Tag Archives: vampire

Book Review of NOS4A2, by Joe Hill

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I borrowed an audio copy of Joe Hill‘s NOS4A2 through the local library.

Description from Goodreads:

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.

Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”

Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son. 

Review:

I’m surprised that I don’t have more to say on this one. But, having finished it, I’m just kind of like, “OK, I’m done.” I have no strong feelings either direction. I didn’t hate it and I didn’t love it. I was disappointed in the lack of what I would consider a happy ending, though it did mostly wrap up. And I 100% appreciated having a positively represented fat man who was lovable and loved. Lou was absolutely my favorite character. (Though the fact that he lost all his weight in the end compromised the fat representation a little bit. Not completely though. He was fat the whole time he was heroic and wonderful.)

This was my first Joe Hill book and I didn’t remember that he’s Stephen’s King son when I picked the book up. I thought his writing very like his fathers and was a little surprised to find him referencing some of Kings work in the book. It was odd.

The narrator (Kate Mulgrew) did a great job with the exception of the times she stopped for dramatic pauses before finishing sentences. “He walked into the……kitchen.” That seriously got on my nerves. All in all, it was pretty good but didn’t blow my socks off.

Already Dead

Book Review of Already Dead (Joe Pitt #1), by Charlie Huston

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I borrowed a copy of Already Dead, by Charlie Huston, from the local library.

Description from Goodreads:

Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they’re true. Only it’s not like the movies or old man Stoker’s storybook. It’s worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them. Just ask Joe Pitt. 

There’s a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. That’s just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word.

From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he’s tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn’t make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan–it ain’t easy. It’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition–the city’s most powerful Clan–and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who’s gone missing in Alphabet City.

Now the Coalition and the girl’s high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down . . . and before the sun comes up.

Review:

Early on in this novel I thought it was going to be a total fail for me. I wasn’t certain of Joe’s voice to start with, and then the first female character was introduced. She was simply a bar patron, no one he even spoke to. But the way he ogled her, the way he referred to her only in terms of ‘the number,’ ‘the number in the dress,’ etc made me go, “Oh, it’s gonna be one of those books.” I resigned myself to a disappointing read. 

And while I think the representation of women in the book remained problematic, with one large exception, I really did end up liking the book. The exception is that the plot is based around rape. Several years ago, I started noting in reviews when a book includes rape as a plot device. I started doing this because it’s so problematically frequent in books. Since I started, I swear it feels like a full 2/3 of the books I review include it. Are there really so few other options out there to progress a plot? It’s not that I take issue with rape in books in general, I take issue with it being all pervasive and everywhere. So, I note it when I see it. And here, in Already Dead it’s not graphic, but it’s especially heinous, what he’s trying to stop. 

Outside of that, I liked Joe. I liked his smart mouth, his gruff attitude, his buried but real soft side. I liked the gritty representation of New York and the inclusion of quite a lot of diversity. Granted, being a dozen years old, the language in the book is sometime a little cringe-worthy, but time ages all things. All in all, I plan of continuing the series.

Drawing Dead

Book Review of Drawing Dead (Dana McIntyre Must Die #1), by S.M. Reine

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I picked up a freebie copy of Drawing Dead, by SM Reine from Amazon.

Description:

The vampire slayer is turning into a vampire? Over her dead body. 

Dana McIntyre has been bitten by a master vampire. She’s infected with the venom. And after killing hundreds of vampires to keep Las Vegas safe, she’d rather die than turn. 

There might be a cure. But the only way to get it is through Nissa Royal, a vampire with close ties to the masters of Las Vegas. Nissa is dangerous — too dangerous to be allowed to live, much less work alongside. 

But if Dana dies, vampires win Vegas. If she doesn’t die, she becomes one of the bloodless. The cure’s her only chance. In this deadly game of hold ’em, Dana’s drawing dead, and whatever happens next, there’s no changing her losing hand. Dana only knows one thing: If she’s going down, she’s taking as many vampires as possible on her way out… 

Review:

I was pretty disappointed in this book. But largely because I went in with really high hopes. I bought it because the heroine is a fat, butch lesbian and how often do they get to be the heroes in a story…an action hero no less? It wasn’t the diversity aspect of the story that let me down though. Dana is just as the cover suggests (and YES she even got to be fat and butch on the cover!). She’s married to a butch-ish woman. So, Reine didn’t even play into the ‘one of them has to be femme’ trap. I love that. The police chief is a ball-busting trans woman, and it’s engaged in the book, not just dropped in as a token. And not all the other characters are straight, white, cis, etc. So, I’m not disappointed to have bought a book that includes a lot of things I wish more books incorporated (Positively represented fat women on book covers? Hell yes, more!).

Unfortunately, what let me down was that Dana is so darned unlikeable. She’s rude and vile and dismissive of people who care for her. I don’t mean that as any sort of ‘proper women don’t act that way.’ Heck yes, give me more cursing, belching, sarcastic women. I mean it in the sense that she’s almost cruel to a wife that loves her, prioritizing her own wishes over heartfelt pleas. She snarks off to people who are actively trying to help her, as if they are being unreasonable, etc. 

What’s more, Dana is basically suicidal for a large part of this book, which means she runs head-long into battles with so little regard for her own life that it felt too much like a miracle that she continued to survive. Heroes/heroines that are so perfect in battle that they never even consider fear is are flat and uninteresting, IMO. 

All in all, Reine’s writing is fine. And despite there being 40 books in this universe (as of the publication of Drawing Dead, the book is readable as a standalone. But I wouldn’t go so far as to claim you don’t feel the lack of those other books. There were several decisions important in this book that are made based on the events of other books, and you notice.