Raja's Blog

This is quite an entertaining book, once it gets started … which took a while, according to my tastes. Ignacio somewhat jokingly compared it to Dying Inside when he first told me about it; while the lead characters have similarities, this is nowhere near as beautifully written or compelling … on the other hand, it doesn't take itself at all as seriously. This is pretty much your standard first book in a series of humorous Vampire murder mysteries in rural Louisiana ;-). The novel opens well, with the first chapter setting up the main two characters, and putting them into action immediately, but after that, much less happens for the next 70 or so pages. Then a character's death starts things really rolling. By the time somebody close to the narrator is accused of murder, the book becomes hard to put down, and near the end, I was wondering if the author would have enough space to close the narrative threads. She does, because by then she was moving at breakneck speed. Perhaps (probably?) the author did this on purpose: Start out slow, and just keep building and building speed, but I think more uniform pacing might have improved the book.

Overall, I rate it 9 of 10. If I have a chance, I'll stop by the MCPL tonight before meeting Ignacio at Vintage Phoenix, and try to pick up the next book(s) in the series. If I don't have time, it's not a complete tragedy; I should reread Red Thunder (our next SFDG book) soon anyway.