LitPick Review
An Artificial Night is a fantasy novel about a changeling named October Daye (or Toby as she prefers to be called) She is a half human and half fairy. She has been through a lot, including having lost her child. She is trying to get her life back after being turned back into a human from being a fish for 10 years, when her best friend's children are kidnapped, as well as all the children from her old flames court. As she investigates, she discovers that many, many children, both human and fae have been kidnapped, leaving hot window panes, and bad smells in the air. This makes her think that the evil Blind Michael has snatched the children for his hunt, as he does every 100 years. The only way she can possibly save them all is striking up a bargain, which is dangerous in any case, but making a deal with a dastardly villain like Blind Michael cannot possibly end well. This fantasy, mystery novel is a fascinating read about finding yourself and discovering the hidden hero in you.
Opinion:
This book had a fantastic plot that had me flipping through the pages. I was engrossed from page one to the end. It has the nice quality of being able to stand alone, even though it is part of a series and also working in very well with the rest of the books in the set. However, it was slightly confusing. Other than Toby, there were an astonishingly large number of characters which made seemingly random appearances throughout the book, sometimes after entire chapters of absence. This meant that unless you were paying very close attention, it seemed like random people were being dropped into the plot. Two of the male characters were very similar and sometimes were almost interchangeable to the story line, making the book more confusing than it had to be. Luckily, the aforementioned fantastic plot saved the book and made it an interesting, thought provoking, and moving book that I would recommend to all of my avid fantasy fanatic friends.
