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lightreadsAn urban fantasy series featuring Vicki Nelson, former cop turned PI due to Retinitis Pigmentosa and failing vision. She becomes entangled with the supernatural world and Henry Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry VIII, vampire, romance writer. Blood Price deals with a murderous demon stalking Toronto. Blood Trail sees Vicki hunting a werewolf killer (why do the second books in urban fantasy series always seem to be the werewolf books? Jim Butcher, I’m looking at you) as Vicki’s human sort of boyfriend Mike Celluci becomes suspicious about Henry. Bloodlines pits them all against an ancient mummy wizard, Blood Pact is a creepy scifi riff on raising zombies from corpses, and Blood Debt involves a haunting and an illegal organ donor operation.
You know, this is a perfect case in point for the importance of context. I bet if I’d read these books ten years ago I would have gotten a lot more out of them. As it is, post-Buffy and just emerging from the massive vampire lit explosion of the past five years, I’m getting pretty tired of the prince of darkness creature of the night shtick. Which is too bad, because these books laid the groundwork for a lot of the more recent material, and I wish I could have read them fresh. (Though it is pretty strange to observe the changes in style evident just over the past fifteen years – urban fantasy has recently discovered explicit sex, and it’s funny now to read vampire books which, for all their gore and omnipresent sexuality, are remarkably non-explicit).
It’s a shame about the timing, because I really did like these books. I liked the quick dialogue, the easy, nearly invisible writing, Henry’s unremarkable bisexuality. I really liked the prickly but no less functional non-monogamy that all the characters seem to take for granted. It’s damn refreshing, and it gives me some hope.
I tolerated the occasional plot contrivance, and my only serious complaint is the general shoddiness of the vision loss plotline. There’s a certain depthless presentation which is nearly indistinguishable from inaccuracy, and I shook my head a lot over the miraculous cure with Vicki’s vampirism. It makes sense, but it left me wondering what the hell the vision loss was for in the first place, since it was never treated with the delicacy and depth to illuminate or change Vicki’s character beyond the most surface details.
Anyway. They’re fun books, really. Rather cheesy (vampires, yo), lacking any pretense at thematic depth that would just get in the way. I read them mostly so I can watch the new TV adaptation – I have a hard-and-fast book before adaptation rule – and I’m glad I did. Distracting, bemusing, undemanding. Just keep in mind that a decade ago they weren’t nearly as clichéd as they are now.
You know, this is a perfect case in point for the importance of context. I bet if I’d read these books ten years ago I would have gotten a lot more out of them. As it is, post-Buffy and just emerging from the massive vampire lit explosion of the past five years, I’m getting pretty tired of the prince of darkness creature of the night shtick. Which is too bad, because these books laid the groundwork for a lot of the more recent material, and I wish I could have read them fresh. (Though it is pretty strange to observe the changes in style evident just over the past fifteen years – urban fantasy has recently discovered explicit sex, and it’s funny now to read vampire books which, for all their gore and omnipresent sexuality, are remarkably non-explicit).
It’s a shame about the timing, because I really did like these books. I liked the quick dialogue, the easy, nearly invisible writing, Henry’s unremarkable bisexuality. I really liked the prickly but no less functional non-monogamy that all the characters seem to take for granted. It’s damn refreshing, and it gives me some hope.
I tolerated the occasional plot contrivance, and my only serious complaint is the general shoddiness of the vision loss plotline. There’s a certain depthless presentation which is nearly indistinguishable from inaccuracy, and I shook my head a lot over the miraculous cure with Vicki’s vampirism. It makes sense, but it left me wondering what the hell the vision loss was for in the first place, since it was never treated with the delicacy and depth to illuminate or change Vicki’s character beyond the most surface details.
Anyway. They’re fun books, really. Rather cheesy (vampires, yo), lacking any pretense at thematic depth that would just get in the way. I read them mostly so I can watch the new TV adaptation – I have a hard-and-fast book before adaptation rule – and I’m glad I did. Distracting, bemusing, undemanding. Just keep in mind that a decade ago they weren’t nearly as clichéd as they are now.