Shadow Hunter

 

By BR Kingsolver

When Erin was a preteen, she began to come into her magical powers and was adopted by the Illuminati and trained to be a Hunter, an assassin who uses both magic and martial arts to eliminate evildoers who are upsetting the balance. Or so she was told.

Turned out all that was a lie. She was actually eliminating road blocks to the Illuminati's plans for world domination. She found this out when she was sent to murder William Strickland. According to her master, Strickland was a sorcerer and practitioner of the Dark Arts and that he had created a superweapon that the Illuminati wanted. 

As Strickland lay dying from her attack, he told her the nature of the weapon, a small crystal ball: "It shows truth. Look through it when a man speaks, and it shows his lies. Look at a spell or a book or a work of art to see how true it is. Watch an Illuminati ritual and see the blood and the Darkness hidden beneath the surface."

He also warns Erin that of the crystal's other power: "Take that to your masters, and they will destroy it. But in the process, it will destroy them."

Erin takes the crystal and views Strickland through it. It shows her that he was dying. But she also saw: "...he was a wizard of the Light, and felt, though I couldn't tell how, that everything he had told me was the truth."

Leaving the dying man, Erin is confronted by his daughter:

'"He said you would come, and you would kill him."

"He may yet live," I said, "but he is dying."

"And you have the crystal?"

"Yes."

"Then you need this as well," she said holding out a book.

. . . The book was black leather trimmed in gold. The title, in the secret language of the Illuminati, said, "The History of the Illuminati."

"Read it," she said. "He said—my father said—that you must read it." She gave me a grin that was so malevolent I took a step back. "They will kill you when you take it to them, whether you read it or not. I hope you're stupid enough to believe their lies."'

Erin does read the book and discovers Strickland hadn't lied about the true nature of the Illuminati and what she had been doing for them: "Rather than being a force for the Light, I had advanced the reach of the Dark."

She takes the crystal to her master and leaves it in his hands, without the warning that Strickland gave her. True to what he said, crystal detonates and leaves the hidden city of the Illuminati vaporized with no trace left to show it had ever existed. The location where it had stood was now pristine wilderness.

Even though that was the end of the Illuminati stronghold, Erin knows the members are scattered all through the world in the places of influence and power and wealth. Her split from the group has put her life in danger and she goes into hiding, ending up in Westport, a city on the western coast of the USA. She quickly finds a job as a bartender and just as quickly discovers that Westport is a hive of magical activity and conflict between supernaturals like werewolves and vampires. Even the bar where she works is part of it, a haven for magically gifted people like herself, mages, wizards, shapeshifters, even vampires occasionally.

But that's not all she discovers. An Illuminati assassin, a Hunter, is in town and is behind a number of mysterious deaths among the supernatural communities. It appears the Illuminati are up to their usual tricks, fomenting disorder in order to gain some kind of advantage in Westport and increase their influence. Erin finds herself entangled in this conflict and trying to help her newfound friends and community survive the Illuminati machinations and still keep her presence hidden from the Hunter and his Illuminati cohorts.

This was an OK read. It goes from Erin learning how to pretend to be an ordinary person to battles with supernaturals that show she certainly is not a ordinary person. Which quickly becomes apparent to those around her and raises many questions about her past that she, for her own safety, will not share.

There are so many supernatural battle scenes, which are just like all battle scenes, just with magic thrown in. To me, no more interesting than all fictional battle scenes, boring. So, bartend for a bit, meet some folks for a bit, battle. Repeat over and over again. 

Normally, I would classify this as a book that would appeal mostly to female readers. But the battle after battle scenes reads more like a book for male readers, who are more inclined to enjoy that than most female readers. Yes, I know there are exceptions, whatever.

Fledgling

 

By Octavia E. Butler

A creature wakes up in a cave, hungry and in terrible pain. It doesn't know why it is in a cave or how it got there but it does know it is gravely injured and in extreme pain. It suffers, not understanding how it came to be in such awful condition.

A man enters the cave. The creature senses him and knows the man is approaching. As the man reaches for the creature, it attacks and kills him and consumes his body. It doesn't know he was a man, all it knows is that it needs to eat to heal and survive.

Time passes, the creature heals. It can now see again. It craves raw meat, raw meat is the only thing that will save it. It leaves the cave and hunts. At first smaller creatures, but as its strength returns, larger animals. Eventually it is strong enough to catch, kill and devour large animals, like deer.

It heals. It mind grows stronger, it's body grows stronger. It's instinct pulls toward a particular place, a place that should be home. But instead it is a burned ruin of torched buildings. The creature can smell the lingering scent of death. The place seems dangerous and frightening. No help will be found here. It scrabbles around in the ashes and unearths a few garments that survived the fire. It dresses itself and leaves. 

But it realizes it needs more than just raw meat. It heads out, looking for something, what is not exactly clear to it. Coming to a road, it encountered a vehicle, which it recognized was car. The car stopped and the man inside asked it if it was OK.

At first it didn't understand the man but suddenly understanding came. When he offered it a ride, it eagerly accepted. The man smelled so enticing to it. He wanted to take it to the hospital, but it strongly refused. He asked its name. But it could not remember ever having a name.

The man gave it a choice: either consent to going to the hospital or go to the police station. It bit him when he grabbed its arm. The blood attracted it and it licked the blood off his hand. The man was startled but relaxed as it licked his hand. He was puzzled because the action of the creature drinking his blood had been pleasurable. The creature told him he tasted good. He brought the creature closer and it latched onto his neck, dining on the man's blood. The man said that he was enjoying it and that it felt fantastic. The man laughed and called the creature a vampire and took it him with him. He even gave it a name, Renee. 

It looked like a ten-year-old little girl. It was female, and still young. But it was not ten-years-old. It was many decades older than the man. And it was a vampire. A vampire with no memory of its past, no memory of how it came to be injured and in a cave, no memory of the burned and destroyed homestead, no memory of its actual name. 

But with the man's help she will seek those who so cruelly tried to end her life and in the process killed her memory of her past and murdered all the her loved ones, even though her memory of them is lost.

So this is the story of Renee/Shori, a "young" vampire girl from a colony of vampires. She finds out that her people were combining vampire DNA with human DNA in order to create a breed of vampires who are not adversely affect by daylight and the sun's rays. Shori is the most successful result of those experiments, able to be out and active in the daytime, able to function if dressed in clothing that covers her skin, with a hat and sunglasses when outside. It was this ability to stay awake in the daytime that enabled her to escape the attack on the homestead where she lived with her vampire family and friends, even though she was badly injured. 

The power behind the attack has not given up though. They are determined to end Shori, viewing her existence as unnatural and disgusting. And they don't care how many people they have to murder, how many homes they have to burn to bring about her end.

This was an OK read. It started out pretty interesting. But then it just got repetitive and tedious, especially when it got to the trial of the guilty persons. I found the last part very boring and just skipped through most of it.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Legacy

 

By Jeanne C. Stein

Book Four of the Anna Strong Chronicles

Anna is a human turned vampire unwillingly and who has been having a hard time accepting her new reality. For example, she has not shared her new status with her parents.

 She fell in with a vampire who promised to help her adjust but Avery turned out to be a complete nightmare. Eventually they had a showdown and Anna killed him, saving her business partner David's life, all of which occurred in previous books. 

David is in love with Gloria, a woman that Anna despises and she has been trying to convince David to dump. So it was quite unexpected when Gloria came to Anna for help because she was being blackmailed. Gloria's business partner has been pressuring her and now he has been murdered and Gloria is the main suspect, thanks to his vengeful wife's lies. 

Meanwhile, Anna has encountered a gang of werewolves and their leader, Sandra, has sparked a strange and inexplicable lust in Anna. Anna suspects some kind of spell or dark magic and so she agrees to meet Sandra at Avery's old mansion. Sandra and Avery used to be together and for some reason, Anna inherited his estate, which Sandra doesn't like. During their meeting, Anna sees Avery has possessed Sandra and she flees the mansion. She is completely unprepared to deal an Avery that is somehow still alive and living inside Sandra.  

This was an interesting story and easy to follow even without having read any of the earlier Anna Strong novels. The author gives you the data you need to understand the backstory without being boring or longwinded. The story is well written and held my interest all the way through. 

Some Girls Bite

 

By Chloe Neill

First book in the Chicagoland vampires series.

In this story all the creatures of our folktales and fairy tales and probably mythology are real and living among us. Including vampires, who have revealed themselves to the world for reasons that are suspicious or just not very clear. The Chicago vampires are divided into Houses: Cadogan, Navarre, and Grey. In addition to the housed vampires, another group of stray or unaffiliated vampires are called Rogues. It is Merit's misfortune to be attacked and nearly killed by a stray vampire one Chicago night. In order to save her life, an affiliated vampire, leader of House Cadogan, who just happened to be nearby, turned her vampire. Without her consent, but she was unconscious and unable to consent to the sudden change in her life.

Before being attacked, Merit was kind of a nerdy college student, working on her dissertation for her graduate work. But that is now all over, as the college doesn't accept vampires as students. Everything she worked for is over, all her plans erased and a new reality that Merit is finding very difficult to accept. She is rebellious and disinclined to cooperate, especially after being told she needs to join House Cadogan or become a Rogue. 

She begins to adapt to her new reality but doesn't really feel comfortable with her fellow Cadogan vampires who all seem to believe she should be thrilled to be included in their company, especially the guy who saved her life by turning her vampire, their leader, Ethan. Merit liked her life before and isn't all that grateful. But the vampires lay down the law, saying that she needs to swear loyalty to Cadogan and to Ethan. Or be an outcast and rogue. 

So she knuckles under and takes the oath and becomes part of Cadogan and swears to protect the house and its leader, Ethan. At which point the story became so boring I had a hard time finishing it.  And there is a serial killer plot that starts out pretty interesting until the guilty party confronts Ethan and blurts everything out without anyone hardly even needing to ask. Like the author got bored with the story too and decided to just wrap it up. 

This book reads like a sixteen year old teenage girl's fantasy about vampires. These vampires are all young (looking) and all beautiful and dressing in sexy black clothing and hanging out together like kids in a dorm. Which is basically what Cadogan House is, a fancy dorm for vampires. Also these vampires eat regular food and drink alcohol, only needing human blood as a supplement. Garlic doesn't bother them, nor does holy water, or crosses and they are not invisible in mirrors. Just really watered down vampires, designed to enjoy the perks of being vampires and human at the same time. Perfect teenage girl fantasy vampires. 

Sabella or The Blood Stone

By Tanith Lee

Sabella lives alone in her dead mother's house on Novo Mars. Novo Mars bares a striking resemblance to Mars, being dry and bleak and barren and reddish in hue, but not as red as Mars.
Sabella chooses to be alone because it is safer for everyone if she does so. Sabella is a vampire of sorts. She drinks the blood of men she seduces, she is inhumanly strong and fast, she cannot bear the sunlight. But she is not undead, she does not sleep in a coffin, she has a reflection and garlic, holy water and crosses are no big deal.
Sabella was just a normal kid until the day she crawled into a cave. In the cave is where she found the blood stone that she wears constantly on a chain. When she is hungry, the stone is clear. When she has fed, it is ruby red.
She had no one to teach her how to be a vampire. She killed people at first but gradually learned how take just so much but not too much. Then she back slid and killed a young man who had a big brother. Big brother is at Sabella's door and he is big and he is strong and he is determined to find out what happened to his brother. Sabella may have finally met the only man she cannot seduce and bend to her will. And he may be her only salvation from the life of degradation she has fallen into.

This is about the third time I have read this story and it is still a gripping and thrilling read even after all this time. I first read it back when it originally came out in the 1980s. I don't consider the story to be fantasy, because Sabella's condition has a scientific explanation, not a supernatural one. I think that is one of the reasons I like the story so much, because it is logical.

The Goldcamp Vampire

By Elizabeth Scarborough

Pelagia Harper, aka Valentine Lovelace, aka Pat Harper, aka Corazon has recently lost her father.
Pelagia despises her father's widow, who owes her money that she had failed to pay. Her father's mistress, Sasha Devine, is leaving California to head to the Klondike to work in an opera house there.  She offers Pelagia a job as her traveling companion, with Pelagia to make all the arrangements and the salary to be paid upon arrival at their destination. Traveling along with the two women will be the coffin of one Mr. Lawson, whom Sasha has promised to bring home to Alaska.
Mysterious deaths accompany the two women on their travels north. One of the deaths is that of a Canadian official. One evening the official demanded that Mr. Lawson coffin be opened to check for contraband. Upon refusal, he attacked the coffin with a pry bar. Mist boiled out of the coffin and engulfed the man and he died. Pelagia, fearful she would be blamed for his death, weighed his body down and, with the help of a friend, sunk him in the lake.
But he didn't stay down for long. And the authorities are looking for Pelagia now. Sasha offers her a position with the opera disguised as a flamenco dancer named Corazon. Pelagia, who has still not received her wages from Sasha, feels forced to accept.
But strange doings are going on at the opera house, centered around the owner, Vasily Bledinoff. Soon all the girls in the opera, except Pelagia, are going around with small wounds on their necks.  The nearby woods appear to be full of werewolfs and weremoose. Vasily is attempting to woo Pelagia into becoming another of his blood cows and the authorities are soon going to figure out that Pelagia is the dancer Corazon.
Who will get her first, the police or the seductive vampire?

This was an OK story. It has a lot of different characters and at times I had a bit of trouble keeping them all straight. It seemed to take Pelagia a long time to figure out that Vasily is a vampire. She only begins to understand what is happening when someone brings Bram Stoker's book, Dracula, to the opera house where she is working. Vasily is an interesting character and it would have been nice to read more about him and his ways. Pelagia herself is kind of boring.

Bride of the Fat White Vampire

By Andrew Fox

The second book in the saga of Jules Duchon, obese New Orleans vampire. In the last book, Jules changed into a pack of white rats, unable to deal any longer with the vampire life after the murder of his vampire girl friend. This book starts with Jules' dear transsexual vampire friend Doodlebug looking for the ratified Jules, needing his help in dealing with a situation. The vampires of the High Krewe are demanding Jules' help in solving attacks on the younger vampires of their colony. They figure he has the low life connections to discover the person or persons targeting the young vampires. Jules, after being rousted from his ratty  hideaway, only agrees to help to save Doodlebug, not caring for the snotty, hoity-toity vampires of the High Krewe.
Doodlebug has esoteric vampire knowledge, gained from his studies with the vampires of Tibet, knowledge that may enable to resurrect Jules' dead lover, Maureen. But their first attempt at resurrection is a terrible failure, with Maureen only half there, screaming in pain. But Jules is determined not to give up because undead life without Maureen is not worth living.
Meanwhile, Jules, in company with an enemy from the previous story, are trying to discover who is attacking the young High Krewe vampires and who murdered two black preachers. Jules will have to consort with goth vampire wannabes, Baptist preachers, High Krewe's nasty youngsters, and various members of the community who are in conflict over a proposed new superstore (think Walmart). All while having to deal with the failure of his vampire powers due to problems with his re-incorporation, which wasn't quite complete.

Jules seems a lot smarter in this story than he was in the first. This story has a few lighter moments, but overall it is more serious than the first story.  However, it is also less chaotic than the first story and the plot is more straight forward, it seemed to me. So it was easier to follow the action but I did want it to be funnier than it was. Still I did enjoy the story even if it wasn't quite as amusing as the first book.
For another review see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/andrew-fox/bride-of-the-fat-white-vampire/

Fat White Vampire Blues

By Andrew Fox

Born and raised in New Orleans, Jules Duchon can't imagine being anywhere else. Fat and happy, Jules loves dining on the rich, cholesterol-laden blood of his hometown neighbors. It's why he has gotten so fat. Apparently even vampires can have weight issues. But something has to change because now Jules is starting to feel the effects of his fatty diet: shortness of breath and aching joints. Plus the love of his life, the woman vampire who made him, Maureen, wants nothing to do with him. He is just too fat to love.
But soon his weight isn't the only problem Jules has to deal with. There is a new, aggressive young vampire in town and he is muscling in on Jules' territory. In fact, he is trying to run Jules out of town, even going to far as to burn down Jules' house. Jules is forced to leave town, leading to an unfortunate incident with a real bitch, but comes back ready to face down Malice X, the mean new vampire and his gang of bullies. But to do so he'll need a little help from his friends, namely his plus-size ex-girlfriend and stripper, Maureen, and his sidekick from the good old days, a crossing-dressing homosexual vampire called Doodlebug. Together, they will stand and in the process maybe Jules will finally grow up.

I really enjoyed this book. It was funny and I liked that the vampires are the traditional, old-fashioned vampires. In fact, these vampires are so old-fashioned that they can't even talk to a priest without starting to roast a little:

"Uh, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been . . . let's see . . . eighty years since my last confession; maybe eighty-five years. Lemme think here . . . uh, I have purchased pornography..." "Excuse me, my son. Surely you realize that smoking is not permitted in the confessional booth." Jules was slightly stunned at having been interrupted midconfession by the priest. "But I'm not smoking, Father."
"I smell smoke."
Jules waved his arms around, trying to disperse the smoke, but his exertions only made his skin burn faster.

I also liked the way the author logically extended the traditional vampire power of transmogrification. Plus the book is just plain funny. And creepy. But most of all, a good, enjoyable read.
For another review see  http://shinybookreview.com/2011/03/08/fat-white-vampire-blues-title-says-it-all/

Bitten & Smitten

By Michelle Rowen

Sarah is having a bad night. First, her best friend set her up with a blind date. This guy was beyond creepy. . .he was actually a vampire who proceeded to attack Sarah. But before she could even grasp what was happening, the blind date was murdered by a gang of vampire hunters, who then turned their deadly attention toward Sarah. Now she is running for her life and she still hasn't even figured out what is going on!
So Sarah, newly turned and lost vampire, stumbles into the beginnings of an all out assault on the local vampire community and also into the arms of the local vampire lord and from him to a handsome and appealing vampire hunter.

This was an OK read. Like many authors these days, Rowen's vampires do not conform to the classic style. Her vampires are not undead, not sensitive to silver, holy water, crosses, garlic. They breathe, their hearts beat, they can eat regular food (in some cases), being out in the daytime only requires sunglasses. What they do have in common with old-timey vamps is fangs, drinking blood, immortality, and no reflection. These are pretty lightweight vampires, designed to be appealing and not scary monsters. And this is a pretty lightweight novel, often amusing and not too heavy with the romance. But it never really engaged me as much as I would like. Maybe the plot was a little too chaotic. The main character is like a tennis ball, back and forth, bouncing from situation to situation. The story never really grabbed me as much as I would like.

The Nymphos of Rocky Flats

By Mario Acevedo

He used to be a soldier. He used to be normal. But that was before Iraq. He came back changed. Into a vampire, that is. So now Felix Gomez is a private investigator, of course.
A friend from college calls, asking for help. He works for the government at Rocky Flats, a government facility that used to produce nuclear weapons. Seems like there has been a sudden outbreak of nymphomania among the female employees at the facility. The friend asks Felix's help investigating the source of the outbreak, which may have something to do with contamination. He wants Felix to go undercover at the facility and do some snooping for him. He is offering $50,000 dollars if Felix completes the assignment and at that price Felix won't say no, even though he has his doubts about snooping at a heavily guarded federal compound. So Felix moves to nearby Denver and sets himself up in the bogus position his friend has prepared for him.
Things heat up pretty fast. It isn't long before Felix realizes he is being followed and then someone tries to kill him. The local vampire community of Denver discovers a troop of vampire hunters is in the area and have already killed some vampires. As Felix looks into the nymphomania incidents, he finds a tenuous connection between the incidents and Area 51 and the Roswell UFO sighting. Maybe he will get it all figured out if people would just stop constantly trying to kill him.

Felix is a likable character and the action is non-stop as he tumbles from one desperate situation to another.  He is a modern vampire, able to go out in the daytime if he wears protective clothing, heavy makeup and sunscreen and sunglasses. He can also eat regular food, with the addition of blood to make it more digestible. He has the classic vampire powers, like changing into a wolf and hypnotizing humans with his gaze. But even though he is a vampire, he seems like a pretty decent person. And I enjoyed reading about him a lot. This was a good, exciting and interesting read.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

By Seth Grahame-Smith

A novel about Abraham Lincoln which places this real person in a fictitious setting, in an America in which vampires exist and prey upon people, including Lincoln's own family. His father borrows money from a vampire and when he can't repay his debt, the vampire exacts revenge against the Lincoln family, inspiring in the young Lincoln a deep, abiding hatred of the undead. He dedicates himself to the destruction off all vampires, not knowing in his inexperience how very deadly the undead are. He is almost killed in a vampire encounter but falls into the hands of a sympathetic vampire who nurses Lincoln back to health and then gives him tips on how to better deal with vampires and even sends Lincoln on other missions to take out vampires.

As Lincoln gains more knowledge and experience in the craft of vampire hunting, he finds out that one of the reasons slavery is supported in the South is because much of the South is under the secret control of vampires, who view slaves as easy prey, even to buying them just to consume. Lincoln is disgusted and outraged at the willingness of non-vampires to collaborate with vampires in supplying them with their slave victims. He discovers this involvement reaches into the highest levels of American society, North and South. And maybe the best way to bring down the vampire reign is to destroy their source of easy prey and end the peculiar institution of slavery in America....

This was an OK story. An odd blend of history and fantasy, it was more interesting at the beginning, when Lincoln is young and strong. But as he gets older and marries and has kids, he retires from vampire hunting. The story kind of slowed down then as middle aged Presidents are hardly in the position to go out chopping vampire heads off on the weekends.

Bite Me

By Christopher Moore

Third installment in the San Francisco Vampires triology, finds Jody and Tommy still trapped in their bronze coating by their treacherous young friend who goes by the name of Abby Normal. Abby and her boyfriend, Steve, are living in Jody's and Tommy's apartment and thinking all their vampire problems are over now that Jody and Tommy are encased and the old vampire who started it all has sailed away. But not so. Chet, the huge shaved cat, was turned vampire by the old vampire before he left and is now building himself a kitty vampire empire. It isn't too long before the streets of San Francisco are noticeably emptier of street people due to Chet's vampire kitty minions.
Meanwhile, Steve, who developed a cure for vampirism in the last novel, has been conducting experiments on lab rats. Shortly after creating a bunch of vampire rats, he discovers, to his dismay, the vampires' ability to change themselves to mist and it is really hard to keep a rat made of mist in your typical rat cage.
But help is on the way when a clumsy friend of Abby's accidentally gouges Jody's coating and she is able to mist her way out of confinement.
Worse things are on the horizon, however, because the old vampire's minions are in town and their goal is to kill anyone who has any knowledge of the existence of vampires, including Jody, Tommy, Steve, and Abby.

This was an Ok story. I felt poor Chet got a raw deal, it wasn't his fault he got turned into a vampire cat. The author must really hate cats, he has no sympathy for their plight in this story. The two love stories in the novel, Jody and Tommy and Steve and Abby, are also disappointing.
I think part of the problem for me was the story has too much going on, it is just chaotic. And I didn't really get the ending to the Jody part of the story; it had been quite a while since I read the second book in the series and I had forgotten the effect of vampire blood on a human. I assume it's good but it would have been nice if the author could have refreshed the reader's memory on that bit of trivia.
And finally, the main character is Abby, and I don't really like the Abby character: bratty, spoiled, vulgar children are not amusing or appealing to me.

Sex and the Single Vampire

By Katie MacAlister

Allie is a Summoner, or rather she hopes she is. A Summoner is a person who has the power to call up ghosts, poltergeists and demons. For Allie, the trouble is, although she is highly trained, she has yet to actually summon anything. So her boss has given her one last chance to prove herself. She has been sent to London and if she can't manage to summon some spirits while there, she is out of a job. Things are not looking good until one night in her hotel room she does summon a spirit: a three-legged ghost cat.
Buoyed by this dubious success, Allie pays a visit to an old building that is rumored to be haunted. But although she can't get any spirits to appear, she does stumble across a wounded vampire, a very handsome and manly vampire who is an angry and upset vampire who doesn't want Allie interfering in whatever scheme he is running. But for Allie this vampire is the man of her dreams, literally. She has had some very bad and intense dreams about this vampire, dreams in which the vampire is in terrible trouble and Allie is the only one who can save him. Now it looks like her dream has become reality.

This was an OK story, even if the plot was a little on the weak side. The bad guys kidnap a vampire who is a friend of Allie's vampire, then they grab Allie's vampire and they are also holding various ghosts captive, but the explanation for why all this was done didn't make a lot of sense to me. Still, the author includes a lot of comic relief in the story, mainly provided by the various ghosts that end up attached to Allie. And since this is also a romance story, there is a lot of sex, but it is not excessively graphic.

Immanuel's Veins

By Ted Dekker

Toma and Alek have been sent by the Russian empress, Catherine the Great, to protect the Cantemir family who are spending the summer in the mountains of Moldavia. Toma is a Russian war hero and Alek is his close friend and no slouch in the daring-do department either. The family, loyal to the Russian throne in uncertain times, consists of an absent father, the mother and her two twin daughters. These three women love life and are famous for their rather extravagant and loose ways. Toma later finds out that the empress wants one of the daughters, Lucine, to form a political marriage important to the throne, so one of the two men's duties is to keep other suitors away from Lucine.
Upon meeting the two young women, Toma and Alek are charmed and captivated, Alek with Natasha and Toma with Lucine. Toma keeps his feelings concealed but Alek enthusiastically and successfully woos Natasha.
Soon after their arrival, at a party being held by their hostess, five people arrive at the party. These people, known as the Russians, are strangely and strikingly dressed, and are very compelling and attractive in appearance. Toma finds them disturbing and threatening and at the same time alluring. An incident occurs at the party when Natasha is found unconscious on the floor with blood on her face, apparently having been hurt by one of the Russian men. He claims that he kissed her, with her permission, and that she swooned from pleasure. Alek challenges him and in the dust-up that follows, Toma shoots and kills the Russian. Into the middle of this walks the last Russian, one Vlad van Valerik.
Despite Toma's words and cautions, Natasha & Lucine become deeply involved with these Russians, who, no surprise, turn out to be a coven of vampires. Alek also becomes seduced by their luxurious and sensuous lifestyles, not knowing that he and the two young women are being changed into vampires themselves. Even Toma is briefly seduced by them. He comes to his senses and realizes that something is very wrong with these people. But Alek and Natasha will not listen and even Lucine, the more cautious twin, is snared in Vlad's toils.
Toma is given a book by a mysterious stranger that tells him the truth about Vlad and, armed with this new information, he is determined he will get Natasha, Alek and Lucine away from their new lord, Vlad van Valerik, even if he has to die trying.

This was an old-fashioned vampire story, with evil, remorseless vampires preying on hapless humans. Though these vampires are somewhat different than the traditional vampires in various ways, still their natures are the same as the classic vampire. These are bad-ass vampires and falling under their sway is not a happy way to end up. The book has a strange ambience, a mixture of old and modern, with an ancient castle, passageways, dungeons, but with the people partying and getting stoned (on vampire blood) like kids at a college frat house. The vampire women dress like dominatrixes in short dresses and thigh-high boots, even at times wearing pants. One of the vampires calls Toma a "party-pooper." It was just a peculiar mixture. Anyway, it was a pretty good book, Dekker's vampires are strange and different and menacing and the story was interesting and worth the read.

You Suck

By Christopher Moore

The saga of Jody and Tommy continues. In the previous book, Tommy had Jody and the evil vampire who turned Jody made into bronze statues. For some reason, he made ear holes in the bronze Jody and she turned into mist and got free and promptly attacked Tommy so now, in this story, he is also a vampire.
So Jody tries to teach Tommy the ins and outs of being a vampire. They acquire a minion, a goofy teenage girl named Allison but who calls herself Abby Normal. Meantime, the guys at the grocery store known as the Animals have spent all the money they got in the last novel on an aging prostitute called Blue that they picked up in Las Vegas. She is called Blue because she dyed herself blue. The animals are completely overwhelmed by her charms and when she finds out that ex-Animal Tommy is a vampire, she demands the Animals capture and deliver Tommy to her as she wants to be turned. Tommy is captured and tied up and the hooker has her way with him and is soon stalking the streets of San Francisco and her first victims are the hapless Animals.
Unfortunately for the citizens of San Francisco, the evil bronzed vampire is released when someone takes a shot at the statue and puts a bullet hole in it and he again takes up his evil murderous ways and again attracting the attention of the two police detectives from the first story. The evil vampire wants Jody and he also wants to destroy all the new vampires on the scene, including Jody's lover, Tommy. Meanwhile the minion, Abby, meets that Asian scientist from the first story and together they kick a lot of vampire ass.

This was a very funny story, from beginning to end. Abby is one of the best parts of the book, her journal entries are hilarious. Tommy's struggles to adapt to vampirehood are also very funny and he and Jody take up with an alcoholic who carries a placard that reads, "I'm homeless and I have a huge cat." Which he does, the cat is enormous and the cat becomes Tommy's first victim. He and Jody borrow the cat from the guy and Tommy tries to drink its blood but gets fur all in his mouth so they shave the huge cat and then Tommy drinks some of its blood and they dress in it a red sweater and give it back to the guy. It's just a really funny book and I enjoyed it a lot and I am looking forward to reading the third installemnt in the series, Bite Me.

Fevre Dream

By George R. R. Martin

Abner Marsh is a riverboat captain in the middle 19th century and he has had some really bad luck. His riverboat company is down to one small vessel when the rest of his fleet was destroyed in an ice jam. So when wealthy young Joshua York offers to become his partner and build him a beautiful new boat, the boat of Abner's dreams, Abner thinks maybe things are finally turning in his favor. But what he doesn't know is that his new partner, who only comes out at night, is a vampire. And soon Abner finds himself involved in a nightmare that will plunge him into financial ruin and maybe even cost him his life.

This was an OK book. The hero of the story turns out to be ugly, fat, middle-aged Abner Marsh, an unlikely hero indeed. The story is mainly about the conflict between Joshua, a forward thinking young vampire who wants to lead his fellows away from preying on humans, and Damon Julian, an ancient, ferocious vampire who is stuck in the old, bloody way and who will not change, with Abner there to help Joshua and to back him up as best he can. I thought it was a kind of depressing story, grim and gruesome, with old Julian having the upper hand throughout most of it and poor Abner losing everything that meant so much to him. Especially at the end, when Abner finds his beautiful dream riverboat, beached in a backwater, rotted and decaying, rusty and falling apart and beyond repair. Just a dark, sad story.

Night Embrace

By Sherrilyn Kenyon

Talon is a vampire-ish guy but not a vampire. Yeah, he has fangs and can drink human blood and has to stay out of the sun for fearing of burning up and he's pretty much immortal. But he is not a vampire, he's a vampire killer. He's also a very lonely guy.
Back in the time of the Druids, he was a king, with a pregnant wife and a little sister he loved dearly. His wife died in childbirth as did the baby and he and his sister ran afoul of politics and were both slaughtered. When Talon was brought back to life as a vampire hunter by divine intervention, he was so scarred by the deaths of those he loved most that for hundreds of years he remained self-contained and isolated, without emotional attachments. Lots of hook-ups but no love. But then he met Sunshine.
Sunshine is an artist who lives in New Orleans and she and Talon feel an immediate bond, although Talon tries to resist falling in love. Falling in lust is OK but not love. Because Talon bears an ancient curse. Back in the olden times, he killed the son of a god and that god has declared that anyone Talon loves will die. So if Talon allows himself to love Sunshine he guarantees she will shortly die.
Meanwhile, it will soon be Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the masses of humanity attending the festival will also attract lots of vampires, or as they are referred to in the book, daimons. So Talon and the other vampire hunters gathered in New Orleans will be very busy trying to protect an unsuspecting public. To make matters worse, it transpires that a group of cast out gods, including the one that cursed Talon, are planning to bring about the end of the world in order to regain all their lost powers. So the Talon and the vampire hunters have to try to stop these rogue gods, plus Talon has to protect Sunshine while he and she struggle to find a way to be together and keep her alive. Plus it turns out that Sunshine is Talon's dead wife reincarnated.

This was a pretty good story. The plot is pretty complicated with lots going on and lots of different characters, all of them drop-dead gorgeous, even the bad guys. There are werebears and werewolves and werepanthers and ghosts and lots of gods popping in and out and psychics and vampires and vampire hunters and lots of people who seem to be there mainly to lead the reader on to the next story that will feature that particular character. Yup, there is a lot going on in this story, maybe too much. Still, I enjoyed the book even if at times I felt a bit lost or overwhelmed with the number of characters to keep in mind and all their complicated relationships and pasts.

The Rogue Hunter

By Lynsay Sands

Book 10 in the Argeneau vampire series.
In the world of Lynsay Sands' vampires, which are not like the old-fashioned kind of vampires, each vampire gets one life mate. How does he or she know their life mate? Because they can't read their life mate's mind. Normally they can read minds, so when they come across someone they can't read it can only mean they have finally found their life mate, a person to love for forever.
Garrett Mortimer is a vampire and a rogue vampire hunter. He tracks down vampires who are feeding off of humans which is forbidden by the vampire council, as it attracts unwanted attention from humans. Such a vampire is suspected to be located near a lake in the woods so Garrett moves into a cabin on the lake. In the cabin next door are three young women spending a few weeks on summer vacation. One of the women is tall, lanky, flat-chested Samantha Willan. Garrett isn't attracted to Samantha at all and is very dismayed to discover he can't hear Samantha's thoughts. In all his 800 or so years he has never had this happen to him. Looks like Samantha is his life mate. Too bad for a guy vampire whose ideal mate resembles someone like, in his words, Jessica Rabbit not Olive Oyl.




Maybe he will learn to love Samantha. But how will Samantha take the news that her hot new boyfriend is a bloodsucking fiend?

This was an pretty good story. But these new modern goody-goody vampires are a little white bread for me. Also, while the title of the book implies it will be about tracking down the rogue vampire, that actually plays very little part in the story. Mainly it is about Samantha and Garrett getting together. It's not a great story but I did find some parts of it surprisingly amusing.

Primal Needs

By Susan Sizemore

Joe and Sid were partners in business until one weekend when business turned into pleasure. Even though Sid (who's a female) knew it was a really bad idea she let herself fall in love with Joe and spend that forbidden weekend in his arms. The problem is that Sid is a vampire and Joe is a werewolf and the two are not supposed to mix and if the other vampires find out, Joe is a dead dog. So to protect Joe, Sid pulled a vampire mind trick on him and erased his memory of their passion. But Joe knew what she had done, and with a little help from a witch, he was able to recover the memories. But he is extremely angry at Sid for what she did.
In the meantime, over the course of a couple years, Sid has had a baby vampire boy and been forced to give him to a special nursery for baby boy vampires equipped to deal with their wild ways and the vampires pulled the same kind of mind trick on Sid that she had done to Joe, to ease her grief at giving up her baby. (Getting rid of the kid is really necessary to the plot otherwise he might get in the way of Joe & Sid getting back together and having lots of passionate supernatural sex.)
Joe has joined a mercenary group composed of various supernatural beings working together to thwart a gang of outlaw supernaturals who desire nothing more than world domination. A series of fires and bombings have been traced to these outlaws and Joe's group is in thick of the investigation and Sid finds herself drawn into it also and once again working with Joe.
Joe can't forgive her but their passion is very much alive and between bouts of investigation they manage to find time for lots of sex. Joe may hate Sid but he still wants her. Gradually they work out their differences but once again Joe's life is in danger from the righteous anger of Sid's fellow vampires. Also, Sid's dad is in love with an old lady in a nursing home that he loved back when he was a soldier in WW II. And the old lady gets kidnapped by the outlaw gang and turned into a young lady so Sid's dad and the former old lady can have lots of passionate sex. Duh! It's not like he would want to pork a wrinkled old crone no matter how much he might have loved when she was young and juicy. So of course she has to become young again.

Another entree in the vampire chronicles that seem to be the new hot romance literature any more. At least in this one the vampires have some of the old vampire problems: garlic, sunshine, stake through the heart, blood thirst. But in this series they deal with them by taking medications. It enables them to blend into normal society better. So that part was acceptable. What wasn't acceptable was how disjointed this story seemed. The many references to occurrences in previous novels in the series were jarring and confusing. They serve as reminders to readers familiar with the previous novels but to someone who is not, it is too much info. Plus the story is in the midst of the Joe & Sid plot when suddenly a new plot is plopped down out of nowhere involving Sid's dad and stuff that happened back in the 1940s. It was kind of contrived tying the two plots together and I never did understand the explanation of how the old lady got young again. Was it the potion she was subjected to or was it the bite of her vampire lover? It wasn't made clear or maybe I just wasn't following that part too well. Bottom line, this is just another typical entry in the new vampire lit where vampires are just regular folks and not at all the evil blood suckers of the night that they used to be. Ho-hum...

Love Bites

By Lynsay Sands

Rachel works in the morgue. One night a guy is brought in who was the victim of a car bomb. As she starts to prepare his body for the post mortem, she notices some rather odds things about his injuries. Like they seem to not be as bad as when his body was first brought in. And like maybe he has a heartbeat. But before she can take a closer look, a man bursts into the morgue and screams that the victim is a vampire and he wants to behead him with a large ax. Just as he swings the ax, Rachel, anxious to protect what maybe not a dead body but a living patient, steps in front of the ax and takes the brunt of it. It is a fatal blow. The man, seeing what he has done, flees.
Etienne, the dead body, wakes up to find Rachel dying. The only thing he can do to save her is to make her like him, a vampire. He and his family sneak her out of the hospital and to his house, there to guide her through the process of learning about the vampire life and, incidentally, to fall in love.

Like so many modern vampires, Etienne and family are not like the old-fashioned vamps. Yes, sun is a problem, but can be tolerated briefly. Garlic, crosses, holy water are not effective against them and they rely on packaged blood for nourishment. Biting people is frowned upon and those who do are dealt with by the vampire community. Oh and the vampirism is the result of a type of nano that lives off blood and keeps the vampire's body healthy and strong. As Rachel discovers when she completes the change over and finds that her breasts are perkier than she can ever remember. Also her scars disappear, including the fatal blow that almost resulted in her death. Which makes me wonder, if old injuries heal themselves, does that include her hymen? Which would of course continue to repair itself after each act of intercourse...
Anyway, this story is basically a romance novel with a vampire twist. It has lots of graphic sex scenes including one in which Rachel gives Etienne a blow job and finishes it off by biting his penis and drinking his blood. It's pretty gross. Not as gross as the blowjob talked about by the whore in PELIKAN, but still it's right up there. The story isn't too long on plot as most of the story scene never leaves Etienne's house except for a two brief excursions, one to a vampire night club and another to Etienne's mom's house. In fact, until the end when the ax guy finally makes his reappearance, there just isn't much happening at all. Just a lot sex. It's really just porn for women. I'm not a fan of it and, adding in the rather thin plot, I have to say I didn't really care for the book. There are several more in the series, of which I plan to read none.