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In this book. an ordinary-feeling young woman is initiated into an invisible world of magic and intrigue. Nervous and clumsy, our protagonist is yet mysteriously beautiful and alluring to the male hero, who is hundreds of years older than he looks, has his own painful supernatural history, and is really cut. Occasionally her feelings overcome her physically and he has to pick her up and carry her somewhere. The young woman's parents are clueless to the point of near negligence. It's uncomfortable to consider the supernatural shadow world as an allegory of the adult world, because in that case, this book seems to imply that the young woman requires an older man to shepherd her through life.

That ends the part of the review that I could have copied from my review of Twilight, had I bothered to write one. I read this book because I'd heard Ballad was so good. I'm not sure it was actually necessary to read this one to understand the other, and I got impatient with it, so maybe I should have dived straight into the sequel.

Points off for treating "lightyears" as a measurement of time and repeated "single tear" episodes.