The Darkest Heart (Paperback)

Darkest Heart is a new Sonja Blue vampire novel, a series that has quite a following and has garnered several awards. Darkest Heart is the fifth Sonja Blue book, and unfortunately, my least favorite.

First off, the entire first chapter has been previously published, twice in fact. The first time was as a chapbook, and the second time as the third chapter in the third SB novel, Sunglasses After Dark. Collins explains that since Darkest Heart deals with people and events from that book, she included it here. To me this was unnecessary, as fans of the series would immediately recognize the people and events of Darkest Heart.

Secondly, and this ties into the first, it is a pretty short novel, 216 pages. When you subtract the previously published chapter, you are left with well under 200 pages of new material. You definitely aren't getting a lot of new Sonja Blue for your money.

What makes it all the worse, is that even barring the above-mentioned issues, the book itself really is not that good. It feels rushed and it strikes me as an easy money-making exercise, something a writer of Collins' talent could easily put together in a short period of time.

If you are a true Sonja Blue fan who must have everything, spend the money and buy this book, but if you are just a casual fan of the series, or just looking to see what the fuss about Nancy A. Collins is about, stay away from Darkest Heart and go pick up Midnight Blue: The Sonja Blue Collection, which contains the first three novels in this series.

Yet Sonja the vampire is also a vampire hunter, and wants to rid the world of these dark hearted villains, which would ultimately mean she also must die after the last vampire does. She dares not have close attachments to any mortal, for when the fiend inside her gets free, the man or woman Sonja has learned to care for will be attacked, and then lust, and desire addict them to the vampire's blood. It is their blood that heals her and their only release is death, and they are so caught up in the hunger for her they do not mind.

Now Sonja is the target of a vampire hunter named Jack Estes, and an ancient vampire with the darkest heart. Jack is human, he would destroy Sonja, therefore, and she must convince him of her nature -- and will have to reveal its duplicity, which keeps him in danger at all times.

For fans of Nancy Collins' vampire series, this is a winner. For those of us who inadvertently pick this book as the first to read, it is difficult. For me to know Sonja, I would have to read books one through four, so I found the shifts inconceivable and her duplicity difficult to follow.

A writer does not reach book five in a series without a large following. This book is for those readers, not for first time readers of the Sonja Blue chronicles.