My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stay in the light, avoid locked doors, and resist silver whispers.
Meet Lynher Aris. Hostess extraordinaire. By night, she entertains the Dark Ones passing through the Night Station: vampires, demons, shifters, and worse. By day, she undermines them all, working with the resistance to unravel their enslavement of the human race.
But Lynher has a dark secret of her own, and with the imminent arrival of Ghost—a vampire overlord few have seen but all fear—she must play her role as the queen of the Night Station to perfection, keeping the resistance and her secret safe, or risk losing everything, including the powerful Night Station itself.
Thank you so much to Pippa Dacosta for providing me with a copy of Twilight Seeker in exchange for an honest review!
I've been meaning to read a Dacosta book for some time, and when this shiny new gothic urban fatasy came along, I couldn't resist jumping right in! It's been a while since I read a good vampire book, and this one really hit the spot! It initially reminded me a bit of the Innkeeper Chronicles, but the Night Station is darker and more dangerous.
"I’d been the Night Station’s hostess for almost two years, and every night I learned I’d never be ready. All anyone could do was hope dawn came quickly."
The MC Lynher Aris, a vulnerable human, is the hostess of the Night Station, where all of the Dark Ones are welcome to stay and be entertained. Vampires, demons, elves and the thing in room 3B, all attend the station at night, and Lynher must play her part as hostess, while during the day she works with the resistance to rescue innocent children from the monsters that would enslave them. The vampires in this are definitely the bad guys, stealing children for their blood farms. But the station is full of secrets, and as we delve further into this world it becomes ever more dangerous and mysterious.
"Every moment I hesitated revealed me for what I truly was: a woman in a pretty dress playing with killers."
The setting is Victorian era style with a Grand ballroom and elaborate dresses, but is actually in a post-apocalyptic world. The majority of the book is set in the Night Station, which is a sanctuary of sorts, just one that happens to be full of monsters with a thin veneer of safety. I really loved the setting, and the author portrays the tension of the main character really well; an almost powerless human attempting to maintain control over creatures that could kill her in a heartbeat, unless the Station's magic protects her. The little bits of magic we see inside the station are fun and I'm sure there's lots more to explore there, so I'm looking forward to that in the next book. We do end up with a lot of questions at the end of the book, as the Station has many secrets, even from its hostess. I like that we only know what she knows.
"Some parts of the Night Station weren’t open to guests. Some parts weren’t on any maps and didn’t have doors to reach them. Hidden parts. Secret parts. Walls with eyes. Spiraling passages to nowhere. The station was known to devour unwanted guests, their bodies never found."
We don't learn much about what is happening in the world outside, and we don't really know why the Station exists at all. I really hope this gets explored more in the next book, as it was a little confusing at times, and made the setting seem a little forced, which is why I only gave it 4 stars, as I otherwise really enjoyed the story and the characters.
"Gaslit chandeliers made the light sway and dance and catch in the eyes of all the predators in the Hall. The huge clock ticked away the minutes. Dark Ones mingled and laughed and danced, and twirled and lied and did all the things they did to each other’s faces and behind their backs."
There's a really great cast of characters and I think the author does really well with their development and reveals. Everyone has secrets, and there are some really good "Oh what?!" moments, and for some characters I'm still not sure if they're good or bad. We get to see inside the head of the main character Lynher, all her secret fears and her determination to keep her people safe despite the odds being stacked against her and finding out that there is so much about her world that she thought she knew, but doesn't. My favourite character is probably Rafe, a playful incubus demon who doesn't do what he's told and may or may not be a good guy, we'll see.
"Gerome had told me the prettiest things had the sharpest bites, and that was true of 90% of the guests. The other 10% you never saw coming."
At times I was a little confused with the world-building and the realms of Night and Day, but I adore the colourful characters and I can't wait to find out what comes next for Lynher and the Night Station. If you enjoy gothic fantasy, with well constructed morally ambiguous characters and monsters who truly are monsters then you can't go past Twilight Seeker!
Happy reading!
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