This book was for me, at 13, what I imagine Twilight is for some of its fans nowdays. A story about a beautiful and deadly vampire and the girl who falls in love with him. Except that in The Darkangel, the vampire really does do horrible things, and the girl goes off on a quest to find a way to destroy (or perhaps redeem) him.

This book haunted me. For several years I only could read it once a year, because the only place it existed in my sphere of influence was the library in the small town in Minnesota where my paternal grandparents lived. I searched desperately for it at used bookstores for years until I finally found my own prized copy (which I still have, though it is very tattered now). Fortunately it has recently been reissued!

It is a lush and dreamlike book, almost surreal. The descriptions can still sweep me away to the odd, beautiful, cruel world of Aeriel and her Vampyre. The entire story resonates with the feeling of a fairy-tale, from the spindle that twists emotions into threads Aeriel must weave into gowns for the vampyre’s thirteen ghostly brides, to the tales she tells the vampyre each night to distract him from ill deeds, to the enchanted boat that carries her away on a quest to fulfill prophecy.

I have not re-read this book since college, partly for fear that it won’t live up to my girlish memories of it. I am not sure that it could strike me quite so hard now as it did then, but perhaps I will give in and find out.

I will also add that although I did enjoy the sequel A Gathering of Gargoyles, I tend to ignore the third and final volume The Pearl of the Soul of the World because I find the ending unbearably sad. Not unfitting, but still sad.