Book Review: Night’s Edge

Night’s Edge by Mag­gie Shayne

My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
“Dancers in the Dark” by Char­laine Har­ris is set in the same uni­verse as the South­ern Vampire/Sookie Stack­house sto­ries, but with none of the incred­i­bly annoy­ing char­ac­ters. How refresh­ing! It does go back to the same stuff Har­ris explored in her Shake­speare series and one of her stand­alone books (Sweet and Dead­ly? I can’t remem­ber if it was that one of the oth­ers, as they don’t stand out in my mem­o­ry too much any­way). The sto­ry was­n’t ter­ri­ble, though, and I was engaged. I kept think­ing while read­ing, “Did­n’t I read anoth­er short sto­ry or novel­la in this uni­verse about dancers?” Does any­body else remem­ber? I hate it when my mem­o­ry goes wonky like that.

“Her Best Ene­my” was too hack­neyed, bring­ing in too many old stand­bys. There’s a tough girl reporter who is real­ly a sweet woman who just needs a good man after a bad one took every­thing she had, a sexy man who is tougher than he looks and bet­ter able to pro­tect her than even he knew, etc. I don’t remem­ber read­ing any­thing real­ly strong by Mag­gie Shayne yet, but she’s def­i­nite­ly on the romance side of the para­nor­mal romance street, so that may explain my lack of enthusiasm.

Bar­bara Ham­bly’s con­tri­bu­tion, “Some­one Else’s Shad­ow,” has us back in the world of dance. I would­n’t be sur­prised to see this one and the first sto­ry in a dance-themed anthol­o­gy (they prob­a­bly are, already, and I just don’t real­ize it yet). It was the strongest sto­ry of the three (with rea­son, as Ham­bly is cer­tain­ly the most expe­ri­enced and IMNSHO best writer of the three). Sound plot­ting, good rea­son­ing, lik­able char­ac­ters who are well-round­ed and believ­able, nei­ther per­fect saints nor dis­gust­ing sinners.

I kept think­ing of Hope while read­ing the last sto­ry because the main char­ac­ter dances and teach­es bel­ly dance. There’s a love­ly quote from the first time she dances in front of her love inter­est, “It’s all danc­ing. Skill infused with joy. Weav­ing jew­el­ry out of dreams.”

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