Book Review: "Nikkoleth" by Angel St. Clair

In a city where werewolves dealt drugs, kidnapped teenagers and crime was on an all time high, Nikkoleth, ancient vampire, and hired assassin was called in to clean up the mess. She finds herself tangled in a web of lies, deceit, and mystery, both of the present and the past. "Who are you?" "I am Nikkoleth. i am Death". -from Amazon.com

This book I received just a few short weeks ago. I "won" it in a giveaway on Facebook, by being the 50th person to 'Like' the author's page. I also know the author, though did not receive the book for that reason. It is an autographed, paperback edition.

Nikkoleth is a vampire that works as an assassin for an unknown, except for his name, employer. She is sent on a mission in Southern Arizona, that suddenly puts her in a situation where her morals and ethics come into play. As she finishes up her mission, it suddenly changes into a more in-depth job, that does nothing but go along with her feelings of anger and revenge. While the story unfolds, we learn a bit more about Nikkoleth, some of her 'co-workers' and as usual in these types of books, a handsome love interest. This is the first of a possible series by St. Clair, (as on Amazon, it is listed as The Daughters of Darkness, Volume 1).

If you are into the urban fantasy genre, with vampires and werewolves, you will enjoy picking up this book. I breezed through it in just a few short days, reading a few hours a day. I enjoyed the development of the main character, Nikkoleth, throughout the story, though I felt not much was really revealed about her. Perhaps this is something that is to come in future books. The story moved quickly, with decent action sequences where needed. The couple 'token love scenes' were not overboard in exhausting detail (I hate pages of sex smut). Based on some of the language, and maybe a little of the sexual content, I would say this is not a YA novel.

That all being said, there were a few negatives to the book. The copy I received was average in thickness, but once opened appeared to be maybe a large-print edition, or maybe it was all double-spaced, which was not a major issue, but my first thought was how fast I was going to read through it. There were many errors in punctuation, capitalization, and spelling throughout the book. I think most of it is easily correctable with a good detail reader prior to publishing, or even an actual editor. In the self-publishing market, this happens quite a bit though, and it isn't so bad to detract from the book. I also noticed a few smaller scenes a bit out of sequence nearer the end of the story. My guess is they were sections re-worked to fill in some detail, and some details were inserted too early by accident.

I did enjoy the story, and would purchase (if not win possibly) more books in this series. I thought St. Clair did a fine job for a first work, and with use of an editor or such, her future works should be fine to read.