Readers looking for an independent heroine will cringe, but fans of vampire fiction may find plenty to savor here.
A human woman marries a vampire in this well-crafted, traditional supernatural romance.
Carmen is a painter who has never had much interest in love until she meets mysterious, bewitchingly handsome and boundlessly wealthy Adrian Tallinn. He owns the office building where her art has been commissioned, and after they meet sparks fly. Their romance progresses quickly. When Carmen wrecks her car after a seemingly demonic woman rushes into her path, Adrian buys her a new one. When someone burns down Carmen’s house, Adrian takes her into his guest quarters. The lovers’ physical relationship, however, is chaste, consisting of passionate kisses that stop abruptly when Adrian pulls himself back from Carmen’s neck. When her lover inevitably reveals that he is a vampire, Carmen flees town, but Adrian tracks her down a few months later, and she rejoins him. Meanwhile, Catherine, Adrian’s vampire ex-lover, stalks Carmen, and Adrian appoints himself her protector. The pair’s love for each other is passionate, and though Adrian warns Carmen he would kill her if she left again–she knows too much about vampires–this threat never seems to affect her feelings for him. Catherine makes a satisfyingly sinister villain, though her storyline concludes long before the book’s end. Later, Carmen and Adrian become deeply involved with a group of the country’s vampire leaders, of which Adrian is the second most powerful member, and the group members’ mixed feelings about a human’s participation in their affairs makes for compelling drama. A plot involving a prophecy is somewhat less successful.
Readers looking for an independent heroine will cringe, but fans of vampire fiction may find plenty to savor here.Pub Date: July 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-3778-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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