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Eternal Dawn Trilogy #1
Dawn From Midnight
Against all odds, Deven, an immortal from another planet and Lyssa, a human girl from the Midwest, fall into a love that spans the ages. Theirs is the kind of love in which fairy tales are born and legends are made. But then, tragedy strikes. While he was never human, can he, in a race against time to save her life, retain his humanity in an effort to preserve hers? Or must he do the unthinkable and face an eternity without her? This is a must-read which will make you laugh and cry and feel every moment as they journey along an impossible highway to find their forever together.
More than a decade since Twilight, Dawn From Midnight again springs forth the hope that true love really can conquer all.
More than a decade since Twilight, Dawn From Midnight again springs forth the hope that true love really can conquer all.
653 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 30, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 15, 2021
Twilight Mark #2
I suspect most Twihards will love this book. It is a wonderful high school vampire romance that largely follows the Twilight plotline, characters, and settings but provides an alternative, often improved, ending to many of the more memorable scenes.
The Opening
Sadly, the opening does not grab the reader’s attention. Much like Twilight, the opening focuses on describing the scenery. Unlike Twilight, there is no initial conflict to interest the reader.
In Twilight, there is a brief preface that promises future action and then the opening paragraphs introduce the idea that Bella does not want to go to Forks but is doing so to help her mom, and this provides an internal conflict. In this book, the first hint of conflict is delayed until the fourth paragraph, which is on the second page.
If the reader can get past the opening paragraphs, the chapter does remarkedly improve. However, there are too many characters introduced, overloading the reader and making this a high learning curve opening. At least they are all interesting.
The Characters
I spent the first few chapters working out which of the Twilight characters the characters in this book represent. It wasn’t difficult since the similarities are so strong. Deven is Edward, Amy is Rose, Emily is Alice, and Nathan is Emmett. Only Cedric fails to match Jasper in personality, though he is similarly an outsider.
It’s not quite that simple, though. There are interesting differences between these vampires and their Twilight counterparts, such as the better pairing of Alice with Emmett, since poor Emmett was only ever Rose’s second choice.
I like that Deven is much more of a rogue than Edward and makes inappropriate comments. However, I don’t like that sometimes Deven is spelled Devin. I suspect that there was a name change during writing but not all the Devins were changed to Deven.
I found the flitting between Amy and Amelia as a name a tad irritating. If there had been a reason, such as Amelia being used when Deven was angry with her, it would make sense. But they are simply used interchangeably for no discernible reason. I also wasn’t keen on the similar-sounding names used for multiple close pairings of characters, e.g., Erma and Edna, Taylor and Tanner.
Lyssa is the improved Bella 2.0. Like Bella, she’s moved from a sunny southern locale to a rainy location in the far northwest to please her mom. This immediately establishes her as a sympathetic character who is selfless in the same Bella-like way.
Unlike Bella, she has dated before, though not seriously, and there are subtle, interesting differences between the two characters. Having said that, she’s still an uncoordinated bookworm who’s more into literature than science and gets to choose between a Native American and a vampire suitor.
It’s not an important issue, but I felt she could have been given a better name than Lyssa. I don’t hate the name, but it is used for a major character in both the first book of the Argeneau Vampire series and the Vampire Academy series.
The Plot
In terms of plot, Dawn From Midnight is an improvement on Twilight. It contains a significant amount of interesting conflict within the opening chapters that keep the action going.
However, there were some plot turns I found difficult to swallow. It’s difficult to be specific without introducing spoilers, but I will give one example.
Imagine you have limitless men and resources. There is a man you believe is incompetent, is not trained or qualified to perform a specific kind of task, not experienced in performing that task, and you neither respect nor trust him. Would you really then send him out on potentially the most important military mission of the century as part of a small elite squad?
What I really didn’t like was how closely elements of the plot followed Twilight. Sadly, I can’t give examples without creating huge spoilers. On the positive side, quite often the author makes small changes to the outcomes that improve on the original Twilight story, IMHO.
Continuity errors are a frequent problem. For example, in a telephone conversation, Edna asks, “Is your mom okay?” and Lyssa answers, “I’m okay.” In a classroom scene, Deven didn’t want to work with Brody, but it was Ted Allen he would have been working with not Brody. Lyssa’s mom buys her a pair of jeans, and she puts them on for her birthday, but they turn into a Gypsy skirt when she arrives at Deven’s house.
There were gender related issues in terms of the labor division within the story. For example, only the females are interested in cooking, and the men go off to watch TV to get out of the way. Lyssa repeatedly fails the Bechdel-Wallace Test by only speaking with other female characters about boys. She even thinks about the fact that she does this at one point in the story and resolves to try and not do it again!
Much like Twilight, the main action occurs toward the end of the book. Unlike Twilight, the final action is well foreshadowed in the earlier parts of the novel. I found the resolution satisfying. There are several plotlines left hanging as teasers for another book, and this was handled well.
The Setting
The setting was well sketched but too similar to Twilight. You have the same kind of rich vampire family living in a big old farmhouse modernized in interesting ways and on the edge of the forest. The vampires are really, really similar in nature to the Twilight vampires but with a bit of Argeneau thrown in, i.e., they can eat human food but can’t survive without blood.
I felt like the vampire and sci-fi setting was unnecessarily complex. It’s fine to make the vampires aliens. That’s actually a great way of explaining their origin. But why have two kinds of vampires? Why can’t they all be aliens and keep it simple? And why the time travel? The alien world can simply be more complex but in the same time period. And what happened to the alternative dimension implied in the beginning of the story?
There were a few small things about the setting that concerned me. For example, these vampires eat, but apparently, they never go to the bathroom. This defies the laws of physics!
The Prose
This area was weak. The story is easy to follow, and I enjoyed it very much, but there are lots of style issues.
I was not keen on the third-person omniscient viewpoint used to tell the story. I suspect the author used this approach to overcome the deficiencies in Twilight, where a limited first-person narration leads to half the action being missed out. However, it was overdone, with far too much head hopping between characters.
What I really didn’t like was the frequent redoing of scenes. You would read a scene from one character’s viewpoint, and then the whole scene would be repeated again from another character’s viewpoint. But why? The narrative is omniscient, so we could have simply had both viewpoints at once.
There were multiple typos or word omissions throughout the narrative. For example, in the school yard when Deven hands Lyssa her bag, “Lyssa’s heart skip a beat.” In a scene where Deven is telling his father about Lyssa’s dream: “Vassur didn’t need asked”.
When photographs are handed out, “Once he was able tear his eyes away from the picture”. In a hospital scene, “Both his hearts fractured completely into.” In the final few paragraphs, “There’s another mystery that needs solved, though.”
There are two many dialogue sequences that remain with one character over multiple paragraphs, and these are often incorrectly punctuated. At the end of the day, this novel would have been much better if the author had made more use of critiquing partners or a competent editor.
My Opinion
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dawn From Midnight, but that is probably because I am such an unrepentant Twihard. With the multiple issues in prose, plot, and character development, I feel I can only rate it 6 out of 10. This will translate to 3 out of 5 on Goodreads and Amazon.
I suspect most Twihards will love this book. It is a wonderful high school vampire romance that largely follows the Twilight plotline, characters, and settings but provides an alternative, often improved, ending to many of the more memorable scenes.
The Opening
Sadly, the opening does not grab the reader’s attention. Much like Twilight, the opening focuses on describing the scenery. Unlike Twilight, there is no initial conflict to interest the reader.
In Twilight, there is a brief preface that promises future action and then the opening paragraphs introduce the idea that Bella does not want to go to Forks but is doing so to help her mom, and this provides an internal conflict. In this book, the first hint of conflict is delayed until the fourth paragraph, which is on the second page.
If the reader can get past the opening paragraphs, the chapter does remarkedly improve. However, there are too many characters introduced, overloading the reader and making this a high learning curve opening. At least they are all interesting.
The Characters
I spent the first few chapters working out which of the Twilight characters the characters in this book represent. It wasn’t difficult since the similarities are so strong. Deven is Edward, Amy is Rose, Emily is Alice, and Nathan is Emmett. Only Cedric fails to match Jasper in personality, though he is similarly an outsider.
It’s not quite that simple, though. There are interesting differences between these vampires and their Twilight counterparts, such as the better pairing of Alice with Emmett, since poor Emmett was only ever Rose’s second choice.
I like that Deven is much more of a rogue than Edward and makes inappropriate comments. However, I don’t like that sometimes Deven is spelled Devin. I suspect that there was a name change during writing but not all the Devins were changed to Deven.
I found the flitting between Amy and Amelia as a name a tad irritating. If there had been a reason, such as Amelia being used when Deven was angry with her, it would make sense. But they are simply used interchangeably for no discernible reason. I also wasn’t keen on the similar-sounding names used for multiple close pairings of characters, e.g., Erma and Edna, Taylor and Tanner.
Lyssa is the improved Bella 2.0. Like Bella, she’s moved from a sunny southern locale to a rainy location in the far northwest to please her mom. This immediately establishes her as a sympathetic character who is selfless in the same Bella-like way.
Unlike Bella, she has dated before, though not seriously, and there are subtle, interesting differences between the two characters. Having said that, she’s still an uncoordinated bookworm who’s more into literature than science and gets to choose between a Native American and a vampire suitor.
It’s not an important issue, but I felt she could have been given a better name than Lyssa. I don’t hate the name, but it is used for a major character in both the first book of the Argeneau Vampire series and the Vampire Academy series.
The Plot
In terms of plot, Dawn From Midnight is an improvement on Twilight. It contains a significant amount of interesting conflict within the opening chapters that keep the action going.
However, there were some plot turns I found difficult to swallow. It’s difficult to be specific without introducing spoilers, but I will give one example.
Imagine you have limitless men and resources. There is a man you believe is incompetent, is not trained or qualified to perform a specific kind of task, not experienced in performing that task, and you neither respect nor trust him. Would you really then send him out on potentially the most important military mission of the century as part of a small elite squad?
What I really didn’t like was how closely elements of the plot followed Twilight. Sadly, I can’t give examples without creating huge spoilers. On the positive side, quite often the author makes small changes to the outcomes that improve on the original Twilight story, IMHO.
Continuity errors are a frequent problem. For example, in a telephone conversation, Edna asks, “Is your mom okay?” and Lyssa answers, “I’m okay.” In a classroom scene, Deven didn’t want to work with Brody, but it was Ted Allen he would have been working with not Brody. Lyssa’s mom buys her a pair of jeans, and she puts them on for her birthday, but they turn into a Gypsy skirt when she arrives at Deven’s house.
There were gender related issues in terms of the labor division within the story. For example, only the females are interested in cooking, and the men go off to watch TV to get out of the way. Lyssa repeatedly fails the Bechdel-Wallace Test by only speaking with other female characters about boys. She even thinks about the fact that she does this at one point in the story and resolves to try and not do it again!
Much like Twilight, the main action occurs toward the end of the book. Unlike Twilight, the final action is well foreshadowed in the earlier parts of the novel. I found the resolution satisfying. There are several plotlines left hanging as teasers for another book, and this was handled well.
The Setting
The setting was well sketched but too similar to Twilight. You have the same kind of rich vampire family living in a big old farmhouse modernized in interesting ways and on the edge of the forest. The vampires are really, really similar in nature to the Twilight vampires but with a bit of Argeneau thrown in, i.e., they can eat human food but can’t survive without blood.
I felt like the vampire and sci-fi setting was unnecessarily complex. It’s fine to make the vampires aliens. That’s actually a great way of explaining their origin. But why have two kinds of vampires? Why can’t they all be aliens and keep it simple? And why the time travel? The alien world can simply be more complex but in the same time period. And what happened to the alternative dimension implied in the beginning of the story?
There were a few small things about the setting that concerned me. For example, these vampires eat, but apparently, they never go to the bathroom. This defies the laws of physics!
The Prose
This area was weak. The story is easy to follow, and I enjoyed it very much, but there are lots of style issues.
I was not keen on the third-person omniscient viewpoint used to tell the story. I suspect the author used this approach to overcome the deficiencies in Twilight, where a limited first-person narration leads to half the action being missed out. However, it was overdone, with far too much head hopping between characters.
What I really didn’t like was the frequent redoing of scenes. You would read a scene from one character’s viewpoint, and then the whole scene would be repeated again from another character’s viewpoint. But why? The narrative is omniscient, so we could have simply had both viewpoints at once.
There were multiple typos or word omissions throughout the narrative. For example, in the school yard when Deven hands Lyssa her bag, “Lyssa’s heart skip a beat.” In a scene where Deven is telling his father about Lyssa’s dream: “Vassur didn’t need asked”.
When photographs are handed out, “Once he was able tear his eyes away from the picture”. In a hospital scene, “Both his hearts fractured completely into.” In the final few paragraphs, “There’s another mystery that needs solved, though.”
There are two many dialogue sequences that remain with one character over multiple paragraphs, and these are often incorrectly punctuated. At the end of the day, this novel would have been much better if the author had made more use of critiquing partners or a competent editor.
My Opinion
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dawn From Midnight, but that is probably because I am such an unrepentant Twihard. With the multiple issues in prose, plot, and character development, I feel I can only rate it 6 out of 10. This will translate to 3 out of 5 on Goodreads and Amazon.
January 23, 2021
Beautiful writing as a romance should be. Very entertaining, with interesting references to Twilight within in. The story is appealing and easy to follow; the characters are well developed and plot follows a somehow known line but it more information and interesting details.
August 17, 2021
Twilight-lite
Go Team Deven and Team Alyssa. Not a bad first book in what looks to be a Twilight challenger. The characters were well developed and the backstory was well executed. Let's see where this series goes.
Go Team Deven and Team Alyssa. Not a bad first book in what looks to be a Twilight challenger. The characters were well developed and the backstory was well executed. Let's see where this series goes.
August 1, 2021
Too much like Twilight
If you want a Twilight rewrite/fan fiction, you'll like this. I wanted something more original and did not get that.
If you want a Twilight rewrite/fan fiction, you'll like this. I wanted something more original and did not get that.
December 14, 2021
Very Nice Story
This was a good find, I like science fiction and romance and this was a good combination. Well written and enjoyed it a lot.
This was a good find, I like science fiction and romance and this was a good combination. Well written and enjoyed it a lot.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews