“Ash, get bent and die.”
Mary-Lynette and Ash are, without a doubt, my favorite Night World couple. she’s a headstrong teen who loves stargazing and wants to find someone to share the night with. He’s the bad, vampire playboy who secretly really does care about others and wants the would to be a better place, but buries it under a shell of uncaring. And when they meet and recognize each other as soulmates they literally cannot stand each other.
Sure the concept of soulmates in fiction can be a fun, exciting thing. It can be seriously overused and a story crutch for “I don’t feel like writing through these people falling in love, so I’ll take a shortcut” too. Which is why I’m always cautious when reading soulmate stories, and why I love this one.
In LJ-world being a soulmate isn’t always easy, or a good thing. And soulmates don’t always end up together.
Ash and Mary-Lynette meet when Ash’s sister run away from their cozy (stifling) Night World enclave looking for freedom. Instead they find their outcast aunt in the cellar with a stake in her heart and the youngest sister, Jade, finds her own soulmate, Mary-Lynette’s brother.
When Ash comes to take his sisters back her finds Mary-Lynette instead and emotional conflict ensues. Plus, there’s the rogue vampire killer to worry about.
My favorite part of Daughters of Darkness? Mary-Lynette never becomes a damsel in distress who must be saved. In fact in the end she has to save bad boy Ash from the Big Bad. Smith sets up the world in book one, then spends this book profiling a major exception to her own genre rules without conveniently ignoring them.
So far the series highlights variety and character-based storytelling over boring repeat plots.