Influential Literature

I found a first edition of my all-time favorite fantasy novel! I’d first read it when it was released in 1982. Had checked it out at the school library and read it three times before I returned it. I have other editions of this story, but nothing compares to this original along with its fabulous cover – especially when it was so influential for me as an impressionable kid and an aspiring author.

The Darkangel has the best theme.  A coming-of-age slave girl, uncomely, unloved yet yearns to be loved, tries to avenge her mistress’s kidnapping by killing her abductor, the Darkangel, a vampyre. He captures her instead, and forces her to care for thirteen sad, withered wraiths who, she discovers, were the once beautiful women he’d kidnapped. She has to resist his deceptive powers, as well. He’s cruel, but sometimes she catches a glimpse of something within him and believes he is not beyond repair. She escapes, burdened and driven by compassion, to find a way to set the Darkangel free of the evil within him – but not without a perilous journey, danger, great challenges, and growth in strength and character first. Eloquent, meaningful, symbolic, and imaginative – Meredith Ann Pierce’s books are my most loved in fiction.

I’ve always wanted to add this particular edition to my library, and now I have that privilege. I’m so excited!

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