Opinion and Themes
This book was phenomenal. It had just the right amount of romance and suspense. Many of the themes present in the book are relevant to all sorts of people, young and old. Three themes I thought stood out were that of determination, live life to the fullest, and keep things simple.
The first theme I found was determination. Throughout the book, Conrad’s determination to keep Neomi alive eventually prevails and he does keep her safe. Also, Neomi continuously keeps her faith in Conrad and his recovery. This theme of determination was very prominent throughout the course of the book and I think it holds true to our daily lives. We need to keep faith in other people and continue to persevere through all that holds us back.
The second theme that was evident in the book was the idea that one needs to live life to the fullest before one’s life is extinguished. This theme can be seen through Neomi’s temporary body. Although she knew she had only weeks, maybe just days, she lived her life with Conrad to the fullest and never regretted a moment of it. Everyone should life by this philosophy. Today may be our last and we need to live as though it is.
The third and final theme that stood out to me was the way Conrad overcame his challenges. He developed a different way of seeing things. He simplified challenges into obstacles and rewards. When Tarut held Neomi captive, Conrad simply classified everything as either an obstacle or a reward. Defeating Tarut was the obstacle and Neomi’s life was the reward. By keeping things simple, Conrad was able to identify the problem and take care of it easily.
Not Quite Human
After her embodying, Neomi recovers from the fatigue and finally marries Conrad. As things settle back to normal, Neomi starts to think she came back wrong. Every now and again, she would glance her spectral self in the mirror and has dreams of floating and walking through walls. One night while Conrad was off talking to his brothers about buying Elancourt from them, a fire rips through the house. Sensing something is wrong, Conrad traces home to find the estate engulfed in flames. He rushes to find Neomi still lying in their bed asleep. Before he can get to her, one of the rafters from the roof crunches above him and falls. Conrad is pinned beneath a heap of burning wood. Neomi awakes to the sound of Conrad’s yell. She is suddenly aware of the flames licking their way around the walls. Neomi then realizes that she has the same abilities she had as a ghost. Using her newly realized powers of telekinesis, Neomi lifts the pile of burning wood from Conrad and moves him to the front yard where she watches her home burn. Conrad regains consciousness after a few minutes. Dazed, Conrad asks Neomi how they had gotten where they are, but instead of Neomi, Nïx answers his questions, and Neomi’s. Nïx explains to both of them that Neomi is now what is known in the Lore as a Phantom. She also explains that a Phantom can incarnate at will, use telekinesis, and trace, but most important of all, Phantoms are immortal. Along with Nïx’s revelation, she gives them a tidbit of their future by telling them they are expecting twins.
The Finale
While Conrad holds her, Neomi is able to tell him about Mari. He rushes her to her studio where he calls Mari through the mirrors. After Mari and her husband Bowen (a Lykae aka werewolf) emerge from the mirror, Mari runs to Neomi’s side while Conrad explains what has happened to Bowen. In a last ditch effort, Mari attempts to recover Neomi’s body and place her soul in it. Toward the end of the spell Mari gets entranced in her mirrors and can’t be freed. Bowen attempts to break the mirrors’ hold on her by blocking her view with his body. Conrad is frantic to find Neomi and finally realizes where she is, her coffin somewhere in the French Quarter. Since he’s never been there, Conrad can’t trace there. The only option he sees it to rescue his brothers and ask Nikolai to bring him to every cemetery in the French Quarter. Conrad traces to Mount Oblak, the Forbearer castle, and searches for his brothers. Along the way, he meets resistance from Forbearer soldiers but easily defeats them, but does not kill them. Finally he finds his brothers and breaks them out of their cell. Before they can escape, Kristoff finds them and refuses to let them leave. After Nikolai speaks with Kristoff, the Forbearer leader concedes that Conrad has recovered to an extent seeing as he didn’t kill any of the guards that attacked him. Murdoch and Sebastian both leave to meet up with their wives. Nikolai is skeptical but agrees to bring Conrad to the cemeteries. In the third cemetery they visited, Conrad finally heard Neomi’s heart beat. He sprinted to the tomb and busted down the door. Once he found her coffin he yanked the lid off. Neomi was alive and unbelievably relieved to be in Conrad’s arms again. She’d said, “ … knew you’d find me.” After they returned to Elancourt, Conrad professes his love to Neomi before remembering Bowen and Mari in the studio. When they entered the room, Bowen had Mari freed and in his arms, which were covered in his blood. After Conrad thanks Mari and Bowen, they leave through the mirror.
A Second Death
After reaching Neomi and tracing her back to Elancourt, Conrad presses Neomi to tell him how she became flesh and blood. The only problem is that once anyone knows how Neomi became corporeal, she will die. Conrad and Neomi come to an agreement to simply live together while Conrad hunts for Tarut. After a week of extravagant trips around the world Conrad brings Neomi to the Paris ballet where he proposes to her. Neomi is stuck between her love for Conrad and her temporary life. She doesn’t want to promise him a future she knows she doesn’t have and so she refuses. When they get home from the ballet, Conrad takes matters into his own hands and tells Neomi that after he kills Tarut, Neomi will marry him. Conrad then explains the “prophesy” to Neomi. He tells her that his most coveted dream, her becoming flesh and blood, has already come true and that his worst nightmare is her dieing again. Neomi realizes that this is the reason he has been hunting so relentlessly. After she tells him it can’t happen, he forces the ring on her finger and tells her to take it off if she truly doesn’t want to marry him. Knowing she most definitely does want to marry him, she leaves it on. As they make love, Conrad loses control and bites Neomi. Stunned by what he’s just done, Neomi pulls away and cries. Conrad is disgusted with himself and traces to the folly where he often goes to calm down and think. While walking the worn path he is surprised by eight of Tarut’s swordsmen and Tarut himself. Feeling as if he has nothing to lose, Conrad engages the swordsmen in an attempt to finally make Neomi safe. As the battle rages, Neomi hears Conrad scream in pain and rushes outside to find three of the swordsmen lying dead on the ground while Conrad fights the other five. Suddenly, Tarut has Neomi in his grasp and Conrad is forced to surrender. Tarut wouldn’t let Neomi free unless Conrad’s head was his. With no other options, Conrad makes Tarut swear to the Lore (the dimension where all supernatural beings reside) that neither him nor his swordsmen would ever harm her before Conrad finally surrenders his life to Tarut. Tears streaming from her eyes, Neomi tries to tell Conrad of her temporary body but is cut off as Tarut tightens his hold on her throat. As Tarut advances on Conrad, Neomi is able to yell out, “I’m … dying anyway! Leave here!” Instants before Tarut’s sword would have connected with Conrad’s neck, the sword and Tarut’s arm fly past Conrad. Cadeon Woede had attacked from behind and now had a dagger in hand as Tarut turned to attack. Without enough time to get between the two, Conrad bellowed, “No! Tarut’s holding her!” But it was too late. Cade had already swung for Tarut’s stomach but instead of Tarut, he had stricken Neomi in the chest. Before Tarut dropped Neomi to block a second attack, Conrad had already decapitated the demon. Neomi lay bleeding to death in the mud.
The Party
After the brothers have been gone for a few days, Conrad comes to the assumption that they were taken captive for keeping him alive by the leader of the Forbearers , Kristoff. The climax of the story comes when Neomi uses the cell phone she stole from Sebastian to call a powerful witch named Mariketa the Awaited. Neomi uses the stack of jewelry that she had saved from her home after she died to buy Mari’s services. Mari then does a spell to embody Neomi. This allows her only a limited time to be corporeal before she dies a tragic death. With her new body, Mari and Nïx take Neomi to a party full of immortals where she hopes to have a good time.
What Neomi doesn’t know is that Conrad is also at the party trying to kill Tarut. Tarut is a sleep demon that Conrad has been trying to assassinate for years. The last time they fought had ended badly. Conrad had been clawed by the demon and the wound would not heal until the demon was dead. The wound also allows Tarut to track Conrad if they sleep at the same time. After they last fought, Tarut gave Conrad a “prophesy” that said if he couldn’t kill Tarut, his “most coveted dream and worst nightmare” would come true. Because of this, Conrad is even more frantic in his search for the demon because he fears for Neomi’s safety.
During the party, a fight breaks out and Neomi is caught in the crossfire. Being that she is only a mortal amongst a mob of immortal warriors, she is paralyzed by fear as Mari and Nïx fail to reach her because of their own struggles. From his treetop view of the gathering, Conrad spots Neomi and is baffled by her corporeal form. After shaking off his momentary confusion, Conrad realizes Neomi is in mortal danger and rushes to reach her. Without taking his eyes off of her, he fights off any beings in his path. Ten feet away and he stumbles, another explosion rocks him. Again and again until he finally realizes what the explosions are, his heartbeat. Neomi had blooded him.
The Plot Thickens
Finally, the brothers’ motive is revealed. Nikolai, Murdoch, and Sebastian want to bring Conrad back from the brink of bloodlust. They hope to help Conrad meet his Bride so that she can blood him and help tame him. According to the brothers, blooding can only happen when a vampire meets his fated mate in the flesh. After a vampire is blooded, his heart begins to beat and his lungs begin to work again. Later in the book, we also learn that Conrad has an unfathomable amount of immortals that want him dead. We first meet the Woede brothers, Cadeon and Rydstrom in a bar somewhere near New Orleans where they are looking for Nïx the Ever Knowing. Nïx is a Valkyrie who is over 3000 years old and basically sees the past, the present, and the future. We learn that the Woede brothers want some information Conrad had acquired after drinking from a warlock. What they don’t know is that Conrad can’t pull the information up at will. Rydstrom is the eldest of the brothers and lost the crown to his kingdom because of Cade. Rydstrom and Cade both have thick British accents though between the two they differ. Rydstrom’s accent reflects his upbringing in a higher class whereas Cade’s reflects his lowborn upbringing.
An actual manor in New Orleans. Probably what Elancourt would have looked like before Neomi was killed.
The Beginning
The beginning of Dark Needs At Night’s Edge was well written and different in its approach. It starts out in 1927 on the night of Neomi Laress’ death. It describes her ex-fiance plunging a dagger into her heart in the middle of her party. She describes her home and the love that she has for it. Neomi tells us that she worked years to earn the money to buy the 15-acre estate.
In the first chapter, the reader meets Conrad Wroth. In his human life, Conrad was a warlord that fought vampires. He first learned to hate and kill vampires when he was just 13 and joined the Kapsliga. The Kapsliga is a group of humans that take an oath at a very young age to protect humankind from the supernatural beings. Conrad was then turned into a vampire by his eldest brother Nikolai. Conrad had been gutted by a Russian soldier while he protected his four younger sisters. Conrad has an undying hatred for all things Russian because he was killed by Russian steal and had fought for his country against the Russians for almost a decade. This hatred for vampires and Russians leads to Conrad not joining the order his brothers join, the Forbearers. This order is lead by a Russian vampire named Kristoff.
Conrad ends up becoming a Fallen vampire. This means that he has drank blood from the vein. After a vampire drinks from the vein, they are consumed by an irreversible bloodlust. Also, the irises of their eyes turn blood red. After drinking from a victim, the vampire obtains all the victim’s memories. This eventually drives the vampire mad because he can no longer distinguish his memories and thoughts from the memories of his victims.
Neomi and Conrad first meet when Conrads brothers, Nikolai, Murdoch, and Sebastian, bring him to Elancourt (Neomi’s home). No one in Neomi’s 80 year afterlife has ever been able to see her so when Conrad stares directly at her and mutters “Where…is she?” and then tells his brothers, “Female…beautiful” before passing out, she is stunned and wonders if he actually saw her.
Book Cover. The man on the cover is Conrad Wroth. He is one of the main characters.
