LOOK FOR ME BY MOONLIGHT was so good. It reminded me of other edgy YA books I read when I was younger, like THE SILVER KISS or UNCLE VAMPIRE. I think it shares traits with those books too: vampirism as an allegory for abuse, "unlikable" female main characters with real and relatable problems, and-- oh yes-- a seriously dark storyline that doesn't pander to its young audiences or take the easy way out.
I don't want to say too much about this book because less is definitely more going in, but I loved how much this follows the sort of classic vampire horror route. It reminded me of movies like Dracula and Fright Night where the vampires are charismatic and sexy but definitely very much not morally in the right. The vampire in this book had some pretty sexy dialogue that definitely would have had Teen Me writing fanfiction in her journal (hey, I stanned the Caroline B. Cooney vampire too lol), but this one was also, uhhhh, kind of a CREEP. I genuinely felt uncomfortable while reading this and I think I was supposed to.
What actually kind of makes me sad is how many people were hating on Cynda as a main character. She could be a little bratty but I didn't think she was that bad. She was desperate to be loved and lonely and still trying to figure out who she was as a person. She was in a vulnerable state which made her easy to take advantage of. I'm high-key shocked at the amount of reviews saying they hated her because she reminded me a lot of me when I was young and depressed and feeling misunderstood. I think a lot of young kids internalize their feelings like that. It's selfish but part of growing up. Cut the kid some slack.
Less forgivable are the stupid parents who basically serve up their kids on a silver platter to the vampire because they are SOOOO accommodating to the guests of their inn! Please, take what you want! My son? My daughter? No, no, no, YOU GO RIGHT AHEAD. These parents were the actual worst. Writer Dad bringing the goatee-stroking "I'm not like Stephen King, I am a REAL NOVELIST" energy to the table, and Homewrecker Stepmom had basically totally checked out The twist at the end kind of made what happened a little more understandable but still. Fail parenting.
I am SO creeped out right now; I've got chills. Bravo.
This was a Kindle Clean-Out Club buddy read with my friend Heather. We both like vampire novels and agree that many of the best ones were the super dark vampire stories written pre-TWILIGHT. SIPS OF BLOOD seemed like the perfect read for us, because not only is it a vampire novel from the 90s, it's also a vampire novel from the 90s about the Marquis de Sade.
Taking famous crazy people throughout history and turning them into vampires is not a novel concept. I've read a number of vampire stories about Vlad the Impaler, Elizabeth Báthory, and the Count of St. Germain. Marquis de Sade is another obvious choice, given that his love of hurting people got him his own eponym (i.e. "sadism").
***WARNING: SPOILERS***
SIPS OF BLOOD is a weird, disorganized novel that has the same gritty, grungy feel as another vampire novel I read a while ago called DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON (one of the Elizabeth Báthory stories I referred to earlier). SIPS OF BLOOD is about three vampires: Louis, Marie, and Liliana. Louis is the Marquis de Sade and he is crazy. Marie is his mother-in-law and she is also crazy. Liliana is Louis's niece and she is crazy, but way less crazy than her crazy vampire relatives, and tries to go the "vegetarian" vampire route a la Edward Cullen by feeding off small rodents and the blood of corpses at the morgue where she conveniently works.
There isn't really much of a plot, apart from, "Gee, I'm a vampire, how can I get me some gross vampire sex?" Marie tries to seduce her neighbor's son, Wil (one of the few characters in this book I liked, so obviously bad things happened to him), and most of the book is about her pursuing him in a way that gives new and terrifying meaning to the word "cougar" while her other love interest, a married man named Garrett, mopes on the sidelines and tries to satisfy his desires while being ignored by his mistress. He ends up getting AIDS, and then is tortured and murdered by Louis. Louis decides that he wants to have sex with his house-keeper's seventeen-year-old daughter (did I mention that he looks seventy?) and for some reason, Cecelia is totally game for this... uh... okay. I kept hoping that Liliana and Wil would get together, but she ends up getting raped by two different guys (one of whom is her uncle) and then murdered by being literally torn apart by rogue vampires after getting impaled on a fence.
This was a very strange and unpleasant book. I couldn't put it down because I was filled with a morbid fascination to keep turning the pages and find out what happened to the two characters in this book I actually cared about. People suffered a lot in this book, which isn't surprising considering who this book is about, but the extent of the cruelty still took me off-guard.
Also, there were a lot of typos in here - especially towards the end. "Jealously" was used instead of "jealousy" (or vice-versa), there were a couple misspellings, and at least once, Wil's name changed to "Will" and then back again on a page. Not sure if these were conversion errors from when the book was turned into an e-book or if they were in the original text, but that was extra.
P.S. It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out that Louis and Donatien were both referring to the same person. Whoops.
We're doing a Halloween 2016 Reading Challenge in the Unapologetic Romance Readers group and one of the categories is a romance novel with blood on the cover. This proved surprisingly difficult, because while 80s and 90s vampire romance novels were content to own up to their gothic horror roots and splatter their covers with blood, modern day vampire romance novels are much more coy and more likely to feature a woman in a prom dress being coddled by a brooding heartthrob than, well, a bleeding heart.
Luckily, being the old soul that I am, I have a conveniently large horde of retro romance novels to dip into for precisely these kinds of occasions. COVENANT WITH THE VAMPIRE is not a romance so I'm technically cheating, but given that the summary of the book speaks of seductive caresses and the hero's intense love for his wife and child, I figured that this was going to be a case of blurred genres.
I could not have been more wrong. This is a horror novel in every sense of the word. I actually considered putting it down at one point, because it's just awful. There's incest and necrophilia, creepy vampire foreplay, and really unpleasant torture scenes that are described in gory detail although not, thankfully, put into practice. At least not in this volume - I noticed that there are sequels. Perhaps the author is saving those delightful little nuggets for laterz.
COVENANT WITH THE VAMPIRE is about Arkady Tsepesh, a descendant of Vlad the Impaler. He lives in England, with his English wife, Mary, who is pregnant with their unborn son. When he is summoned by his uncle, to care for him in his failing health, his return to Romania is swift. An imposing castle greets him, run by superstitious and resentful servants. Vlad is effusive when he receives the couple and seems genuinely glad for their presence but there is something creepy about him. Mary, especially, finds him off-putting, but can't exactly put her finger on why.
Things get worse as Arkady's sister, Zsusanna, begins to sicken. Various people affiliated with Vlad and his family in some tangential way disappear. One of the servants shows up wearing one of these missing men's watch fobs and rings with blood on his wrist. And, of course, Vlad continues being creepy. Arkady takes a hit as well, with powerful headaches that come and go without warning, and lapses in memory that he is unable to explain. Mary and Arkady are starting to suspect that Vlad's servants' inexplicable terror and loathing of their master are perhaps not so inexplicable, after all.
To be fair to the book, it is a faithful reimagining of Bram Stoker's original DRACULA. Like the original, this book is written in epistolary format from multiple POVs, and the build-up is slow, gradual, and atmospheric. Many retellings often just focus on Dracula, and I appreciated how this book incorporated Romanian folklore about strigoi, as well as vampires' servants and brides.
My problem with this book is that it was just too gross. A lot of the random scenes in this book felt like they were included for shock value. I'm not averse to gore and violence necessarily, but I do think it should serve some purpose. George R.R. Martin, for all his faults, can be excellent at using horrible acts correctly: to show the effects of extreme terror or loathing, or as acts of power by someone who is attempting to curry favor or fear. I did not get that same impression here.
The diary entries also did not work for me. All the characters sounded very similar - bland and disconnected. I thought the story was interesting and liked the twist at the end, but I felt like it was told in a very poor way and that the medium in which the story was delivered was a huge contributing factor in this.
As far as COVENANT WITH THE VAMPIRE goes, I am not a fan. I love vampire stories but I did not like this one at all and will probably not be pursuing the sequels. Oh, and yeah, I was wrong - it's not a romance. (Whatever, I'm still counting it towards the challenge.)
Like most American children, Disney's Peter Pan was a part of my video library (we watched it on VHS, and waiting for the tape to rewind is an exercise in patience that few children these days know). Because my mother was a firm believer in reading, we also had the book, as well - a lovely illustrated edition of J.M. Barrie's classic tale. They're very different stories, though. Even as a child, I remember picking up the book and thinking to myself, "this is wrong" as I flipped through it. That's because 9 times out of 10, you know that all of your favorite characters are going to be safe and sound in the Disney movie (with a few notable exceptions), but in Barrie's book, death was very much present and very much real, and the morality of the characters is far more ambiguous.
Brom wrote THE CHILD THIEF with this initial version of the story in mind. Peter Pan is kind of creepy when you think about him too hard. I mean, he floats around outside nurseries, waiting for the parents to go to sleep before sneaking in and seducing children away and he has a markedly cavalier attitude when it comes to rules and the well being of himself and his lost boys.
THE CHILD THIEF opens in New York. We're introduced to a handful of children who have been forced to grow up before their time, either because of sexual abuse, drugs, crime, or neglect. Peter looks for these children specifically, because these are the children who are willing to leave their old lives behind and risk everything to follow him into the Mist to Avalon. One of these boys is Nick, who is facing persecution from a drug gang because he tried to make off with their stash when he ran away. Peter saves him from a slow and painful death and takes him through the Mist...but "Neverland" isn't like the stories, at all. It's actually incredibly dangerous...and terrifying.
I wasn't really prepared for the sexual and physical violence, the language, and the viciousness of the children and monsters in this story. It reads kind of like LORD OF THE FLIES, in the sense that the children gradually become more and more "wild" as the magic of Avalon infects them and they lose sight of their old lives in their blind following of Peter and his mission. Psychologically, it's very interesting, but it doesn't make for comfortable reading, either. I was expecting something along the lines of Clive Barker's ABARAT, I think - dark and brutal, but also fanciful and charming and morally sound. As convoluted as it can sometimes be, you can still recognize "good" in Barker's work. Here, "good" is much more ambiguous.
Despite all that, I was still mostly on board with Brom's reimagining of Peter Pan. Yes, it was darker and a bit bleaker than I'd anticipated, but it was an interesting story, and the use of Celtic folklore to explain both Peter's origins and the world he came from was inspired. The problem happens in the third act, when THE CHILD THIEF jumps the shark. There's too many things going on at once, with fight scenes that go on for way too long, and then a couple things happen that had me squinting at the book and going, "Wait, did that really happen?" And I started having flashbacks to the first, traumatic time that I watched the Super Mario Bros. movie and found out that the Mushroom Kingdom is actually a dystopian world forcibly torn from ours by the same comet that killed the dinosaurs.
I only paid $1.99 for this ebook, so I'm not as annoyed as I would have been had I paid the full $12.99 for it. For $1.99 it was solidly entertaining. I did enjoy the author's art, too. His style reminded me of the art work you see on old Magic: The Gathering trading cards. I also liked the idea behind the story and the use of Celtic mythology. The story did not live up to my expectations, however, and I thought the pacing and writing quality were both way off, with some passages being beautifully written and others reminiscent of the trashy indie pulp sci-fi serials that go for $0.99 a chapter. Some tighter editing could have made a huge difference. Ultimately, given the choice between ABARAT and CHILD THIEF, I'd pick ABARAT every time, although just between you and me, I like Brom's illustrations better. Maybe the two of them can work together on a new book. I'd definitely buy that...
With October looming, I feel like it's time to break into the spooky Gothic reads, and what better way to crack open the creepy champagne bottle than with an old skool book about vampires who don't sparkle, who sleep on their native earth and can't come into your homes unless invited, set against the grim and gruesome backdrop of the Spanish inquisition?
THE BLACK CASTLE is about two brothers. Diego is an Inquisitor who hides his own morbid fascination with cultish ephemera in his pious devotion to burning heretics. While this book isn't too gory, the book does describe how people were tortured in the Inquisition, and the author makes no attempt to downplay the rampant antisemitism that allowed people to act on and benefit from their hatred of those who were different from themselves, sometimes for incredibly self-serving reasons.
Sebastien, on the other hand, is a vampire who lives in his dark tower. The eldest son, who died in the crusades and then came back as an unnatural terror. Diego knows he lives, and benefits from his existence in an attempt to further his own glory. Which begs the question-- given their mutual blood lust, which of them is the real monster?
The beginning of this book is much better than the end. The synopsis of this book would make you think that this is a romance, kind of like Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's books, but it isn't really a romance and the ending is as grim and devastating as the beginning. That said, I don't think it could have ended any other way-- and if you think you know what I am saying, you probably don't. I wasn't expecting it. I do wish the pacing had been a little more consistent, as it dragged until it didn't, and ended with a bang.
THE BLACK CASTLE focuses on traditional vampire lore, and the emphasis is more on the historical elements than the fantastical ones. It does have some interesting things to say about mortality, faith, and hypocrisy, and one of my favorite scenes in the book is a Tarot card reading that takes place in the castle. It literally sent chills up my spine. If the book had more scenes like that, it would have been an easy four- or even five-star read, but because of the pacing issues, I'm deducting a star.
This book is a tease - it is all bark and no bite, and when I'm reading a book about vampires, I want allllll the bite, baby.
I love books about vampires, particularly vampire novels published before TWILIGHT. For better or for worse, TWILIGHT was a game-changer for the vampire subgenre, removing them as figures of horror and placing them firmly within the camp of other romance heroes. I've read some excellent vampire romances, but part of me - the dark part of my soul that comes alive at night - yearns for those sinister figures of yore, who were less interested in kissing and pining on about their eternal loneliness and more about the BITING. YAS.
CANDLE BAY was published in 2001 and even though it has romantic elements, it's definitely more horror than romance, and anyone picking it up expecting romance is going to be disappointed. The premise is pretty unique. Amanda Pearce is a newly hired concierge at a clubby hotel and spa near San Francisco. She's always been attracted to Gothic horror and things like vampires, so the misty, reclusive resort really appeals to her romantic sensibilities - and so does her tall, dark, and handsome employer, Stephen Darling.
The Candle Bay Hotel and Spa is managed by the Darlings, who are all very good looking - and all vampires. There's Orion, who fancies himself the next Godfather; Natasha, the femme Dom who likes to work hard and play hard; Stephen, the brooding romantic; and the evil twin daughters, Lucy and Ivy, who swing both ways and are completely psychotic and out of control. Living with them is another vampire named Julian Valentyn. Unlike the Darlings, Julian was BORN a vampire and not MADE - something that puts him a cut above the others, and which he doesn't fail to lord over them.
In addition to a "Will they/won't they?" between Amanda and Stephen, there's also a bit of a love triangle between Amanda and Julian, because Julian feels a connection to her due to events in his past. Those events make up the bulk of the plot driving this story forward because there's something hidden in the tunneling basements beneath the Hotel, and that something is alive.
CANDLE BAY is not a short read and it went on for way too long. There are many pointless asides that bog down the narrative and all of the sex scenes are disgusting. I don't mean disgusting because of gore (although that too); I mean disgusting because of how they are written. I'm hoping to post this review on Amazon, so I must refrain from posting salacious content, but please check out some of my Goodreads status updates for a "greatest hits" recap of some of the choice sex scenes in this book.
I also feel like there wasn't a lot of payoff. I was expecting hotter scenes between Amanda and Julian and Amanda and Stephen. The only people having sex in this book for the most part were secondary characters, which brings me to my next issue with this book: EVERYBODY GETS A POV. This is exactly why I didn't like Paula Hawkins's new book, INTO THE WATER - if there are too many people running around, it's harder to become invested in any specific person and they all start to blur together after a while. To her credit, Thorne gives all of her characters distinctive personalities (which Hawkins did not), but this makes the blurb seem misleading, because you think that it's going to be all about Amanda and Stephen getting it on, when in fact it is not.
Also, this is the SECOND vampire "romance" I've read with an Atlantis connection, and yes, it is just as ridiculous as what FOREVER AND THE NIGHT tried to do. At least this book didn't involve angels. Seriously, if you ever want a laugh, check out my review of FOREVER AND THE NIGHT.
I feel like I should give this book a low rating but can't quite bring myself to. I was vastly entertained by CANDLE BAY and couldn't put the book down. Even the terrible sex scenes were incredibly entertaining. This is basically the Bertrice Small of vampire novels - it's disturbing and badly-written, but the story is such a compelling train wreck of a mess that you can't bring yourself to look away.
Thanks to Heather and Karly for joining me in this BR!
P.S. The Chelsea Quinn Yarbro reference in this book was A+
ALICE was an unexpected but pleasant surprise for me. I don't read a lot of fantasy and I'm picky about retellings - unless they bring something new to the table, I don't really see the point in them. But ALICE was a dark, alien retelling of a familiar story, about a dystopian world run by sadistic crime lords, where magic is outlawed, and everyone fears for their lives - and sanity.
Translation: awesome
ALICE was a four star read that came close at several points to verging on five. The world-building was original, the villains were terrifying, and Alice was a strong character who managed to pay homage to her original namesake (I thought). Of course, when I saw book 2 was going up on Netgalley, I applied for an ARC immediately. And when I got said ARC, I did a little happy dance before settling back down to read.
Here's the thing. While reading ALICE, I was glued to the book. There were nights when I only got about 4 hours of sleep before working my overnight shift because I couldn't put the book down. It was so compulsively horrific that I had to find out what happened next. With RED QUEEN, I found myself reading complacently to a point, upon which I set it down and forgot about it for a little while. It isn't a bad book, it just doesn't have the same tight, compulsive writing style as before.
Alice managed to survive her adventures in the previous book and now, with Hatcher, continues on in her journey, which takes them to a small village on the edge of a blazing ruin. The place is glowing with magic, magic that belongs to three key players: red, white, and black...as well as another monster, a goblin, who is nothing like your mother's goblin king who was content to sing David Bowie songs while dancing around in a silver leotard. No, this goblin - he means business.
Henry weaves some celtic faerie lore in with this second book, and even manages to squeeze in that infamous quote - "off with her head!" - before the book is over. There was a clear effort and I do want to say that I could appreciate the consistency with the writing. The story, however, was completely different in tone and mood. If ALICE was Tim Burton, RED QUEEN is Angela Carter: unevenly paced, needlessly melodramatic, and aspiring to far more than it needs to to get the job done.
RED QUEEN was an okay sequel, but not great. I think it falls prey to that hated of all series-related conditions "middle book syndrome." I am curious to see how Henry chooses to bring this to a close, however (I'm assuming it's a trilogy), so all is not lost!
Imagine if Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino sat down at a table to do a book collaboration.
"Let's make a book with tons of over the top violence," Tarantino might say. "Sexual, physical, cannibalism - you name it!"
"Okay," Tim Burton might say. "But only if we get to ruin somebody's childhood classic with an existential nightmare set in a surrealistic landscape of angst and desolation."
"And let's have a female character go on a killing spree as she embarks upon a quest for revenge," Tarantino would add.
"Deal," Burton would finish, "just don't forget the purple spirals!"
That's kind of what ALICE is like. The eponymous main character, Alice, is not the Alice we know. She's a survivor of terrible acts she can't entirely remember, and imprisoned in a mental institution along with folks like Hatcher: a man ten years her senior who murdered his entire family with an axe.
When the two of them escape, they land up in a place purged of all magic, where evil crime lords have carved up the land into slices of terror and poverty and corruption. One of those crime lords is the man who raped and scarred Alice. Another is a brothel owner who tortures the girls in his employ. Another eats the girls he captures alive. And still another is dangerous because his motivations are completely secret. Alice and Hatcher have to deal with all of them in order to survive.
ALICE takes a while to get rolling. I actually started this months ago and lost interest around page 80. This time, I managed to finish the book, and let me tell you, once you hit page 100 or so, it's a nonstop thrill ride. To get the best effect of the world-building, I recommend reading this book at night. I had a graveyard shift last week, and as I headed to my car in the cold darkness, with mist circling the ground, and an eerie silence filling the air, it really did feel like the world of ALICE was not only possible, but also immediate. I locked the doors right away, just in case. ;)
The sequel is getting released this year. I'm hoping I can finagle an advanced copy, because that ending was frustratingly open-ended and I'm dying to find out what happens next.
Initially, I was really into CRIMSON KISS. It's the perfect fall read, a 90s story about vampires that fits perfectly into the niche pre-TWILIGHT vampire cannon. You can easily imagine a Goth adolescent curled up with this book in a pre-commercialized Starbucks while nursing a black Americano as the leaves and rain swirl past the window and Nirvana plays moodily over the speakers.
The structure of this book is very odd. It starts out in the "present" (1998), before reverting to the mid-40s. We're introduced to a teenage Meghann O'Neal, her loving Irish family, WWII war hero fiance, her hopes, her dreams. She meets a charming man named Simon Baldevar at a party who threatens to sweep her off her feet. She knows she shouldn't spend time with him because she's engaged, but can't seem to help herself. After a night spent painting the town red (pun unintended, actually), Simon declares himself in love with her and all but demands that his feelings be reciprocated.
Meghann falls for Simon, and that's when the romance ends and the nightmare begins. Oh, we already know that Simon's a vampire - but did you also know that he's a demented psychopath who likes torture, kink, and human misery? Neither did Meghann. But Simon immediately sets to weaving a web of psychological manipulation and, later, physical abuse, to trap Meghann permanently in his clutches and put her completely under his control. I was shocked at the amount of sexual and physical violence in this book, as well as how uncomfortably convincing the abusive relationship dynamic feels.
Back in the "present", Meghann is free and in a relationship with a human vampire slayer who also has a bone to pick with Simon. She has friends, a new mentor, and a Simon-sized chip on her shoulder. All of them have their own reasons for wanting Simon dead, but he's far more powerful than any of them had ever dreamed, and the cost of defeating him might be more than they can afford.
CRIMSON KISS follows the typical vampire mythos pretty straightforwardly. Dual timelines, Gothic settings, and lots of angst and existential musings create the backdrop and set the scene for CRIMSON. The execution is what causes this book to stand on its own two feet. Simon is a very bad man. The things he did shocked me, and made me sick to my stomach. He is scary. And Baker's very good at deceiving the reader so we get deceived right along with Meghann. This makes it easier to forgive when she falls for his tricks again and again, when she refuses to leave or give up her feelings for her abuser, or when she finds herself giving into him (sigh) yet again.
The other characters aren't quite as fleshed out as Meghann and Simon, but I did like Alcuin and Charles a lot. Jimmy, I liked less, but certain events at the end of the book suggest that he might meet with some interesting developments in the sequels. The evil villain and the gloom-and-doom atmosphere are what really drive this story forward, though, and Celtic folklore adds some interesting bells and whistles to the magic in this book. It really is the perfect fall read; I think this would be a great vampire book for October. It's creepy, haunting, and morbid. Plus, it's only $2.99 in the Kindle store - and so is the sequel. I mean, how do you beat that?
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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