book, and doesn't just dictate how Sydney interacts with Dimitrius, but how they respond to the threat that has set its sights on them both.
Whilst I enjoyed that a lot of these elements were left something of a mystery in the other books I was great to actually begin to learn more, to see how these characters all interact with each other, as well as learning small snippets about their long lives. Some of the best scenes in this book were the moments where we saw tiny peaks at stuff that adds flavour to their lives but isn't necessarily important; moments like getting to see the old photographs in Dimitrius' room that shows him and his group across the decades, or the hints of his affiliations with old mob families from a century ago.
That being said, thanks to the fast pace of the story Sydney never really gets a chance to slow down and ask any of her immortal friends what it's like living so long, and whilst we do get the occasional heavily embelished drunken story these moments are fleeting as the main antagonist of the book takes up a lot of their attention. Hopefully in future books Sydney will get the chance to delve more into this past when things are less dangerous for her; especially as I really want to know this myself.
A lot of the humour that was present in the previous books makes a return here too, and even though there's a constant sense of dread as the heroes are beset by the villain it feels like there's a lot more joviality here than in previous books. Perhaps this ties into the fact that there's also a lot more trauma being dealt with in this book too, and humour is often used to help deal with pain. Sydney has to face the loss of Mitch head on this book, alongside having to try and figure out how her feelings for Dimitrus work; but it's not all Sydney's story. Dimitrius himself gets a good deal of focus this time around, and probably gets the most development across the entire series to Sydney just in this book alone. Whilst he began the book a somewhat enigmatic figure with motivations I'm not sure I entirely trusted, come the end I felt like I knew him well, as well as cared for him.
Air & Darkness does a lot with its characters over a relatively short time, and whilst this is the second book in the series (third if you include the sequel) it also feels like a first in some ways. It feels like this is a starting point to new, bigger things to come. There's a new family forged by the end of this book, a group of heroes who look set to go off and challenge the world and do great things. And I hope that the tease we get in the final pages is stuff that we're going to get to read about in the next one.
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