ALL THE DOGS ARE DANCING j m goguen

ALL THE DOGS ARE DANCING is an absolute triumph in terms of world building.  The post-apocalyptic North America that Burner and Aaron traverse has texture, beauty, foreboding, strange perils, deep history, and layers that give it a strange plausibility despite being fill with roaming lions, bands of human cannibals, werewolf fight clubs, and terrifying deadwalkers.

Burner has a great deal of charm as a protagonist and the planned future alpha of his pack--which makes a peaceful subsistence living  migrating back and forth across the re-wilded countryside and staying away from the cities which are largely dystopian nightmares.

The plot, however… well.  It starts off as a risky rescue mission but quickly becomes a disorganized zigzag across the country punctuated by torture, explosions, more torture, and more explosions.  While Burner and Aaron instigate a few situations they spend the latter half of the story largely being rescued by more influential individuals.  The author makes use of some pretty huge coincidences, a couple of info-dumps, and the story eventually just peters out without anything in the way of an obvious conclusion.

This story is also very much a “with romantic elements” rather than a romance, but the charms of the main characters are undeniable and they do get a happily-ever-at-least-for-a-while. but it’s kind of a bittersweet one compared to the life Burner was living in chapter one. I found the entire book wildly original and entertaining but hope that in her future endeavors the author decides to focus more on blending these aspects with a plot that properly resolves by the end.

That said the vampires-by-another-name in the story are a truly novel take on the vampire idea in their origins, attributes, and philosophies. Goguen has mastered the art of not over-explaining how the supernatural-esque elements of the novel work, and they stand apart for the cliches that are now so common.  That alone makes me inclined to see what else this author may have written and look for opportunities to return to this dark world.

Review copy courtesy of Netgalley, 2/5

MASKED LONGING alana delacroix

MASKED LONGING is a vampire adventure-romance executed with professional polish.  The vampires are of the super-hero type with all the speed, strength, psychic ability and longevity advantages but really none of the disadvantages.   Estelle is assuming the duties as the most important vampire queen’s head of military/security.

This story is clearly part of a series and the author does a pretty good job of getting the reader up to speed, except for taking a very long time to explain that the masquerada, our hero Stephen being one, are equally long lived human-to-human shapeshifters.  Both heroine and hero have hundreds of years of baggage that is getting in the way of them getting together romantically, and there is also an inconvenient war going on.

Generally I am a huge fan of a romance where the female is more alpha than the male.  However at about the half way point of the book Estelle makes a horrendous decision that involves deserting her duties and gets a bunch of people she is responsible for killed—an outcome she has a passing one sentence of regret about.  Having no respect whatsoever for the heroine meant that the sudden resolution of the previously crippling emotional barriers to love, in the last few pages of the book, didn’t really have the impact it was probably meant to.

A review copy was provided courtesy of Netgalley, 2/5

THE VAMPIRE WITH THE PINK HANDBAG sharee greene

I wanted to like The Vampire with the Pink Handbag, I really did. It is gay fiction, it has vampires--two of my favorite things. Oriole, a unfeasibly gorgeous male teenage vampire is going to a school specifically for vampires for the first time. He immediately becomes friends with two vampire girls, Jamie and Pear. He also immediately gets caught up in a tumultuous romantic relationship with another boy called Josh, and entangled in Josh's mysterious connection with two other powerful teen vampires, Roland and, um, Rayon. (Yes, a sexy mind-reading vampire named after a cheap synthetic fiber).

My first stumbling block was that none of the characters are very nice. They behave erratically and several of the 'love interest' males are extremely abusive, violent, judgemental, unfaithful and controlling. But that's fine so long as they love you, apparently. I get that vampires in this world are slow to mature and at the mercy of a turbo-charged form of adolescence, but that doesn't mean I find their melodramatic dialogue and sexual violence acceptable and entertaining. (By contrast Edward Cullen starts to look like a sensitive new age metrosexual.)

I suppose I could have gone with the premise and content of the book if the writing and formatting had allowed me to get swept up in the hyper-hormonal world of vampire college. Unfortunately Ms. Greene's prose is feels like it needs some time to mature. The narrative seems more focused on costume than motivation, and is rife with shifting points of view and jarring word choices. Add to that the lack of right justification and spacing between paragraphs that ranges from none to four of five lines for no apparent reason, and reading this book became something of a chore.

The Vampire with the Pink Handbag is a reasonable and timely idea for a teen vampire novel but it fails in the execution, quickly becoming a mire of head hopping and bed hopping lacking either the style or narrative momentum needed to make this a book a pleasure to read.

2/5

Cross-posted with POD People

FLESH AND BLOOD Reay Tannahill

Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex is readable enough for the purposes of entertainment. It feels like the book compiled mainly to satisfy prurient interest. One chapter near the end deals with both werewolves and vampires. It is a rather disorganised collection of early myths and stories relating to these creatures. The version I have is the hardback from 1975, the cover shown is for a later paperback edition. This book is an inoffensive novelty but worth acquiring only if you want a really complete collection of vampire non-fiction. It contains nothing that cannot be found in other, superior volumes.

2/10

THE VAMPIRE FAMILY Kristin Battestella

The Vampire Familyopens with 50 pages of rapid fire royal melodrama. The evil Antonio emerges from harsh poverty and by cunning and blithe murder takes a throne. An awful lot more than that happens, and lacking a pause to appreciate the impact of all this rape, murder, torture and betrayal--and lacking a sympathetic protagonist or a point-of-view character, I have to admit is passed as rather a blur with Antonio somehow both the hero and the villain of the piece.

Around page fifty the story leaps nine centuries into the future, but still lands thirty some years short of the present day. Surrounded by the female vampires created in the first part of the story (his family in more ways than one) Antonio now has plans for world domination. The time period bounces around rather a lot from there with an ongoing blur of action involving Antonio, his women and various secondary characters.

Somewhere in the middle of the murders, dungeons, zombies, torture and a cast of scores I realised I just could not get interested in this story. The Vampire Family has an authentic air of the old vampire tales like Varney the Vampire or even Dracula, but as a modern reader I find I want a character to root for, and some insight into his thoughts and feelings. And that is one thing this book doesn't have. Others may enjoy the convoluted family and their exciting lives, but this just wasn't my kind of book.

2/5

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH Wendy Pini

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, Volume 1
Wendy Pini
Go! Cmi
graphic novel: $19.99
2/5

This graphic novel is the first in a series (very) loosely based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe. While not about vampires per se, it does concern a quest to achieve immortality--so I am going to consider it "close enough". The creator, Wendy Pini, is most famous for her work on Elfquest.

This graphic is a hybrid comic/manga with strong yaoi (gay erotic) themes. Some commenters have been a little shocked by that--unused to comics with adult material. However these kinds of themes are entirely welcome to me as a fan of similar work by the likes of Donna Barr and Coleen Doran.

The main characters are the reclusive Anton Prosper who embarks upon a secret scientific project, and the gorgeous Steffan Kabala, soon of a preeminent geneticist and a scientist in his own right. Both characters are rendered as a cross between an Olympic swimmer and an anorexic model. The general styling of the world and people seems exotic but haphazard.

However in this case I was disappointed. The plot is slow moving, the art work suffers from a lack of distinct line work and is weighed down by amateurish digital techniques like filters and gradients. While this is obviously a work of love Pini has spent a lot of time on it simultaneously seems thin and poorly worked out.

For example, Prosper effectively tortures himself in penance for using a single lab rat (at least I think it was a rat) yet provides his pet black panther with flocks of goats to recreationally hunt and kill. Ultimately, Masque of the Red Death had some charming moments and clever conceits, but equally deep flaws in rendering and general lack of engaging plot. I think this graphic novel may amuse Pini's more established fans but it is too self-indulgent to win her any new followers.

Masque of the Red death . com

Other Reviews:
Deb Aoki [About.com]: [3/5] "While there are a few missteps, such as the garish costumes, the long-winded dialogue, and a more 'grown-up' plot than most yaoi manga, it does accomplish something unexpected...."
ComicsBulletin: [5/5] "Taken all together, Masque of the Red Death is a superb opening volume."

See also:
GoodReads : Wikipedia