Tony Paul De Vissage

Even though I’ve not had much familiarity with vampire stories, I was more than hooked on this novel, and I can tell that the author has mastered the genre to the point of being able to take it in new directions even as he honors its conventions. The story of the Strigoi family of vampires, or aventurieri, banished from Transylvania in the wake of a murderous feud, could describe the travails of any family unjustly condemned to exile.

Marek Strigoi’s previous ambition in life had been to become a scholar, but after his father and other members of his family are exterminated by a rival, he’s forced to assume leadership of his clan and the title of Shadow Lord, thus becoming the aventurieri Prince’s personal assassin. Yet his urge to seek revenge against his father’s murderer soon puts him in the Prince’s disfavor and Marek finds himself stripped of rank and his entire family exiled from the insular world of Transylvania. The saga of the wandering aventurieri family seeking shelter amid the unfamiliar world of Western Europe conjures timeless themes of loyalty, revenge, honor, and survival. The story smoothly merges unexpected plot twists, intriguing love stories, some truly memorable characters, a mix-up of identities, and fascinating background on Europe in the early 1800’s as the Strigoi clan, members of a “second species,” learn how to cope with the rapidly advancing society of the first.

The author’s style is mature and inspires the kind of trust that keeps the reader eagerly moving through the book. Fast-paced action easily mixes with a vast range of emotional discovery, be it eye-opening adventures in the gentlemen’s clubs of Vienna or the bewilderment of young women coming of age as human or as vampire. The author’s patiently chronicles everything from the lewd to the noble, bringing it all into clear focus for the reader.

Book 1, Shadow Lord, has a robust, epic quality which I feel sure will be deftly extended into the next books of this series. The novel’s shocking conclusion effortlessly conjures up the need for Book 2, which I’m definitely looking forward to.

review by Michael D. Smith… (mehr)

I thoroughly enjoyed this charming short novel which reviews all basic vampire parameters but focuses them through a delightfully fresh lens.

Set in a small Irish town in 1929, the novel effortlessly produces the vampire memes of the innocent village beset a hundred years ago by vampires, and its currently empty, brooding mansion newly occupied by ageless foreigner Karel Novotny, who just happens to have the same name, and exhibit the same vampire-like good looks, as the ghoul hounded from the property over a hundred years ago. We get Karel’s sad tale of his exile from Hungary and the dispossession of his personal fortune, the daughter Brigid who swoons for him, the village girls taking ill and dying as they did a hundred years ago, garlic and crosses, and the vigilante villagers once again roused to murderous ire. Then … we start seeing things quite differently.

1929 is also an interesting date for dealing with newly-merging cultures: old rural values, the neighboring big city where daughter Brigid learns new mores, and newly imported American concepts all mix into and provide some humorous contrast to the vampiric mood.

Highly recommended!

Review by Michael D. Smith… (mehr)

The Night Man Cometh is an intriguing overview of the vampire world, chronicling the life of the French Marquis Damian La Croix from 1249 through 3500 A.D. 1249 is the year that, upon hearing that his betrothed Antoinette is dying of the Plague, Damian chooses to become a vampire not only to flee the near-certainty of his own death from the unstoppable disease, but also to turn Antoinette to the Undeath as well, thus ensuring their immortal love. But the circumstances under which vampires must operate through the ensuing centuries conspire to deny him the romantic companionship which figured so centrally into his desire to choose Undeath.

Becoming a vampire has rendered Damian more or less a wild animal who must hunt human blood to survive, but his deep urge for immortal, romantic love has given him an appreciation of human ethics. Time and again he refrains from killing or from turning others into vampires, even at the cost of his own health or mental stability, as he considers the moral implications of how his acts may affect his quest for transcendent love. Though impelled to survive as a vampire, and guilty of dozens of atrocities against humans over the centuries, at critical moments he chooses cooperation and empathy over raw hunger and lust.

The Night Man Cometh can also be read as a future history of the different ways vampires, as a small subset of the world’s population, could coexist within human society and outside it. Upon becoming a vampire one may be instantly endowed with near-invincible powers, not the least of which is the charisma or glamour which is often all that’s needed to paralyze a victim, but a vampire must also contend with numerous drawbacks including the hunter’s uncertain quest for the proper food, the quick extermination brought by exposure to sunlight, the necessity of relying upon enthralled humans to take care of one during daylight hours, the possibility of being attacked by vengeful humans during those vulnerable hours, and, oddly, the fact that buried aspects of one’s human personality may come to the fore to create fresh conflict and instability.

The vampires become what they must to survive: sometimes they are mercenary soldiers, sometimes they are prisoners, and often they must fake their deaths to start new lives as existing human generations vanish beneath them. The book posits different kinds of vampires: the Vampyre from England who converts a victim via a method more akin to infection, and the winged Sansmort from France, who employs a more psychological method of “turning” the victim.

What I drew from this book was the sense of a tragic choice of a rather unsatisfactory immortality in order to flee the terror of personal extinction. But cheating death only brings Undeath, not true eternal life. And the same hungers Damian had while human are magnified in this new state and uncomfortably accompany him through the centuries. Yet his still intact deep human nature offers a possibility of breaking out of that endless cycle of disappointment.

review by Michael D. Smith… (mehr)

This very enjoyable pair of short stories begins with Identity, in which a thief learns the hard way about the dangers of not choosing his victims more carefully. In The Best Dentist in Orange County, vampire Domingo Leyenda wakes from his slumber with a toothache — something that has never happened to him before. Apparently Domingo should not have bitten that muscle-clad surfer the night before. When he tells her about the problem, Domingo’s sister finds him a dentist that keeps evening hours.

Both of these stories prove very entertaining. Identity manages to pack in fun surprises in just a few pages. The Best Dentist in Orange County contains a bit of everything for readers to enjoy: humor, an engaging, out-of-the-ordinary vampire tale, and a hint of romance. This fun pair of stories is recommended for both urban fantasy and paranormal romance readers.

~ Bitten by Books for AReCafe… (mehr)