Dark Stranger: The Nightmare: Children of the Review

*** Disclaimer: Dark Stranger: The Dream: Children of the Gods is a terrible, no good, very bad book. This review will not focus on literary quality, because Dark Stranger wasn’t written with a page-turning plot in mind; Dark Stranger exists to provide a potential reader with hot supernatural bad boys and spicy vampire romance (with a dash of misogyny and eugenics). If you wanted to click off of this article and continue going about your day, this would be your last chance to save yourself from the brain rot to come.

To fully understand the monstrosity that is Dark Stranger: The Dream: Children of the Gods, we first have to establish that this was written by a man. While a blonde, middle-aged woman named “Isabella Lucas” is credited online for the creation of the Dark Stranger series, her official author portrait looks somewhat… wrong to the naked eye. As the only photos available on the Internet of the infamous Lucas are AI-generated images and cartoon avatars, the fact remains that it is impossible to verify for certain who actually wrote the paranormal romance series billed as “Twilight meets Ancient Aliens with the sizzle of Fifty Shades” in its official Amazon description.

So then, if the actual identity of this creative mastermind is ambiguous, why do I feel so certain a man wrote this series? The answer is that I’ve spent enough time on the r/menwritingwomen subreddit to recognize that a line lavishly describing a woman’s “perfectly shaped b***s, substantial but not too big, strain[ing] her T-shirt [and] stretching it across her chest” could only originate from a man’s raging testosterone.

Female characters in Dark Stranger solely exist to be sexualized and are only discussed in terms of their relationships with men. The novel’s main character, Syssi—pronounced as “sissy” for peak misogyny—offers the only female perspective in the entire book, and even she doesn’t receive any character development that extends beyond her burning desire for Kian, our titular dreamy dark stranger. Kian is billed as a mix between an immortal alien, a Sumerian god, and a vampire, and has been searching for a new mate with whom to satisfy the desires of his “immortal hormones.” He chooses Syssi as his newest mortal consort because she is a type of human called a Dormant—a mortal with latent immortal genes—who has hidden godly abilities that can be “activated” by sleeping with one of the titular vampire demigods. Spoiler alert: naughty times ensue, vampire acid is shared, and Dormant(s) are activated. 

I won’t subject you, dear reader, to further glimpses into the novel’s numerous 18+ scenes. One can only read about “venom-glands pulsating” in preparation for raunchy vampire-god antics so many times before losing faith in humanity.

Is your head hurting yet? I hope not, because I haven’t even mentioned the bad guys in Dark Stranger, aptly named “The Doomers.” They are supposed to be the sworn enemies of the gods in question, but mostly appear to just be a gang of petty sex traffickers, albeit with a supernatural edge. Yes, naming the novel’s bad guys “The Doomers” could be a little on-the-nose… but the fact that our hero Kian also engages with prostitution rings to satisfy his heightened vampiric sexual urges could confuse a potential reader about just who they should be rooting for had the evildoers not been named as such.

If that wasn’t enough Children of the Gods content, thank the Dark Overlords, there’s more! 77 books to be exact, all carrying the classic “Dark” prefix in their titles. Included at the end of this review are some of my favorites.

I’m sure a more courageous reviewer could do an even deeper dive about just how much this book is steeped in conspiracy theories and harmful gender dynamics, but I, unfortunately, do not have the tolerance to spend much more time within the Dark Stranger universe without significant cognitive damage. Let’s just hear a cliffnotes version of the book’s core philosophy from our buddy I.T. Lucas “herself:” 

Myths as persistent and prevailing as those of the vampire, the shapeshifter, and other mythical creatures, as well as modern-day UFO and alien sightings, may not purely be the product of overactive imaginations [...] could they perhaps originate from realistic hallucinations induced by members of an advanced species?

You heard it folks: all the stories are true! Believing in sexy godlike vampires and UFOs isn’t delusional or naive, you’ve just been blessed with psychic powers by a member of the advanced race! So the next time your crazy uncle starts rambling about how the government is covering up the existence of aliens, tell him a book with two colons in its title says he’s right on track. 

Selected Children of the Gods Titles:

Book 19: Dark Operative: The Dawn of Love

Book 35: Dark Spy Conscripted 

Book 41: Dark Choices: The Quandary

Book 47: Dark Haven Illusion (I feel seen!)

Book 56: Dark Hunter’s Query

Book 60: Dark God's Reviviscence (Reviviscence isn’t a word, right?)

Book 63: Dark Whispers From Afar