DNF Audiobook Review – Nightwalker (Dark Days, Book 1) by Jocelynn Drake, Narrated by Celeste Ciulla (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 13 hours and 1 minute (388 pages)
Publisher: Recorded Books
Release Date: April 16, 2010
ASIN: B003HMX7MG
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in Dark Days series
Source: Audiobook for Audible.com
Rating: 2/5 stars

“For centuries Mira has been a nightwalker—an unstoppable enforcer for a mysterious organization that manipulates earth-shaking events from the darkest shadows. But elemental mastery over fire sets her apart from others of her night-prowling breed . . . and may be all that prevents her doom.
The foe she now faces is human: the vampire hunter called Danaus, who has already destroyed so many undead. For Mira, the time has come to hunt . . . or be hunted.”

This is the first book in the Dark Days series by Drake. There are six books in this series. This is a pretty typical vampire urban fantasy read. I listened to the first 80% of the book on audiobook and then realized I was dreading listening to it each time I got in the car so I decided to stop.

I listened to this on audiobook and the narration was okay but not great. The narrator did a good job on women’s voices, but male characters sounded awkward and over-characterized. In general the narrator was a bit stiff sounding as well. This is one I wouldn’t necessarily recommend listening to on audiobook.

The premise of the story is that Mira, a Nightwalker/vampire, runs into a Hunter named Danaus in her territory. However, Danaus isn’t the real issue here…the real problem is the the Naturi, a centuries old race that uses nature magic that was supposed to be extinct. Suddenly Mira is drawn back into an age old war between the Nightwalkers and the Naturi.

I didn’t like the characters all that much, thought the plot was overly simplistic and boring, and also thought the dialogue was poorly done. There really wasn’t anything I liked in this book.

Mira’s character bothered me, she is supposed to be 600 years old but she acts really immature and short-sighted a lot of the time. Danaus is kind of intriguing but mostly just seems to follow Mira from place to place. The side characters were single dimensional and not well done.

The plot was very straight-forward and predictable. I kept waiting for some more interesting plot elements to be added but they never were.

Overall this wasn’t the worst vampire based UF I have ever read; however I liked it even less than I liked the first book in Drake’s “Asylum Tales” (Angel’s Ink). I have learned that Drake just isn’t an author I like reading; for me there are much better UF authors out there.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge