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Night's Dream #2
Danse Macabre
Roselyn Jacobs' life may not be strictly uncomplicated. She lives with Shane, a girl caught between being a teenager and a goddess. She sleeps with Dryden, who pretends to be a vampire when he is not working the graveyard shift at a dead-end job. Moreover, she is keenly aware that the world is dotted with pockets of beings that better belong in horror movies and fairy tales than taking her order at the local diner. She manages well until her boyfriend is turned into an actual vampire and her roommate is kidnapped as a means of leverage. To save them she must confront a basement blood-selling ring, a surly demigod, obtuse prophesies, a fortune-telling Wiccan, and a vampire hunter who wants more than she can give.
Can she manage to keep up her life intact and still stop more people from dying to swell a gang of the undead? Can she trust the self-interest of the monsters on her side, the few remaining daemonic beings left in Red Hook? Should she continue to give her heart to a man whose own heart has stopped beating?
Can she manage to keep up her life intact and still stop more people from dying to swell a gang of the undead? Can she trust the self-interest of the monsters on her side, the few remaining daemonic beings left in Red Hook? Should she continue to give her heart to a man whose own heart has stopped beating?
Paperback
First published May 8, 2012
16 people want to read
About the author
Thomm Quackenbush
23 books43 followersThomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Renaissance England, confused as a mad scientist, filed away ten thousand books, and tried to educate the learning disabled, adjudicated, and gifted.
He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. He finds that friends do not enjoy the extremes he goes to in order to research books, as these involve mortuaries and UFO support groups.
He is available for panels and talks about writing, aliens, mysteries, and murder. He is even available for panels on writing mysteries about murdering aliens.
He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. He finds that friends do not enjoy the extremes he goes to in order to research books, as these involve mortuaries and UFO support groups.
He is available for panels and talks about writing, aliens, mysteries, and murder. He is even available for panels on writing mysteries about murdering aliens.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 12, 2015
The more I read from indie authors, the more sure I am that the real gems in the literary world are in no way connected to the big publishing houses. Thomm Quackenbush's, Night's Dream series is one of those gems. He has created a series that will pull it's reader to the underneath of it's pages and leave them enraptured in it's wake. Thomm's writing style is as unique as it is eloquent. This series exceeds expectations with it's remarkable world building and cast of characters. The author has a way of breathing life into these characters and the world they inhabit. I was definitely impressed by both the first and second book in this series.
Danse Macabre is a great continuation of this exciting series! I think I enjoyed it a bit more than We Shadows, but solely because it focused more on Roselyn and I really like her character. This book is anything but ordinary. I have grown a a dislike for vampires over the years but I greatly enjoyed Thomm's portrayal of them in this book.
I can not wait to read the next book in this series! I will definitely be recommending this series to all. It is well worth the read and will definitely not disappoint!
Danse Macabre is a great continuation of this exciting series! I think I enjoyed it a bit more than We Shadows, but solely because it focused more on Roselyn and I really like her character. This book is anything but ordinary. I have grown a a dislike for vampires over the years but I greatly enjoyed Thomm's portrayal of them in this book.
I can not wait to read the next book in this series! I will definitely be recommending this series to all. It is well worth the read and will definitely not disappoint!
March 12, 2013
I love Danse Macabre, this was my second reading and it might have been even better the second time around!
June 5, 2015
I will open this review by saying I did not finish reading Danse Macabre and so the following is written with the knowledge that I may be utterly and completely wrong on all counts.
Danse Macabre is the second in a series. I didn't know this before I started reading, but I knew within the first few pages because I had no idea who anyone was or what was going on but it felt like I was supposed to. This feeling never really went away.
There were odd hints as to what had happened previously, but not enough for it to make any sense to a new reader which made me feel excluded and immediately broke my attachment with the book.
I persevered though, because a lot of books start out shakily and then end up brilliant a few chapters in.I persevered though, because a lot of books start out shakily and then end up brilliant a few chapters in.
Sadly, this one didn't. I loved the ideas and the basic storyline - it was right up my street and I really wanted to be sucked in and enjoy the ride but it never managed to grab me enough to make me care.
The characters all felt very two-dimensional. By that I mean that if you had outlined the story idea to me, I could have written a list of the stereotypical required cast of characters required to make it work and those are the characters Thomm Quackenbush presented. They are all perfectly flawed and exactly what is needed and nothing much else, they didn't intrigue me and they didn't feel 'real' enough for me to particularly care about what happened to them.
One of the main characters, Dryden, was also utterly unlikable. Now there is nothing wrong with unlikable characters - often they are the most interesting ones of all - but there wasn't anything else about Dryden, he was just boring and a bit of a prat. He didn't have a redeeming quality or interesting hidden side that was hinted at and even his girlfriend didn't seem to like him much which wasn't a great selling point. I was probably supposed to care when he got turned into a vampire but mostly I was just disappointed that they didn't accidentally kill him.
Danse Macabre felt a little bit like pieces of work I saw (and wrote!) when I was at university - it was a perfectly good idea and there wasn't anything particularly wrong with it as such, it just needed tweaking and polishing up. It needed the epic ramble of a character justifying her self-harming cutting out (because she wouldn't need to justify it to herself so enthusiastically, she'd just do it), it needed the characters fleshing out and building up and it needed to cut to the chase a whole lot faster.
I stuck with Danse Macabre until I hit 30% through and then I gave up. If a book hasn't grabbed me by 30% in then I'm afraid I will put it down. Life is too short to read books that feel like wading through treacle to get nowhere and there wasn't enough in that 30% to make me keep on turning the pages.
I tried.
Danse Macabre is the second in a series. I didn't know this before I started reading, but I knew within the first few pages because I had no idea who anyone was or what was going on but it felt like I was supposed to. This feeling never really went away.
There were odd hints as to what had happened previously, but not enough for it to make any sense to a new reader which made me feel excluded and immediately broke my attachment with the book.
I persevered though, because a lot of books start out shakily and then end up brilliant a few chapters in.I persevered though, because a lot of books start out shakily and then end up brilliant a few chapters in.
Sadly, this one didn't. I loved the ideas and the basic storyline - it was right up my street and I really wanted to be sucked in and enjoy the ride but it never managed to grab me enough to make me care.
The characters all felt very two-dimensional. By that I mean that if you had outlined the story idea to me, I could have written a list of the stereotypical required cast of characters required to make it work and those are the characters Thomm Quackenbush presented. They are all perfectly flawed and exactly what is needed and nothing much else, they didn't intrigue me and they didn't feel 'real' enough for me to particularly care about what happened to them.
One of the main characters, Dryden, was also utterly unlikable. Now there is nothing wrong with unlikable characters - often they are the most interesting ones of all - but there wasn't anything else about Dryden, he was just boring and a bit of a prat. He didn't have a redeeming quality or interesting hidden side that was hinted at and even his girlfriend didn't seem to like him much which wasn't a great selling point. I was probably supposed to care when he got turned into a vampire but mostly I was just disappointed that they didn't accidentally kill him.
Danse Macabre felt a little bit like pieces of work I saw (and wrote!) when I was at university - it was a perfectly good idea and there wasn't anything particularly wrong with it as such, it just needed tweaking and polishing up. It needed the epic ramble of a character justifying her self-harming cutting out (because she wouldn't need to justify it to herself so enthusiastically, she'd just do it), it needed the characters fleshing out and building up and it needed to cut to the chase a whole lot faster.
I stuck with Danse Macabre until I hit 30% through and then I gave up. If a book hasn't grabbed me by 30% in then I'm afraid I will put it down. Life is too short to read books that feel like wading through treacle to get nowhere and there wasn't enough in that 30% to make me keep on turning the pages.
I tried.
May 21, 2014
Danse Macabre is the second book in the Night’s Dream Series.
The four main characters are back – Roselyn, Shane, Eliot and Dryden.
Dryden likes to role-play as a vampire. He has a whole clan that is in on it with him. They believe they are vampires, but they also believe that real, bloodsucking vampires are a myth.
That is, until Dryden is converted into one. He isn’t like the rest though. He doesn’t feel the need to kill people in order to get blood. He would rather drink from an animal than from a human, but that is not how it works in the world of the undead.
When he escapes captivity from his makers, they set out to hunt him down and will collect everyone he loves in the process.
Shane gets mistaken for Roselyn and is captured. Roselyn, Dryden, Eliot and Noah must all work together to try to save her before the vampires end up killing her.
As Dryden feels himself becoming more bloodthirsty and violent, he must find a way to halt his urges before anyone close to him is hurt.
I feel like there was better character development in this one compared to book one. They all had their own arcs and personalities. Whereas, in the first book, everyone meshed together for me; it was hard to get connected to them.
Seth was an extremely likable unlikable character. The reader isn’t supposed to like him at first, and he is written well to make you appreciate him.
The plot and flow of the story made a lot more sense to me in this one than the first one did. I was able to follow along pretty well. It also helped that I knew who the characters were from the first novel.
Even for a book about vampires, I was a little surprised by the amount of blood that was in it. I am not used to the genre though, so I don’t know whether it is more or less than the norm.
3/5 stars
The four main characters are back – Roselyn, Shane, Eliot and Dryden.
Dryden likes to role-play as a vampire. He has a whole clan that is in on it with him. They believe they are vampires, but they also believe that real, bloodsucking vampires are a myth.
That is, until Dryden is converted into one. He isn’t like the rest though. He doesn’t feel the need to kill people in order to get blood. He would rather drink from an animal than from a human, but that is not how it works in the world of the undead.
When he escapes captivity from his makers, they set out to hunt him down and will collect everyone he loves in the process.
Shane gets mistaken for Roselyn and is captured. Roselyn, Dryden, Eliot and Noah must all work together to try to save her before the vampires end up killing her.
As Dryden feels himself becoming more bloodthirsty and violent, he must find a way to halt his urges before anyone close to him is hurt.
I feel like there was better character development in this one compared to book one. They all had their own arcs and personalities. Whereas, in the first book, everyone meshed together for me; it was hard to get connected to them.
Seth was an extremely likable unlikable character. The reader isn’t supposed to like him at first, and he is written well to make you appreciate him.
The plot and flow of the story made a lot more sense to me in this one than the first one did. I was able to follow along pretty well. It also helped that I knew who the characters were from the first novel.
Even for a book about vampires, I was a little surprised by the amount of blood that was in it. I am not used to the genre though, so I don’t know whether it is more or less than the norm.
3/5 stars
January 5, 2014
*I received a copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.*
The book Danse Macabre by Thomm Quakenbush was a book written from a more clear aspect of life than the previous one. It is a tale about how Shane gets accidently involved in a pack of vampires trying to abduct and torture her. It shows how Shane, Roselyn, Eliot, and Dryden bravely fight and struggle for their safety. It’s a engrossing and engaging book just like the first one and I cannot wait to read the next.
The book Danse Macabre by Thomm Quakenbush was a book written from a more clear aspect of life than the previous one. It is a tale about how Shane gets accidently involved in a pack of vampires trying to abduct and torture her. It shows how Shane, Roselyn, Eliot, and Dryden bravely fight and struggle for their safety. It’s a engrossing and engaging book just like the first one and I cannot wait to read the next.
July 26, 2016
In We Shadows a woman named Shane was introduced, now in Danse Macabre her story continues, in a bigger, more exciting way. This time around vampires as antagonists are introduced, and as a result part two is a bit more edgier than its predecessor. Overall an interesting second part to a series and fantastic vampire novel all rolled into one.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews