Brighter than the Sun (Charley Davidson 8.5) by Darynda Jones
We’ve seen Charley Davidson’s story continue through the books – now we look again at these events, but from Reyes’s point of view.
This is a book that largely recaps a lot of what has been spoken about and touched upon in the main series. Often I’m not a fan of that when it comes to short stories – or long stories for that matter. Retreading old ground too often feels like some kind of broken money-grab, leaching a book out of a series when it doesn’t really have an original book there. It has to bring something new to the proceedings, to the series – it has to bring a perspective that is actually useful and novel
The perspective this book brings is Reyes point of view
The actual events of the book are ones we’ve seen before. We know Reyes’s history – we know he was repeatedly abused by Earl, we know he was controlled by threats to his sister. Everything he endured is something we knew about. But seeing it from Reyes point of view helped explain a bit more about him, especially since he’s always been the awesomely powerful one Charley has turned to
Here we see what she brought to him – he isn’t just her protector (and frequently abusive controller). He relied on her on her light and on her presence to get him through the dark times.
It also brings some insight into him and his views. He’s always been ridiculously, impossibly beautiful in a way that is full of annoying Paranormal Romance tropes of the incredible love interest who just can’t be resisted. Well here’s the dark side – here’s Reyes, ab to sense people’s emotions and always feeling that endless, hungry all consuming lust. It’s a burden on him, a constant attack on him, a pressure that always drives him down. From there his appearance is never an asset to him, but a source of constant pain. A source of him hardly ever being able to have real relationships with most people.
This is also coupled with his knowledge of who he is and what he does and the inherent conclusion that he is damned, tainted and awful. Which, of course, he is in a way – he was created entirely to help the invasion of Earth and Heaven, he was created to co-opt Charley, her mission and her power.
He chose to reject that, but it took a lot of walking through fire to get there.
We could always infer Reyes’s story – but there is definite value to seeing it through his eye sand his experiences, it helps explain him a lot more
Though it certainly doesn’t justify him, it does help explain him.
