Gina's Reviews > I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call

I Am The Dark That Answers When You Call is Part 2 of a duology about Laure, a Black ballerina who's left her ballet days behind after a bloody and tragic end to her friendships and her future. All she's got left is the ever-present and ever-encroaching companionship of the ancient creature she made a deal with to gain everything she's now lost. Trying to find herself and start anew doesn't amount to much more than hard partying every night and kissing strangers, but it gets worse when dead bodies start showing up again. This time, her homicidal powers may not be enough to save what's left of her life.

I hate to say this about such a cool series and cool author, but I think this series would've worked better with Book 1 as a standalone. The concept and prose for the first book was so very awesome - a Black ballerina makes a deal with an eldritch monster in the Paris catacombs in order to gain power and prominence as the primadonna! And the covers! And that title! ‘I Feed Her To The Beast And The Beast Is Me"? Are you kidding me?? Everything about it is immaculate. Book 1 was a bloody fever dream with an epic climax and an ending that worked great on its own, but held promise for future adventures just in case.

Book 2, not so much. I hovered between two and three stars on this one (half stars, Goodreads, make it happen already) but went with three because, well, it's just fine. It's not bad, it's perfectly serviceable! But we could've done without it, I think.

It might not have felt so extemporaneous if there were more things happening, but it felt like a lot of filler and cliches to get to the point of the climax in this one. Laure spends a whole hell of a lot of time angsting about her lost future and her personal life - and understandably so, she's literally been through hell and back! But this phase went on for nearly two thirds of the book, and it didn't take long for me to start tapping out mentally every time Laure talked about how lost she was. I didn't find myself caring a whole lot about whatever was happening with Elysium, or with Laure's mom, or even the main plot of Niamh's treachery. It felt like a lot of things were introduced to generate chaos but ended up more like a bunch of letdowns.

There's one revelation about Laure's mom that seems promising, but goes nowhere beyond that. The Elysium (sub?)plot takes up way more time than I cared to read, and Niamh's whole thing could've been interesting but ultimately felt like wasted potential, because here we are with a bunch of teenagers who wanna rule the world because don’t they always? I get what Jamison Shea was wanting to do here, but the execution felt kind of lacking, because whatever investment I had drained out by the time I hit the halfway point.

I don't want to harp on about it though, because even if I was no longer invested, I'd still read any future stories from Jamison. I didn't love this one, but it still had some of the hallmarks that made the first one so excellent. While the prose got overwrought and repetitive more than I'd like here, there was still a lot of great horror imagery - Shea really dives deep when it comes to the macabre, and I appreciate that in a YA book! There were some cool moments towards the end, and Laure is still an interesting character because of the way she embraces and even elevates her rage. I like Andor, too, even if he is too "soft boy" for me to really invest in him. In another perspective, he'd be an interesting watch, but I don't think he got to do a whole lot in this series and that bums me out a little.

I think part of what this book suffered from was a lack of personal drive from anyone outside of Laure. It's her story, obviously, but the stakes in the first book felt so much higher because of Laure's desperation and how everything and everyone around her were intertwined with the same desperation. We don't get that here - not just because we're no longer at the ballet house, but because everyone else feels so random and stuffed into character slots that needed filling.

However, I wouldn't tell anyone not to read the second book if they really want to - just know that the first one is strong enough on its own and accomplishes more than the second book tried to.