Night World by L. J. Smith

"Night World” is a 9-book series (there’s a mythical 10th book that may or may not eventually be published) about a reality where witches, vampires, and shapeshifters coexist in a secret society with only 2 rules: 1. Don’t tell humans we exist, and 2. Don’t fall in love with humans. Naturally, most of the books are about members of the Night World falling in love with humans. Specifically finding their “soulmate,” in all the concept’s cheesy glory. To be fair, it’s supposed to be extremely rare for soul mates to exist, and implied that so many are occurring at once for a specific reason. Unfortunately, see: mythical 10th book.

The shape shifters are basically 2nd class citizens here, and I cringe a bit at their portrayal, though one of the best books in the series is about a shapeshifter. The witches and vampires, however, are descended from the twin daughters of Hecate, Hellewise and Maya. The vampires come in two varieties: the lamia, who are direct descendants of Maya and can have children and choose when to stop aging (part of me wishes they‘d been called Empousai, but oh well…), and the “made” vampires, who are humans who were turned into vampires. The main villain of the series, Hunter Redfern, is the head of the most powerful lamia family. Hunter has never recovered from when he made a contract with a witch for heirs, expecting sons, and now his entire clan is descended from his half-witch daughters. (Like other LJS mythologies, it’s a very matriarchal mythology.)

The first 5 books are connected but largely independent, with the sixth book kicking off the main metaplot of the series, that carries into the other 3 books, which can also be read alone, which center around finding four “special” teens who will avert doomsday. Most of the books are variations of YA vampire romances.

This, basically, is how the vampire romances go in Night World:

Hero: Hello, I am a vampire (possibly an actual teenager, possibly centuries old) who has been raised since birth to view humans as Lesser Beings. And lunch. But I probably don’t engage in much random killing!
Heroine: Hi! I am a gutsy human who may actually be a vampire hunter or half-vampire! I am suitably unimpressed with your vampire badboy antics.
Hero: Probably, I don’t like you to talking back to me much (yet) but we are Soulmates so you are my true love for all eternity. I just have to figure out what to do about that thing where you are a from race I’m supposed to think is inferior.
Heroine: You are an idjit and I am leaving now even if I’ve started to notice you’re not quite the douche bag I initially thought you were.
Hero: I know! I’ll turn you into a vampire and that’ll solve everything! If you’d just tilt your head a little to the left…
Heroine: Bring those fangs any closer and I will stab you with this pencil.
Hero: No, really, you’ll thank me la- *gets stabbed with pencil* YOWTCH! Right, “no means no.” Vampires can get lead poisoning, you know!
Heroine; You are a big, alpha male baby.
Hero: But you’re still human and I have a lifetime of bigotry to overcome!
Heroine: *whaps over head with Nancy Drew books* Excuse me, I must go save the world while you have your little moral crisis. Oh, by the way, you’ll probably want to reconsider things if you don’t want to spend the rest of eternity celibate.
Hero: I think I am actually starting to like humans. In fact, I think I’m going to go join that little group that thinks humans are people too and work on my deprogramming now.

Which…sounds kind of bad, but is usually pretty awesome in practice? Likely because the heroines really are completely “oh, hells no” to it and pwn the vampires repeatedly (sometimes, Hunter Redfern shows up and kicks their egos around for a while, too) and are very much not going for the badboy vampire antics unless there’s some serious redeeming going on. Also, unlike most vampire romantic interests who get “redeemed,” LJS’s vampires aren’t just giving up something they really like for now or behaving for a bit, they’re actually changing their world views with no expectations of getting anything in return. It also isn’t always resolved by turning the heroine in a vampire. In fact, most of the books leave it questionable as to whether or no it will happen, and the romance itself is rarely resolved beyond “well, they love each other but things are complicated and they don‘t even know if they‘re going to stay together. They may decide after they take care of the apocalypse, and after he‘s done some serious amending of the things he‘s done in the past.”

Individually, the books are mixed. There are 6 I like/love to varying degrees, 2 I didn’t like as books, but that had other elements I really liked, and then one that I found boring and that used tropes I dislike, and I didn’t finish it.

The nine books are collected into three omnibuses.

( individual books )

And now I have read all of L.J. Smith’s 90s goodness, and loved almost all of it! I don’t know if I can go back to contemporary gothic YA. I have the first of the new Vampire Diaries books, but I understand that it’s not exactly good and often faily. And possibly someone else using the penname, anyway.