Category Archives: Challenges

The Nightlife New York

Book Review of Travis Luedke’s The Nightlife: New York

2 Replies

Travis Luedke and I recently connected on Twitter. At the time he jokingly offered me a free copy of his first Nightlife novel (New York). It happened to be free on KDP that day so there wasn’t much sincerity in the offer, but it was amusing. Turns out I had already downloaded the sucker (pun intended since it’s a vampire book). I like the cover art and that’s often enough to grab my attention…that and it’s about vampires. I’m a sucker, I know. (OK I’ll stop.)

LONG Description from Goodreads:
Vampires, strippers, escorts, night clubs, gangs, pimps and corrupt cops, the Nightlife of New York is never boring.

Is she a beautiful blond guardian angel as he imagined, or something else entirely? When Michelle saves Aaron’s life she shares the benefits of her blood (after getting him shot accidentally). He awakes a changed man, living in a purgatory of eternal night, never to see the sunrise again.

Michelle drags Aaron through a hardcore learning curve of vampiric slavery. Forced to adapt to servitude, Aaron is subject to her authority of compulsion. She orders him around like a puppet on a string, a dog on a very short leash. First things first, he must learn to feed properly without creating bloodslaves (humans addicted to the powerful drug-like effect of their venomous bite).

And then she puts him to work-a male escort in the sex trade-same as Michelle. Aaron walks a tightrope of strictly controlled feeding regiments and intensely erotic sexual adventures while catering to the neurotic control-freak tendencies of his new master. It’s do or die, Michelle vows to eliminate him if he proves too difficult to control. The real kicker-amidst all these shocking and degrading adjustments, Aaron finds he’s falling in love.

Can he maintain and keep a sliver of his humanity intact? Innocence is a luxury few can afford in the decadent nightlife of New York. In a world where sex, blood, and power over women is so readily accessible, Aaron struggles against the predatory instincts deeply rooted in his new psyche. He must find his way quickly, practicing rigid self-control, or risk the consequences of Michelle’s wrath.

Review:
Nightlife: New York is a paranormal romance unlike I’ve ever read and it took me a little while to pinpoint why. Surprisingly, I think it is the fact that it was written by a man. It changed the feel and focus of the romance. There was a realism to the main character, Aaron’s, thoughts and actions that I can only imagine was born of the male author’s innate ability to relate to the emotions of a male character. This multidimensionalism  is often lacking in other PNR. They regularly focus almost exclusively on the man’s alpha qualities, to the exclusion of all others. And while I enjoy these novels it was nice to come across a PNR hero who had a little more depth to him.

Aaron Pilan is the nice guy who never gets much coverage in this genre. He isn’t 6’5”. He isn’t build like a tank. He isn’t bulging with muscles or oozing raw sex appeal. He doesn’t even wear leather or shitkickers. He’s attractive, but innocent and a little naive. Meeting the gorgeous vampire Michelle and being brought into her way of life throws him for a serious curve. I adored him! Over the course of the book he grew to be the strong alpha lead we women currently love so much, but managed to maintain the caring qualities that attracted Michelle in the first place. He was interested in more than just pounding a hapless, lust-driven female into a mattress (though the springs did get a workout or two) and I appreciated his internal debates as he tried to reassess his new role. 

There was a little bit of an info-dump in the beginning as Luedke established what type of vampire we’re dealing with. Do they sparkle or brood? Do they maintain their human intellect or become mindless predators, etc? The book gets a little dry during this necessary evil, but quickly picks back up. There are a whole host of interesting underworld characters who play their role without ever cluttering up the plot, a little bit of humour, some sizzling moments, and some tender moments. There really is just about enough of everything.

This is definitely one worth picking up. I have Nightlife: Las Vegas which I have every intention of reading. As an aside, I happened to notice that both books are still be free on Amazon at the moment. I don’t know how long that will last though. 

Vampire Rule

Book Review of K.C. Blake’s Vampire Rule

Leave a reply

I grabbed K.C. Blake’s Vampires Rule off of Amazon’s KDP recently, only to discover that I had already ‘purchased’ it from Smashwords at some point in the past. Guess the synopsis really appealed to me if I thought to download it twice. (Note: as I wrote this I noticed that it is currently free on both sites.)

Description from Goodreads:
They don’t call him Jackpot for nothing.

Jack has always beat the odds… at least until now. When he was attacked by a werewolf, vampires saved him. When he got tired of living the vampire life, another werewolf attack freed him, making him human again. Now Jack just wants to live a normal life, but what’s normal about a hunter girlfriend, a brother who wants to stake him to be on the safe side, and a head werewolf building an army to rule the world?

Review (with some spoilers):
I’m having a little trouble writing this review. Not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because I don’t want to write the exact same review 15 other people already have. The truth is, however, that just like a number of previous readers, I found the idea of this story fascinating but the execution lacking. Jack, Silver, and Jersey’s destiny was an interesting one, but there were a number of plot holes and a couple just curiosity holes. For example, they have to fight the head werewolf, so what about the head vampire that was created at the same time as him? He’s never mentioned. Surely he was important at some point.

I thought that the characters were a little flat and I greatly disliked the way that Silver was constantly treated as a child. She had trained her WHOLE life to be a werewolf hunter. Jack had just been introduced to the art. But everyone was willing to let him take the lead and all of the risks. Why? Was she really so weak? If so, how had she survived so long without him? I mean she’s part of the prophecy (or whatever) too. It smacked of paternalistic sexism…have to protect the precious, fragile female at all cost. Oh god, just gag me.

I did really appreciate Jersey Clifford in all of his poetry spewing badness. He felt like he had more depth than all of the other character combined. Cowboy and Lily had a lot of potential too. Similarly the interaction between Jack and his brother was thought provoking. Billy’s experience surely had to be the hardest of any other character. He deserves some credit.

It was hard to reconcile the ‘we have to save the world’ plot line with the ‘innocent love’ storyline. I suppose if I was 15 and didn’t know how much more life had to offer I might be able to relate to the importance of being a couple (holding hands, carrying her books, etc). But as an adult I found the whole thing too…too vanilla. Granted, I am an adult and this is a YA book (and I’d expect it to best appeal to the lower age brackets of the genre). But even if I could get excited about it, I have a hard time believing two people tasked with such a heavy destiny would stop in the middle of it to cuddle and declare their undying love. Not the time people.

My final and extremely inelegant say on the matter is that the book was alright and will likely appeal to Twilight‘s younger fan base.

Review of A.D. Stewart’s Black Pyramid

Leave a reply

I grabbed A.D. Stewart‘s Black Pyramid (Ancient Breeds, #1) off of the KDP free list. As I write this (Feb. 11), I notice that it is free again. Don’t know how long that will last, though.

Description from Amazon:
In a time, when SandWalkers fight BloodSeekers for supremacy, it’s kill or be killed!

Down through time, we thought the lost civilizations died out.
We were wrong…
Find out the truth…
The secrets of the pyramids are about to be revealed…
In the first story within the Ancient Breeds Series

Ancient Breeds Novel:

Melissa Ambers travels to Egypt with one question on her mind. Why me?

Entering the Black Pyramid with mixed feelings- unsure how or why the giant sandstone pyramid appeared out of thin air, she risks everything, her job, her reputation, and her life to unearth the mysteries within.

Entering the tomb, it becomes increasingly apparent that something or someone dwelling within the dark, confines of the Black Pyramid is trying to keep her from learning the secrets buried within.

Entrusted with the powers to protect the humans from total annihilation, Siaak, the keeper of the pyramid, must do everything within his powers to keep the evil vampire, Osiris, locked inside, and trespasser out!

When two humans force their way into his pyramid, he has no choice but to get rid of them! For if they unleash the leader of the BloodSeekers, there is nothing on this earth that can save them again!

Review:
I generally liked the book. Siaak’s genuine desire to do good in the face of evil was wonderful, while his willingness to also kill mercilessly when needed provided a well-rounded understanding of his motivations. Melissa was a little firecracker. She was smart, witty, and fearless. Much like Siaak, I found her endless chatter annoying at times, not always though. I often thought she had insightful questions and could relate to her constant desire for more information, but there were times when lives were on the line (often her own), and I thought, ‘Jesus woman, shut the hell up.’

I really wanted to see the two of them complete each other. There was very little sex in the book, which is fine. But it seemed like, though Siaak could talk a good game (some of the things he says/describes are toe-curling, in a good way), they never seemed to smolder. They didn’t seem particularly impassioned. While his whole fangy thing was smexy, there wasn’t a lot of information (beyond his adamant denials) about the difference between his Sandwalker breed and the vampiric Bloodseeker breed. I kind of got it, but you just have to pick tidbits up along the way, and I never understood where the second breed came from. Was it a mutation, a divine intervention, always been there?

The side characters were fun too. Siaak’s brothers were each good in their own way. They filled the obligatory laid-back jester with unexpected wisdom and brooding, emotionally damaged, hostile roles. I look forward to each of their books ’cause you know that there’ll eventually be one for each of them. Then there was Mark and Elizabeth and the baddies…all good.

I did have a little trouble anchoring myself in time. The book started in Ancient Egypt, but one of the characters can time-travel, so there were a number of modern references that threw me for a loop. Plus, when two of them reenter the storyline after what I think was thousands of years, they leaped right into life (they knew people, one had a job, they had homes, etc.) I couldn’t figure out how that worked, even if time travel was involved.

There were a lot of brand references (Kindle Fire HD, iPhone, iPod, Tic Tacs, Ray Bans, and that’s before even getting to the clothing & shoes) that felt really forced. Why not just an e-reader (or even just a Kindle) or sunglasses? I did appreciate all of the pop culture references, though. Some of them really made me laugh.

In the end, I’d be happy to read another one should it be published. And for the record, I’ve seen a number of covers for this book, and this one (the one with three stacked guys on the front) is by far my favorite. Honestly, it’s the reason I picked the book up in the first place. Yummy.