Tag: vampires

11 for 2011: Best reads of the year

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | best book lists> book reviews> books> ebooks

2011 is coming to a close. It’s time to pause and reflect on the year that is ending.

There’s a lovely quote from Garrison Keillor, “A book is a present that you can open again and again.” There’s a corollary in this house about “not if the cat is sitting on it” but the principle still applies. The good stories from this year will still be good next year. Some of them may even have sequels!

These were my favorites of the year. At least when I narrow the list down to 11 and only 11. And even then I fudged a bit. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (reviewed 12/1/11). This book had everything it could possibly need. There’s a quest. There’s a love story. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s an homage to videogaming. There are pop-culture references to every cult classic of science fiction and fantasy literature imaginable. There’s an evil empire to be conquered. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Omnitopia: Dawn by Diane Duane (reviewed 4/22/11). On the surface, Omnitopia and Ready Player One have a lot in common. Thankfully, there is more than meets the eye. Omnitopia takes place in the here and now, or very close to it. The world has not yet gone down the dystopian road that Wade and his friends are looking back at in Ready Player One. On the other hand, any resemblance the reader might see between Worlds of Warcraft mixed with Facebook and Omnitopia, or between Omnitopia Corp and Apple, may not entirely be the reader’s imagination. Howsomever, Omnitopia Dawn also has some very neat things to say about artificial intelligence in science fiction. If you liked Ready Player One, just read Omnitopia: Dawn. Now!

The Iron Knight (reviewed 10/26/11) was the book that Julie Kagawa did not intend to write. She was done with Meghan, her story was over. Meghan is the Iron Queen, but what she has achieved is not a traditional happily-ever-after. Victory came at a price. Real victories always do. Meghan’s acceptance of her responsibility means that she must rule alone. Ash is a Winter Prince, and Meghan’s Iron Realm is fatal to his kind. The Iron Knight is Ash’s journey to become human, or at least to obtain a soul, so that he can join his love in her Iron Realm. It is an amazing journey of mythic proportions.

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel (reviewed 10/18/11) is a story that absolutely shouldn’t work. The fact that it not only works, but works incredibly well, still leaves me gasping in delight. Dearly, Departed is the first, best, and so far only YA post-apocalypse steampunk zombie romance I’ve ever read. I never thought a zombie romance could possible work, period. This one not only works, it’s fun. There’s a sequel coming, Dearly, Beloved. I just wish I knew when.

Debris by Jo Anderton (reviewed 09/29/11) is the first book of The Veiled World Trilogy. It’s also Anderton’s first novel, a fact that absolutely amazed me when I read the book. Debris is science fiction with a fantasy “feel” to it, a book where things that are scientifically based seem magical to most of the population. But the story is about one woman’s fall from grace, and her discovery that her new place in society is where she was meant to be all along.

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (reviewed 09/19/11). If you love mysteries, and you are not familiar with Louise Penny’s work, get thee to a bookstore, or download her first Chief Inspector Gamache mystery, Still Life, to your ereader this instant. Louise Penny has been nominated for (and frequently won) just about every mystery award for the books in this series since she started in 2005. Find out why.

I love Sherlock Holmes pastiches. (This is not a digression, I will reach the point). I have read all Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell books, some more than once. I almost listed Pirate King (reviewed 9/9/11), this year’s Holmes/Russell book instead of Trick. But Pirate King was froth, and Penny never is. A regular contributor to Letters of Mary, the mailing list for fans of the Holmes/Russell books, recommended the Louise Penny books. I am forever grateful.

The Elantra Series by Michelle Sagara (review forthcoming). I confess I’m 2/3rds of the way through Cast in Ruin right now. I’ve tried describing this series, and the best I can come up with is an urban fantasy series set in a high fantasy world. I absolutely love it. It’s the characters that make this series. Everyone, absolutely everyone, is clearly drawn and their personality is delineated in a way that makes them interesting. There are people you wouldn’t want to meet, but they definitely are distinctive. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny in spots, even when it’s very much gallows humor. I’m driving my husband crazy because I keep laughing at the dialog, and I can’t explain what’s so funny. I would love to have drinks with Kaylin. I’d even buy. But the Elantra series is not humor. Like most urban fantasy, it’s very snarky. But the stories themselves have a crime, or now, a very big problem that needs solving, and Kaylin is at the center of it. Whether she wants to be or not.

If you are keeping score somewhere, or just want the reading order, it’s Cast in Moonlight (part of Harvest Moon), Cast in Shadow, Cast in Courtlight, Cast in Secret, Cast in Fury, Cast in Silence, Cast in Chaos, and Cast in Ruin.

The Ancient Blades Trilogy by David Chandler consists of Den of Thieves (reviewed 7/27/11), A Thief in the Night (reviewed 10/7/11) and Honor Among Thieves (reviewed 12/21/11). This was good, old-fashioned sword and sorcery. Which means the so-called hero is the thief and not the knight-errant. And every character you meet has a hidden agenda and that no one, absolutely no one, is any better than they ought to be. But the ending, oh the ending will absolutely leave you stunned.

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher (reviewed 7/29/11) is 2011’s entry in one of my absolute all time favorite series, The Dresden Files. And I saw Jim Butcher in person at one of the Atlanta Barnes & Noble stores. Ghost Story represents a very big change in the Dresden Files universe, where Harry Dresden starts growing into those extremely large boots he’s been stomping around in all these years. If you love urban fantasy, read Dresden.

Turn It Up by Inez Kelley (reviewed 8/10/11 and listed here) is one of the best takes on the “friends into lovers” trope that I have ever read. Period. Also, I’m an absolute sucker for smart people and witty dialogue, and this book is a gem. “Dr. Hot and the Honeypot” pretty much talk each other into a relationship, and into bed, while they give out sassy advice over the airwaves on their very suggestive and extremely successful sexual advice radio show.

My last book is a two-fer. Break Out (reviewed 8/4/11) and Deadly Pursuit (reviewed 12/6/11) by Nina Croft are the first two books in her Blood Hunter series, and I sincerely hope there are more. This is paranormal science fiction romance. Like Dearly, Departed, this concept should not work. But it absolutely does. And it gets better the longer it goes on. If you have an urban fantasy world in the 20th century, what would happen if that alternate history continued into space? Where do the vamps and the werewolves go? They go into space with everyone else, of course. And you end up with Ms. Croft’s Blood Hunter universe, which I loved. But you have to read both books. The first book just isn’t long enough for the world building. The second one rocks.

I stopped at 11 (well 11-ish) because this is the 2011 list. I could have gone on. And on. And on. My best ebook romances list was published on Library Journal earlier in the month. LJ has a ton of other “best” lists for your reading pleasure. Or for the detriment of your TBR pile.

Deadly Pursuit

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

I absolutely love it when an author gives me what I asked for! Not that Nina Croft and I have ever met. But in my review of Break Out, the first book of her Blood Hunter series, I asked for more world-building, more information about how the situation with the Church and the Collective got started, and were there any others like Rico, meaning, are there any other vampires traveling the space lanes? And I just plain wanted more story.

Deadly Pursuit, Ms. Croft’s second entry in this paranormal science fiction romance series, gave me just what I asked for. Which makes me one happy reader.

Deadly Pursuit picks up right where Break Out left off. The El Cazador and her crew have eluded the pursuing Collective, after breaking Jon the mysterious prisoner out of their clutches just before he was scheduled to be shipped to their maximum security prison planet. What they still don’t know is why Jon and the crew were all supposed to die in the escape attempt. Whatever he knows is so toxic that everyone who gets near him is poisoned. It must be a really big secret.

Jon is a contract killer. The person he assassinated was in the inner circle of the Collective, a man named Aiden Ross. Everyone knows that members of the Collective are supposed to be immortal, and Jon was given the secrets to killing them, so maybe that’s the reason for the big target on his back. It’s certainly not because anyone took Aiden Ross’ death personally. The guy was a bastard, and I don’t mean the fatherless kind.

But the crew has other problems. And so does Jon. Because the cabin boy, Al, isn’t a cabin boy. He’s a she, and she’s not just any girl. She’s the 24-year-old Lady Alexia, the High Priestess of the Church of Everlasting Life. She ran away from her temple 3 months ago, and the Church is just gunning to get her back. Literally.

And Jon has a not-so-big secret of his own. He’s a werewolf. And that whole territory thing about werewolves and vampires? It’s still a problem. And a space ship really doesn’t have enough territory for one vamp and one werewolf to share comfortably.

But the real problem is that Jon’s werewolf has found his perfect mate. And it’s the feisty virgin priestess. But Jon has failed too many people in his life to let himself care about anyone ever again, never mind letting someone like Alex depend on him or care for him. But when the ship’s crew worm their way into becoming his new pack, what’s a werewolf to do?

Escape Rating B+: This was so much fun! It answered so many of my questions from Break Out, and told a great story. The male-bonding between Rico and Jon was hilarious, and the love story with Jon and Alex was sweet without being too syrupy.

I’m looking forward to the next book. Meridian, the drug that grants immortality, well, let’s just say that anything that seems too good to be true is, as usual, too good to be true. Let me put it this way, if you have vampires and werewolves, what other supernatural creatures might you have?

If you like science fiction romance, get Break Out and Deadly Pursuit and just read them both at once. You’ll be very glad you did!

 

Happy Halloween: L.A. Theatre Works Dracula

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks

For my own personal Halloween Treat, I listened to the L.A. Theatre Works dramatization of the one, the only, the original, prince of the night, Count Dracula.

This L.A. Theatre Works dramatization is a full-cast adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic Victorian horror story, Dracula. It’s absolutely perfect for anyone’s holiday listening pleasure, complete with chills and thrills.

We all know the story, or we think we do. And it doesn’t matter. Hearing the story, with each part portrayed by an excellent actor, as was done in this production, makes the entire story fresh and new. You feel Jonathan Harker’s terror as he watches helplessly when the Count’s boxes of earth are packed and shipped to England. You share in Dr. Seward’s and Lord Godalming’s surprise, disgust and ultimate belief when Dr. Van Helsing proves to them that Lucy Westenra has, in fact, become a vampire. All while hearing only the actors’ voices.

The quest to solve the mystery, destroy Dracula, and save Mina, all while scouring London, and then trekking through half of eastern Europe, is painted through voices that can’t help but etch themselves in your mind.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a classic for a reason. Listen to this production and you will have an absolutely marvelous time remembering the reasons why.

A few personal comments about listening to the recording. If you can download this, do it. The download is currently $3.95, that’s 4 bucks. The CD is $17. Talk about a holiday treat for downloading!

Second comment, this initially caught my attention because of the voice actors. David Selby plays Van Helsing, Simon Templeman voices Dracula. I would have bought it for those two names alone. I used to run, not walk, home from school to watch the original Dark Shadows. Climbing into the “Way Back Machine”, David Selby played Quentin Collins, the werewolf member of that rather unusual family. Hearing his voice again brought back a lot of memories.

Returning to the present, I play a lot of role-playing video games, in what I refer to with some irony as my “copious free time”, mostly because said free time doesn’t exist. For the past two years, my video game of choice has been Dragon Age Origins and its sequels and DLCs. In Dragon Age, Simon Templeman is the voice of Loghain Mac Tir, an extremely compelling character who has listened to the darker side of his nature. Actually not unlike Dracula in some ways. Without the blood-drinking. Loghain had a henchman for that.

And in case it wasn’t totally obvious, Escape Rating A+.

A Vampire for Christmas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Who would have thought that a vampire might be a good thing to find in your Christmas stocking? Or even better, helping you out of your Christmas stockings! In the new anthology, A Vampire for Christmas, with novellas from Laurie London, Michele Hauf, Caridad Piñeiro and Alexia Morgan, sometimes a vampire is just what a girl wants Santa to bring her for the holidays.

Like all collections, the stories vary in appeal.

Laurie London’s “Enchanted by Blood” is for those who prefer their vamps to come complete with political machinations. Trace Westfalen has already given up his human lover Charlotte Grant once. And wiped her memories. All in the service of preserving the secret that vampires live among us. And in the interests of preserving his possible seat on the ruling council. Not to mention the secret of his nasty cousin’s even nastier habits. However, when he finds Charlotte in trouble, he can’t resist coming to her rescue. When he sticks around long enough to let her fall in love with him again in spite of her memory wipe (he never fell out) their troubles begin all over again. Will Trace decide that love is worth the cost?

Caridad Piñeiro’s entry, “When Herald Angels Sing”, is a Christmas redemption story with a twist. A guardian angel’s assignment is to redeem the soul of a vampire. Little does she know that the vampire’s task is to redeem her heart.

On the other hand, “All I Want for Christmas”, by Alexis Morgan, has a very pronounced urban fantasy flavor. Everyone who frequents Della’s Diner, from the fry cook to the customers to the punks who try to rip her off, seems to be some sort of supernatural creature. Including the cop investigating drugs and disappearances and finding himself wanting to sink his fangs into purely human Della.

My favorite story of the bunch was Michele Hauf’s “Monsters Don’t Do Christmas” for its terrific characters and very unusual take on who is and who isn’t a real monster. Daniel Harrison is a vampire, but he’s not the real monster of the story. The real monster is a purely mortal woman, who just so happens to be a superstar. I loved this story.

Escape Rating B: Collections are always mixed. Some of the stories work for me, and some don’t. But that’s the point, you discover someone or something new. For me it was Hauf’s story. Her take, that the superstar machine creates a person who feels more of a monster than an actual monster, made the entire book.

Lord of the Vampires

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

Lord of the Vampires by Gena Showalter is the first book in the Royal House of Shadows from Harlequin Nocturne. The series is about the children of a royal family in a world that exists parallel to our own. This is a world where magic exists, the king is a vampire, and the queen is a witch. Unfortunately for this particular ruling pair, their throne was coveted by an evil sorcerer, and they were murdered. But not before they each cast one final spell. The king’s spell imbued his four children with an unstoppable need for revenge. The queen used her last ounce of power to send each of her children far away from the sorcerer, from the kingdom, and unfortunately, from each other.

Lord of the Vampires is the story of the crown prince, the oldest son Nicolai. The spell flings him naked out of his own kingdom, Elden, and into the slave markets of Delfina, where he is quickly sold as a sex slave.  His memories are wiped away by magic, and he knows nothing except rage and his dreams of vengeance against a sorcerer whose name he cannot remember.

In our world, a woman named Jane Parker receives a leather-bound book, along with a note bearing four simple words, “I need you, Jane”. Jane is disbelieving. No one needs her. Her family was killed in a car crash, and she was the only survivor. She has just regained the use of her legs. She is totally alone. But touching the book brings back memories that she doesn’t think are hers, as well as dreams that she barely remembers. In dreams she has experienced what the book details, and she knows it. What she doesn’t know is how it is even possible. She worked in quantum physics before her accident, she has met creatures from the parallel world, but she is sure what she feels just isn’t logical.

But just the same, she can’t stop thinking about the book, her dreams, and her memories of those dreams. So when logic fails completely, she settles down to actually read the book itself. And when she falls asleep over the book, she crosses the barrier between the worlds, and meets her destiny. And Nicolai, who needs her.

Lord of the Vampires fell into the “just plain fun” category for me in spite of the dark themes throughout the book. The evil characters were all caricatures of evil, particularly the ones who have been “keeping” Nicolai for the last several years. The link between our world and Nicolai’s was just a bit too convenient. And although Nicolai summoned Jane to help him escape from his captivity, when she turns out to be his chosen mate, they are both surprisingly agreeable to being bound together for life. On the whole, Lord of the Vampires was mind candy, but it was pretty good mind candy. The next book in the series will be Lord of Rage by Jill Monroe, followed by Lord of the Wolfyn by Jessica Andersen and last by definitely not least Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh. It will be interesting to see how different authors manage to handle the different siblings while still retaining the continuity.

Escape Rating: C+: Definitely worth following the series, but the cliché count rose to high to keep me up all night reaching for the ending.

Riding on the City of New Orleans

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books

There are a lot of songs and stories that ride to the city of New Orleans, including the famous one about the train. In Steve Goodman‘s classic, covered by Arlo Guthrie, Willie Nelson and a host of others, the train doesn’t actually arrive by the time the song ends. It’s going to get there “by morning.”

Whenever a story is set in New Orleans, the city is more than just the setting, it’s also a character. Anyone who has been mesmerized by Louis’ story in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire will attest to that. There is no place in America with the cultural gumbo of history that would otherwise be able to make Louis’ and Lestat’s story fascinate the reader.

But Anne Rice‘s love affair with New Orleans is reflected in some of her other work. One of her earliest stand alone novels is The Feast of All Saints. The story is about the gens de couleur libre, the free people of color who lived in New Orleans before the Civil War. It is a society that seems uniquely part of New Orleans history, and that most people know nothing about. The writing is as compelling as Interview, but what fascinates is how fragile the world of the gens de couleur was. Everything existed on sufferance, and when that sufferance was strained or torn, disaster struck.

Part of what makes New Orleans such a unique part of America is the different cultures that have held sway over that port city. The French, then the Spanish, back to the French and finally the relatively new American Republic bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1801. When the U.S. took over New Orleans, there was a clash of cultures between the planters and the new Americans who came to the city and the Territory. Culture clashes make for great stories.

Barbara Hambly’s historical mystery series is set at the time of that cultural clash. Benjamin January returned to New Orleans from Paris in 1833, after the death of his wife. Ben January trained as a surgeon in Paris, but he makes his living as a piano player in New Orleans. Why? Because he is A Free Man of Color, as the title of the first book in the series names him. He can only practice medicine during the annual cholera epidemic, when most of the white doctors flee the city. But January’s insider/outsider perspective allows him to see into the heart of what is unsaid in every facet of New Orleans society. The new Americans, particularly one policeman, discover that his ability to see into all parts of Creole society, areas that the Americans have no entry into, may be useful in solving crime. But it’s the view into Benjamin’s world that is compelling. The latest book in this series, The Shirt on his Back, just came out in June.

For a different perspective on historic New Orleans, David Fulmer‘s Chasing the Devil’s Tail takes place during a different clash. His Valentine St. Cyr is a private detective in the fabled Storyville district in the early 1900s. He investigates the death of a musician just at the point when the blues was giving birth to jazz.

Katrina also gets its due. In The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, a history professor receives a map of New Orleans. But it isn’t just a map of streets and tourist destinations. It’s a map of historical moments. And if the professor can manage to visit all of the “moments” and do all of the right things, he can undo the biggest mistake of his life–leaving his lover to die amid the devastation that Katrina made out of New Orleans.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, about a man who was born old and lived backwards, was originally set in Baltimore. Made into a movie post-Katrina, it was set in New Orleans, using the oncoming storm as an integral part of the frame. The story as written is quite short, and available free at Project Gutenberg. The movie was much greater than the sum of its original parts.

The lyrics in my head are from an old rock classic by Poco, Heart of the Night. Something about the words and the music still evoke New Orleans for me. The song compares an ex-lover to the city on Lake Pontchartrain. And as the song rightly says, “she’s so full of surprises”. She’s always been full of stories, too.

Goddess with a Blade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Vampire politics and sex. If that had been the sum total of Goddess with a Blade, Lauren Dane‘s latest book from Carina Press, it would still have been a fun read. But the story turned out to be a bit deeper than I expected, and that made it even better.

The Goddess named in the title is the Celtic Goddess Brigid. Her physical vessel is Rowan Summerwaite. Rowan is also, coincidentally, the licensed vampire hunter for the Las Vegas region. To complicate matters further, Rowan was raised by the leader of the Vampire Nation. And, there’s a new Vampire Scion in Las Vegas, and he and Rowan are starting their naturally adversarial relationship off on the wrong foot. She killed his predecessor very, very righteously, for not keeping his “people” in line. That’s her job.

But there’s a serial killer in town. A vampire who doesn’t care if he exposes the vamps and all of the other kindred to curious mortal world that hasn’t yet figured out they exist. All he wants is his next victim, and his next fix, after over 600 years of immortal ennui. Meanwhile, Rowan and the new Scion, Clive, try to negotiate whether their business relationship will turn out to be frenemies, frenemies with benefits, or something more.

Escape Rating A: I had a great time with this story, and these characters. Rowan’s relationships with all the people around her just kept drawing me in. Her love/hate/love thing with her foster father, who is, after all, the head honcho vampire, is a heart breaker. She kills rogue vampires for a living, and he trained her, and he is one, and he knew this is what she would become, and wow!

I want to see more stories in this world. It was a cool place to visit. And I want to find out if the romance between Clive and Rowan works out. And if Rowan’s cop friend ever gets his act together. As I said, I really liked these people, I want to see how they go.

Some of my first loves were vampires

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

Edward Cullen was certainly not the first sexy vampire–if he even makes the list at all.

I still remember reading Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire for the very first time.  I was in my college dorm room.  I remember sitting there, spellbound, turning the pages, just pouring through the book from cover to cover. I think I only got up once to go to the bathroom.  I still remember Lestat, and Louis, and the child vampire Claudia, and the steamy city of New Orleans as if it was a separate player in the drama.  And the poor interviewer who was mesmerized by the whole erotic, gory, glorious mess.  Even if you think you know the story from the movie, it is nothing like reading the book for the first time.  Or again. (Never judge a book by its movie.)

Other vampires have told their tales to other interviewers.  After all, a good story always needs an audience.  Dracula wanted to tell his side of the story, to let people know the “truth”—to counter all the “propaganda” that Bram Stoker published for Van Helsing.  So, after his true love Mina had lived her full life, on the night that she was ready to rise, the Count waited out the evening with yet another poor, unsuspecting journalist with a tape recorder, pouring out the true tale of his fateful meeting with Jonathan Harker, Mina, and Dr. Van Helsing.  Fred Saberhagen’s retelling of the Count’s own story makes compelling reading in The Dracula Tape.

Saberhagen went on to relate more stories of Count Dracula’s modern day adventures in The Holmes-Dracula File and An Old Friend of the Family, as well as later books. It was a very interesting family that included Count Dracula among its “old friends”. And a story of Sherlock Holmes not just meeting, but joining forces with, Count Dracula–it is absolutely delicious. Two alpha predators at the height of their powers joining forces for the greater good.

And last, but not least, there is the mysterious vampire known as the Le Comte de Saint-Germain, who first appears in Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and has appeared in many, many books since.  Saint-Germain rescues a woman from ruin, as he so often does, in a tale that blends history, romance, and mystery.  It is fitting that this story blends fact with the paranormal, as the fictional character of Saint-Germain was based on a true historical “worker of mysteries” who appears seemingly everywhere, in a spinoff of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, a Buffyverse comics miniseries, and more than one videogame. The Comte, like Count Dracula himself, seems to be immortal.

What could Abraham Lincoln and Elizabeth Tudor possibly have in common?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies coverThere has been a trend in pop literature in the past two years to re-write great works of literature to include horror elements, usually for comic or satiric effect. Some of the results are hilarious, some are fairly dreadful. Patient Zero in this trend (to mix metaphors in the extreme) was the strange, bizarre and absolutely screamingly funny in-joke that was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, written by the great Jane Austen and edited or amalgamized (or whatever) by Seth Grahame-Smith. This crazy thing, I personally think at least partially on the strength of a truly fantastic cover, was a surprise commercial success. Therefore, it begat sequels, spinoffs and sideways imitations.

Now they have slipped sideways into a variation of alternate history where real historic figures were supposedly vampire slayers or vampire hunters. I kid you not. On the surface, two historic figures less likely to imagine as even having the spare time to stalk vampires during the night than either Abraham Lincoln or Queen Elizabeth I could hardly be found. Why pick them? What could they have in common to make them likely, or even compelling, targets for such a treatment.

There are so many differences. Male and female, obviously. An elected leader vs a queen by right of inheritance. They are separated, not just by an ocean of salt water, but by an ocean of three centuries of time. And yet, they are both figures that fascinate in history. They both led their nations during eras when those nations were on the cusp on becoming, but had not yet become world powers. Times when their people were under grave threat. From our modern viewpoint, they are seen as leaders in times and places where personal leadership particularly mattered, and that they rose to the challenges they faced.

Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer CoverThe Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer, is written using a time-honored literary tradition. Elizabeth’s secret diaries were supposedly unearthed during the very real fire at Windsor castle in 1992 and the first volume is now being published, after the public events mentioned in the diary have been verified. The story is told in Elizabeth’s voice, her perspective on events in the very first weeks of her reign as she discovers that she is the heir, not just to the throne, but also to the powers of vampire slayer, the first in a millenium–the first since her ancestress, Morgaine, better known to history as Morgan le Fay.  And the King of the Vampires that Elizabeth must face is none other than Mordred, the illegitimate son of King Arthur.  Tying the vampires to the end of Camelot makes for masterful storytelling, and leaves the door open for a sequel.  Because there is a question that runs throughout the story.  Mordred may not be Elizabeth’s enemy.  Historically, England in Elizabeth’s time had many enemies, particularly Spain, as the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada showed.  Those enemies are very much present, as are the foes she has within her court.

Lucy WestonHowever, as much as I enjoyed the story itself, and the melding of the real history with the supernatural elements, trying to sell the idea that the editor of the diaries was the Lucy Weston from Bram Stoker’s Dracula was just one stage too far.  There’s a concept called the “willing suspension of disbelief” and that just tore it.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter coverAbraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, also pretends to be a publication of secret diaries.  But at least the “real” author (Seth Grahame-Smith again) isn’t claiming to be someone else fictional.  The author tries to make the diary entries sound like Lincoln, and to therefore sound like someone writing in the mid-19th century.  It’s a difficult trick to manage, and whether he completely succeeds, I’m not certain.

But the premise is compelling, if strange.  Abraham Lincoln experienced several deaths in his early years of the people surrounding him.  Deaths that contributed to the man he became.  Both his mother and his first love (if you subscribe to that belief in the first place).  In Grahame-Smith’s version, both of those deaths were caused by vampires.  And Lincoln becomes a vampire hunter out of a desire for revenge.  Unlike Elizabeth, he has no special talent for the work, he is simply big and strong and wants to kill as many as possible.

The Civil War, the defining event of the 19th century United States, is not left out.  In this version of both the War and Lincoln’s life, vampires control the Southern States, and are slave owners.  The vampires want to expand slavery, because slaves are not merely property, they are food.  No one questions what happens to someone else’s slaves.  Humans are always food to vampires, but this objectifies the practice even more.  Human slave owners are colluding with the vampires, either out of a desire to be on the winning side, out of a hope to be spared, or merely out of the knowledge that as collaborators, they will be taken last.  Discovering what vampires do to slaves makes Lincoln a firm abolitionist in addition to a vampire hunter.

But Lincoln has no particular talent for this work, he is just strong and vicious.  At the age of 16, he is nearly killed on a hunt.  He is saved by a vampire named Henry Sturgis, who, along with many of his fellow vampires, believes that slavery is wrong, that killing humans other than criminals for food is wrong, and that the slave holders and other “evil” vampires must be stopped at all costs.  Henry also declares that he has had glimpses of Lincoln’s destiny, and that Lincoln is “just too interesting to die.”

Martin Luther King Dream speechThis book was not about changing history.  Everything that needs to happen, does happen.  The world we know, does come to pass.  But history is viewed through a different lens.  “What if?” asks the author, and then views that “if” through Lincoln’s point of view.   The North still won the war.  Lincoln was still shot and killed at Ford’s Theatre.  The difference?  The vampires found the new Union without slavery inhospitable and fled the country.  John Wilkes Booth was a vampire.  But the image that sticks with me from the book is the ending.  Lincoln and Henry standing in the shadows of the Lincoln Memorial, watching Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Vampires and Venice?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

Friends ask me to tell them something good to read.  Sometimes I do it whether they ask or not.  They’re still my friends, so they must not mind.

Fallen Blade CoverTwo books I just recommended were The Fallen Blade, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, and Of Saints and Shadows by Christopher Golden.  At first, they seemed not much alike.  Blade is historic, set in an alternate Venice of 1407, at the height of the power of La Serenissima, as the floating city-state is frequently referred to.  At first, it seems difficult to discern who the main character might be, whether it is the head of the Assassini, the Guild of Assassins, or Lady Giulietta, the cousin of the current Duke, or perhaps the slave who is given the name Tycho when he is rescued from the hold of a ship without his memory or his identity.

But Tycho is a vampire, even if he doesn’t remember his people, his powers or his original purpose.  And Venice is not the Venice we know.  It contains not just the Assassini (historically, Venice undoubtedly did have plenty assassins, whether they had a formal guild or not) but also witches, and especially, werewolves.

The Fallen Blade is the labelled Act One of the Assassini Trilogy.  This is a dark and dangerous alternate world, grim and brutal.  For a book that is first in a trilogy, it ended on a surprisingly down beat.

Saints and Shadows coverOf Saints and Shadows shouldn’t have had too many points of comparison with Blade.  Really.  But it did.  Saints is, after all, urban fantasy, more or less.  It starts out as a private detective type-mystery, except that the PI in question is a vampire.  Peter Octavian is not his real name, either, but at least Octavian remembers who he is, and who he was.  But he is still searching for his identity, too, in a sense.  His search is that he is aware that what he has been told are limits to his powers, are not, in fact, necessarily limits.  He is forced to find the evil behind those limits.

Saints is the first book in a series.  The series was originally started in the mid-1990’s, but has been re-printed in its entirety this year and a new title has just come out.  The dark and gritty feel of Saints matched right up to Blade.  Again, for the first book in a series, it ended on a fairly grim note.  Also, although it started in New York, most of the real action, including the big finish, took place during Carnival at, you guessed it, Venice.

Next time I send him a recommendation, it needs to be a little cheerier, or he’s going to worry.