March - Dark Light

A Year of reading with Jodi Taylor

Dark Light is available in ebook, audio and paperback editions.

In "Dark Light," the gripping second instalment of Jodi Taylor's Elizabeth Cage series, our protagonist, Elizabeth, finds herself betrayed, terrified, and utterly alone. Fleeing her past, she seeks refuge in the seemingly idyllic village of Greyston. However, Greyston harbours dark secrets, and Elizabeth becomes entangled in an ancient ceremony destined to culminate in death. As she navigates this perilous situation, the relentless Sorensen Institute continues its pursuit, and the enigmatic Michael Jones remains elusive. In a world where danger lurks in every shadow, Elizabeth must confront her deepest fears to survive. Jodi Taylor masterfully blends suspense, supernatural elements, and rich character development, delivering a thriller that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Enjoy an extract read by Jodi Taylor:

Book Review: Dark Light by Jodi Taylor review by RLSmithWriting

This is one weird book – I mean that in a good way. Elizabeth Cage is a mostly ordinary widowed housewife who likes a quiet life. Her primary problem is that she can see colours, which means she can read others emotions by the colour aura that swirls around them. We discover through her backstory that her special power is of interest to a man who had her locked up in an asylum so he could study and exploit her, until another inmate helped her escape.

Dark Light opens with Elizabeth running away and trying to cover her tracks by jumping random buses, then disembarking only to do it again on another bus until she decides to stop in the town of Greyston out of pure exhaustion from being on the move all the time. That’s when things really start to get wacky. Greyston is a small English village of women with a medieval tradition that involves kidnapping a man to be king for a year, getting him to impregnate the towns women then sacrificing him to the stone gods on New Year’s Eve. Elizabeth is recused from almost becoming one of the towns women by the man she was running away from.

It soon becomes evident Elizabeth has other special powers as she slips between the cracks of this world and other bizarre, chaotic, parallel universes inhabited by creatures from your childhood nightmares. In these other spheres bad things happen, dramatic rescues take place and Elizabeth is subjected to all kinds of quirky twists and turns, all the while wishing she could just sit quietly at home in a warm bath with a cup of tea.

All the way through this supernatural thriller, I was surprised at how it drew me in. When I had to put it down to go and attend to my ordinary life, I couldn’t wait to get back between it’s strangely engrossing pages. I have never read any of Jodi Taylor’s writing before and it wasn’t until I finished Dark Light that I realised it was the second book in a series – luckily it turned out that didn’t matter particularly, other than being disappointed I hadn’t started at the beginning with White Silence. I am certain I will be reading more of Taylor for another dose of peculiar, spooky fun in the future.

Next month’s book will be Long Shadows - Book 3 in the Elizabeth Cage series