Dance of Shadows (review)

Ballet wasn't originally Vanessa's vocation, but ever since Margaret, her ballerina older sister, mysteriously disappeared three years ago, Vanessa has embraced the family dance tradition. She's now a student at the New York Ballet Academy, the school from which Margaret vanished, and she's enjoying the camaraderie of dorm life, beginning to fall for handsome classmate Zep, and thrilling to the possibility of being cast in The Firebird. If only that were all, though: a creepy practice room seems to contain the souls of past ballerinas, another dancer drops dark threats, and dancing sends Vanessa into a frightening trance that seems to be connecting her with an evil force. The writing does a lot more telling than showing, and the setting details are largely hasty and convenient, providing merely a superficial structure for the paranormal story. The supernatural ballet story is good B-movie fun, though, with cliffhanger chapter endings ("Before Vanessa could scream, a hand closed over her mouth"), generous helpings of sinister foreboding, and a fraught romance that may lead to the heroine's doom, and the book moves much more rapidly than the page count suggests. This series opener leaves Vanessa still hunting for the truth about Margaret at the end, but she's now aided by a group of enchanted dancers who have "pledged to protect the world from those who seek to use the dark powers of dance for evil ends." How many ballet stories can promise that?