This next pick comes courtesy of my friend Deena whose favorite number is 16. Thus, she picked page 16, book 16 and I ended up with the wonderful novel “Dark Angel”, part of the night world series by the incomparable L.J. Smith. The Night World is a series of nine (soon to be ten!) books that focuses on, well, the night world. Comprised of vampires, witches, werewolfs, shape shifters and all other things creepy and crawly, the night world books show what happens when various members of the community break the most important law and fall in love with a human. In Dark Angel we discover Gillian who is being watched over by a guardian angel, only does he really have her best interests in mind? Smith is arguably most famous for her Vampire Diaries series which has been turned into the SUPER awesome television show starring Mia from Degrassi, Boone from Lost and Maureen from Freaks and Geeks. VD unlike GG, is a perfect example of when the tv show actually exceeds the written material in amazingness. The show is awesome, the books are kind of lame. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with Dark Angel does it? Oh well. What I love about the Night World series, is that even though each book focuses on (mostly) completely different characters, there is a clear story line that runs throughout all of the books. Soulmates and wild powers, ancient kings and the witch child, the whole series vibrates with intensity and all builds to a (hopefully) Armageddon-y conclusion. Which brings me to my main issue with the series. I read these books when I was in middle school. That was like 1997ish, and I think the books actually came out a few years before. But the final installment, Strange Fate, has STILL not been published. It is supposedly coming out in April or July or something, but there have been potential release dates for years, YEARS, what’s a poor, impatient girl supposed to do? Apparently “Strange Fate” is like 12,000 pages long so I am excited, and the first few chapters are available for consumption which gives me hope, but if I have to wait ten more years, I might go VAMPIRE STYLE on someone’s ass. I don’t really know what that means…