Taken by the Night
By Kathryn Smith
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Taken by the Night is the third book in a paranormal historical series featuring warriors who became vampires after drinking from a cursed chalice six hundred years ago. Smith’s writing style is solid throughout, but I couldn’t help thinking that I would have liked the book better as a straight historical.

Saint is in London and, as dawn approaches, he must find shelter. So he automatically heads to Maison Rouge, a whorehouse established by his friends to serve their purposes. As he’s being led into a very comfortable sun-free apartment in the cellar, one of the employees informs Saint of the recent murders of two of their girls. Then the manager’s beautiful daughter, Ivy, comes down and demands that Saint track down the killer and exact justice.

Having grown up in a whorehouse, Ivy is not an innocent. She has had lovers, takes sensual photographs, and tries to chase down a killer. At first, Ivy has no faith in Saint’s dedication to solving the crime or his abilities. She understands that the vampires have an arrangement with the women of Maison Rouge. The girls have to be willing to give blood, often feeding other needs as well, and the house provides living quarters, but in exchange the vampires protect the house and the girls in it. Ivy thinks that the vamps get the better end of the deal, however, and now that the girls need protecting, where are their defenders?

Saint soon proves himself to Ivy and an attraction she has always felt for him flares up. After living for hundreds of years, Saint feels wary of forming any attachments, especially having recently lost a woman he loved. He makes up his mind to resist Ivy, but she has made up her mind to pursue him. And so the battle begins, with Ivy seducing an increasingly desperate Saint.

The plot minus the vampire stuff is actually pretty interesting. Ivy’s involvement in a brothel is different, as is her fascination with erotic art/photography. The murders closely mimic a rash of murders that terrified London ten years earlier, those of Jack the Ripper. We learn that an Order is behind both occurrences and that aspect also intrigues. The romance itself is rather hot and the emotional conflicts between the two are believable. The author’s writing also impressed me and encourages me to search her out again.

So, why didn’t this book get a higher grade? Because it is supposed to be a paranormal. As a paranormal, the book ranked somewhat below average compared to others on the market. It was the other great characteristics that pushed the grade up to where it stands. Information introduced in the first novel of the series gets a poor explanation here and I knew that I was missing parts of Saint’s character due to the muddled presentation of background. Other vampiric traits were also poorly delved into. Saint hardly seemed like a vampire at all, more an eccentric gentleman who can’t be in the sunlight and occasionally needs some blood to tide him over. The rougher aspects of the lifestyle were barely mentioned and characters make a huge decision made with seemingly no thought given to the consequences of that lifestyle. The book read as one with an interesting plot that had vampire stuff tacked on as mere icing.

I count myself a big fan of vampire tales, but Taken by the Night needed expanding in the paranormal department to allow it to compete with other paranormals. Otherwise, it is an intriguing, sexy, well-written romance that might have been better off as simply a straight historical. I will probably check out the author’s backlist, while hoping that she either reverts to her old genre or beefs up the paranormal aspects of her work.

Reviewed by Andi Davis

Grade: C+

Book Type: Paranormal Historical

Sensuality: Hot

Review Date: 13/12/07

Publication Date: 2007

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Recent Comments …

  3. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

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