Review: WOW
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 9, 2013
I never have been a big fan of historicals or period pieces and usually I find life before the electronic era less than appealing to my mental palate. (I can't even imagine using a chamber pot, an outhouse, or having to draw baths. No microwaves, indoor plumbing or TV?) But when I finished Dark Genesis the only word I could come up with to describe it was...WOW.The tale begins with our narrator, named Dallas, a woman who has an odd portent in the middle of the night on her way home when a stranger asks her for a lighter. She walks away from the encounter with the odd feeling that she has narrowly escaped death. The story continues when Dallas digs through an old chest and finds an ancestor's journal. And not just any diary of long forgotten memories about a vapid woman's fears or minor triumphs of finding a spouse on the marriage market, no, this is the diary of a slave named Luna.Luna is our narrator's ancestor and just that quickly, the read spins back in time and into an entirely different mindset. One that I am hard pressed to understand with the modern luxuries of plentiful food, sleeping in, holding my own children at night, and doing what I please when I decide to do so. But reading the story made me take real stock of every blessing and gave me an appreciation for what I have been blessed with as I experienced the life of a house slave. Many of the experiences are gritty, riveting and penned with the near painful skills of Donald Goines' novel Dopefiend.The hero is simply amazing. Avery is not your average man, and that's for good reason, as he is a vampire. But he's kind, loving, absurdly gentle (even when he is at his worst), and unlike any other person Luna has ever known. He loves Luna and not even because she is a beautiful house slave, but for her mind and heart instead.She teaches him to walk among the living once more and he taught her to (gasp) read and write. She prods him into relearning what a conscience is, and he teaches her what sacrifices for loved ones truly means. Dark Genesis is an amalgam of Twilight and Alex Haley's Roots. As it would take an hour to even fully explain that statement, I won't even try to start what I can't finish.The only cons that I noted were with margin justification and pacing in parts. Some of the paragraphs were unbearably chunky, but with a plot and writing of this caliber, those issues were quickly rendered unimportant.Is this story worth reading? The only answer to that is a resounding yes. I sat in front of my laptop and refused to close the lid of my PC until this story was finished. Honestly, I'm a Nook girl and the fact that I had to use my computer was of no consequence, even when I was forced to chain myself to the wall to charge in the middle of the story. This is the first in a trilogy and I will be reading the other two as soon as I can get my hands on them.-Reviewed by: Jennifer