‘A thrilling ´vampire´ fantasy packed full of twists, turns – and danger!’

This was a fast-paced and exhilarating supernatural and sci-fi YA fantasy! The world-building and mythos that the author built into this series were evident immediately. The shadowy world that exists hidden from everyone else and the established feeling that the book has allowed readers to really feel the tense atmosphere and rich dynamics between the characters in this book. The heart of the narrative definitely rested in the character development, something that was quick to come to life. The protagonist, a strong heroine who stands in stark contrast to her vampiric nature by harboring emotions, was so engaging to get lost in and made the story feel alive on the page as she not only fought for the people she feels for but struggled against the less than empathetic vampires she came across in her life. Beautifully, another standout in this book was how despite how established the setting felt, readers could delve into this book without prior reading of the series.

Like William’s The Rift, A Fire in the Shadows is action-packed genre fiction, set in the Weekly World News -inspired setting of his “Bolingbrook Babbler” articles. At around 12k words, it’s long for a short story, but only covers a few short events. There’s a lot of information around those events, and the author wants the story to stand on its own, so the exposition can land like bricks upside the head. The references to events in The Rift feel particularly unnecessary, beyond the important fact of the weredeer incursion. I do like being able to include a sentence like that in a review. Still, as I said before, it’s fun to see SFF genre fiction that isn’t beholden to the conventions laid down by the titans of Intellectual Property. There’s stuff here to enjoy. The vampire battle strategizing reminded me of a bit in “From Russia with Love” where James Bond was thinking about how he could totally judo chop through his opponent’s chest if he wanted to, but now wasn’t the time for it... One thing that struck me odd. The vampire characters seem to regard their own human ethnicities as a thing to be disdained, and I’m not convinced they’d have any reason to feel that way. This element seemed like a ploy to spell out the characters’ backgrounds without breaking from the plot and dialogue to do so. In general, the bitchy attitudes of the vampires were unappealing, and while that may have been intentional, it’s not interesting to me as a reader. I know some other readers like it, so YMMV. I did like the main character Lydia being a lovefool like The Cardigans. William’s writing style spells out a lot. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the central dogmas of 20th century literature, but there are situations where even back then it was ignored. Short stories in action-packed genre fiction, well, that’s one place where telling works. His “The Rift” was short for a novel, and like this story, packed a lot into its length, by merit of willingness to lay ideas out plainly. This creates a paradox (if I’m using that word right), because sometimes William does not spell something out. Those can be pretty important themes and ideas, and since a reader gets accustomed to him spelling out the situation unambiguously, it’s easy to forget he might leave something unsaid. I’m guessing a lot of readers might miss his unspoken ideas.