Dark Light of Day by Jill Archer

Released: September 25, 2012
Format: Mass market paperback
Publisher: Ace

Series: Noon Onyx #1

Source: Personal shelf

Armageddon is over. The demons won. And yet somehow…the world has continued. Survivors worship patron demons under a draconian system of tributes and rules. These laws keep the demons from warring among themselves, and the world from slipping back into chaos.

Noon Onyx grew up on the banks of the river Lethe, the daughter of a prominent politician, and a descendant of Lucifer’s warlords. Noon has a secret: She was born with waning magic, the dark, destructive, fiery power that is used to control demons and maintain the delicate peace among them. But a woman with waning magic is unheard of, and some would consider her an abomination.

Noon is summoned to attend St. Lucifer’s, a school of demon law. She must decide whether to declare her powers there…or to attempt to continue hiding them, knowing the price for doing so may be death. And once she meets the forbiddingly powerful Ari Carmine—who suspects Noon is harboring magic as deadly as his own—Noon realizes there may be more at stake than just her life.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I waited a long time to pick up Dark Light of Day. I was intrigued by the concept from the get-go but I found the cover a little off-putting. But after seeing all sorts of rave reviews around the blogosphere, I decided it was time to give it a shot. And boy, am I glad I did! Jill Archer’s debut novel is absolutely amazing and I’m so glad I finally took my first steps into Noon’s world.

First off, Archer has created a great series mythology. Dark Light of Day is a post-apocalyptic novel but the apocalypse wasn’t a natural disaster, or war, or anything like that. Well, it was something like that because there was a war but it was between angels and demons and, as the blurb says, the demons won. Surprisingly, life isn’t all that different, except there are people with magical powers that fall into one of two schools: waning (destructive magic, typically found in men) and waxing (healing magic, typically found in women). Noon’s a bit of an oddity because she has waxing magic and her twin, Night, has waning magic. (Love the play with their names, by the way.) It’s a really neat idea and I really love the way this duality was executed.

I also really liked Noon. At first, I wasn’t sold on her as a protagonist but she grew on me over the course of Dark Light of Day. She’s not very confident at the start of the novel but she really comes into her own, magically and academically, though she’s by no means perfect at either by the end. Watching her develop made this novel for me.

If magic and academics aren’t enough, there’s also a love triangle. Noon is torn between her childhood crush, Peter, who’s an Angel, and her new acquaintance, Ari Carmine, a fellow member of the Host. I wasn’t really taken with this part of the story but I appreciate how Peter represented Noon’s childhood dreams and her hope to not have waning magic and Ari represented her potential future, if she could embrace her waxing magic. I got it but I didn’t love it.

Nonetheless, I will definitely be picking up Fiery Edge of Steel when it comes out this summer. I really loved the world building in Dark Light of Day and I’m curious to see how Noon’s next adventure will go.