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reader44ever's review
2.0
This book was okay. I've enjoyed the other works I've read by [a:Susan Sizemore|88608|Susan Sizemore|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1254303347p2/88608.jpg] from her Primes series, so I was very disappointed that this one didn't live up to my expectations of a good story from her. It was very confusing at the beginning and hard to get into: Was Valentine the narrator? Was this a book within a book? Were Selim and Siri just characters within her latest script?
Thankfully, I read a review that mentioned the glossary at the end of the book. The glossary helped to answer the questions I had about the terms in the text (strig being one of the most confusing). Understanding the terms helped me get through the story, though it never really got better. Regarding the two main characters: I liked Selim, but never really felt much for Siri. I thought Valentine was more interesting than her.
I think I'll read book 2 ([b:Partners|1017308|Partners (Laws of the Blood, Book 2)|Susan Sizemore|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348751550s/1017308.jpg|1003432]), though, before making a final decision on whether or not to give up on this series.
Thankfully, I read a review that mentioned the glossary at the end of the book. The glossary helped to answer the questions I had about the terms in the text (strig being one of the most confusing). Understanding the terms helped me get through the story, though it never really got better. Regarding the two main characters: I liked Selim, but never really felt much for Siri. I thought Valentine was more interesting than her.
I think I'll read book 2 ([b:Partners|1017308|Partners (Laws of the Blood, Book 2)|Susan Sizemore|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348751550s/1017308.jpg|1003432]), though, before making a final decision on whether or not to give up on this series.
brownbetty's review
2.0
YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS.
Okay, So, there's actually so much going on in this book that I felt vaguely like I'd picked up book two. One sub-plot is "Oh noes, the half-human (gypsy? wut? That is not a species!) half vampire child of these other characters might turn out to be a monster! (Unlike us, who are just law-abiding people-eating vampires.)" That's usually a book three type problem, yanno?
But the very first thing that happens in this pulp vampire book is that we are introduced to an writer who is trying to write a pulp vampire plot and is suffering writer's block. (It is almost universally a bad sign when your characters are suffering writer's block; generally it means the author has utterly run out of ideas about what to write.) It eventually develops that our writer is a vampire. For those following along: A vampire in my vampire novel is trying to write a vampire story.
Then, on page 24, her agent calls her up and tries to convince her that no one will ever want a story where there's a romance with the vampire protagonist, and I nearly fell out of my chair. Then I checked the frontmatter, and discovered that this book was published in 1999, which although it is a solid five years before [b:Twilight|41865|Twilight (Twilight, #1)|Stephenie Meyer|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1361039443s/41865.jpg|3212258], is at least two years after Buffy, five years after [b:Interview with the Vampire|43763|Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)|Anne Rice|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1218672404s/43763.jpg|873132] was adapted to film, and ten years after Forever Knight. I don't know what world her agent is living in. In the end, she has to use her vampire-psychic powers to get her script approved.
The recursive vampire writing is actually a bizarre sort of framing narrative for the actual story. Our vampire writer is using her vampire-psychic powers to spy on the vampire enforcer of Los Angeles as he goes about his duties, and then writing it down. Although the structure of the book suggests that this is the main conflict of the novel (Oh noes, someone is going to make a movie revealing the truth about vampires!) the actual vampire heroes remain mostly ignorant of this fact until nearly the end, when our vampire writer reveals herself, revealsthat she is in fact the vampire-originator of the vampire enforcer line, swoops in and solves all of the problems the vampire enforcer has been struggling with for the whole book, and promises not to reveal the vampire-secret after all. She was suffering from writer's block and it made her a little irrational, okay?
Wut.
Okay, so more on the actual plot. The Vampire-enforcer stuff is kind of interesting, as is the actual mechanics of vampire society and biology. In this book, making a vampire is a long process that starts with taking a human 'companion' (a lover) and ends with secret vampire rites. But the law is that vampires can only be intimate with humans, not with other vampires, so the change is always the end of your love affair, and after they become a vampire they are sent away to be fostered by another vampire line, so as to remove the possibility of vampire-incest.
Much of the book is about the vampire enforcer, Selim, and his human companion, Siri, and Selim's desire to prolong their love affair by keeping it chaste and Siri's frustration with this.
Vampires in this book are a bit like addicts, addicted to slaughter. Every so often, the enforcer comes in to town and allows them to hunt a set number of humans. They gruesomely kill whomever, and then they calm down for a while; if they don't get a hunt, there is a real danger they'll go insane and slaughter indiscriminately.
This makes it a bit difficult to really feel any identification with the vampires. There are basically no humans in this book who aren't at least partially Renfield-ified, and although Siri is pretty upset when she discovers that the vampire lifestyle requires a dedication to serial murder, she eventually decides it's okay because Selim kinda tries to only murder gross people, and besides, he's super hot.
Also, the real villain was writer's block. I'm not over that.
Okay, So, there's actually so much going on in this book that I felt vaguely like I'd picked up book two. One sub-plot is "Oh noes, the half-human (gypsy? wut? That is not a species!) half vampire child of these other characters might turn out to be a monster! (Unlike us, who are just law-abiding people-eating vampires.)" That's usually a book three type problem, yanno?
But the very first thing that happens in this pulp vampire book is that we are introduced to an writer who is trying to write a pulp vampire plot and is suffering writer's block. (It is almost universally a bad sign when your characters are suffering writer's block; generally it means the author has utterly run out of ideas about what to write.) It eventually develops that our writer is a vampire. For those following along: A vampire in my vampire novel is trying to write a vampire story.
Then, on page 24, her agent calls her up and tries to convince her that no one will ever want a story where there's a romance with the vampire protagonist, and I nearly fell out of my chair. Then I checked the frontmatter, and discovered that this book was published in 1999, which although it is a solid five years before [b:Twilight|41865|Twilight (Twilight, #1)|Stephenie Meyer|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1361039443s/41865.jpg|3212258], is at least two years after Buffy, five years after [b:Interview with the Vampire|43763|Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)|Anne Rice|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1218672404s/43763.jpg|873132] was adapted to film, and ten years after Forever Knight. I don't know what world her agent is living in. In the end, she has to use her vampire-psychic powers to get her script approved.
The recursive vampire writing is actually a bizarre sort of framing narrative for the actual story. Our vampire writer is using her vampire-psychic powers to spy on the vampire enforcer of Los Angeles as he goes about his duties, and then writing it down. Although the structure of the book suggests that this is the main conflict of the novel (Oh noes, someone is going to make a movie revealing the truth about vampires!) the actual vampire heroes remain mostly ignorant of this fact until nearly the end, when our vampire writer reveals herself, reveals
Wut.
Okay, so more on the actual plot. The Vampire-enforcer stuff is kind of interesting, as is the actual mechanics of vampire society and biology. In this book, making a vampire is a long process that starts with taking a human 'companion' (a lover) and ends with secret vampire rites. But the law is that vampires can only be intimate with humans, not with other vampires, so the change is always the end of your love affair, and after they become a vampire they are sent away to be fostered by another vampire line, so as to remove the possibility of vampire-incest.
Much of the book is about the vampire enforcer, Selim, and his human companion, Siri, and Selim's desire to prolong their love affair by keeping it chaste and Siri's frustration with this.
Vampires in this book are a bit like addicts, addicted to slaughter. Every so often, the enforcer comes in to town and allows them to hunt a set number of humans. They gruesomely kill whomever, and then they calm down for a while; if they don't get a hunt, there is a real danger they'll go insane and slaughter indiscriminately.
This makes it a bit difficult to really feel any identification with the vampires. There are basically no humans in this book who aren't at least partially Renfield-ified, and although Siri is pretty upset when she discovers that the vampire lifestyle requires a dedication to serial murder, she eventually decides it's okay because Selim kinda tries to only murder gross people, and besides, he's super hot.
Also, the real villain was writer's block. I'm not over that.
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