Reading in Reykjavík

Originally published in March 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is the third installation in the Anita Blake - Vampire Hunter series. Blake is an Animator whose job it is to raise zombies from the grave, along with other duties: the occasional execution of murderous rogue vampires and work as an adviser to the police in cases where her expertise is needed. In this case, the action starts when Blake is called out to a murder scene where a man has been attacked by a pack of vampires. Blake herself soon runs into them and has a narrow escape. She soon meets an ancient vampire who wants to return vampiredom to the old order: no integration, no citizenship, just a few clever and powerful vampires against humanity, with the weak and the stupid destroyed. She plays an important part once the battle for the city - between the “civilised” vamps and the “wild” vamps - begins. Her hate/desire relationship with master vampire Jean-Claude continues to intensify, and she meets a living man i...

I hadn’t planned to review this book, but then I realised that not only was it a perfect fit for the Gothic reading challenge, but also that I had already reviewed the previous four books in the series, so why stop there? It fits the Gothic theme because much of the story seems to happen at night, in a medieval style castle (even if it does have electricity and hot and cold running blood water), parts happen on a medieval battlefield which is pretty damn scary, there are vampires involved and supernatural threats, there is considerable angst, and there is cloak-and-dagger villainy that threatens the heroine (who, however, is no shrinking violet and is fully capable of defending herself). Intro, necessary for understanding of some of the below. Cue a bad Christopher Lee vocal imitation doing the starting voiceover to an episode of The Dark and the Dangerous : "The Darkyn were once people, but centuries ago they became infected with an organism that stopped their ageing process...

Originally published in June 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Original Spanish title: Las Piadosas Author: Federico Andahazi Translator: Albert Manguel Year published: 1998 (original), 2000 (translation) Genres: Fantasy, gothic horror Where got: Public library The story: In the wet summer of 1816, five people arrive at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Leman: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin and her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, Byron’s secretary. Upon arriving, Polidori finds a mysterious letter in his room, written by a monster who proposes a deal with him: something of his in exchange for literary fame. Polidori, who has suffered much humiliation at the hands of his employer, accepts the deal, but not before further humiliations and events that convince the others that he is going mad. Technique and plot: The translation is fluid and beautifully done and the book comes across as if it had been written in English. The style is remi...

Click image to read about the challenge My second Gothic Reading Challenge book, but the first to be reviewed. I’m working on the review for the other one. Fits the Gothic theme because: a lot of it takes place at night, there are vampires, ghosts and demons involved, there is angst, the heroine shows some genuine Too Stupid To Live behaviour (a required plot element in the Gothic novels of old), and the hero is tall, dark and dangerous, and was alive during the Gothic era. Genre: Urban fantasy, romance Year of publication: No. in series: 2 Setting & time: London, UK; contemporary Inexperienced Summoner Allegra Telford is in London to prove she can summon and bind ghosts when she begins to have dreams about a wounded, bleeding man. Coming across him for real wasn’t in the bargain, but she does and is swept into an adventure involving ghosts, demons and Moravian Dark Ones (aka “my vampires must be unique” by any other name). There are hardships to overcome and the rew...

From the book: He found the fact that she hid the candy and the books in her desk rather endearing. He had even read one of the books— Pride and Prejudice —although he had thought many of the heroine’s problems could have been solved if someone had simply strangled her mother. Genre: Urban fantasy/paranormal romance Year of publication: 2005 No. in series: 2 Setting & time: Chicago, USA; contemporary Darkyn (i.e. vampire) Thierry Durand, cured in body but not in mind after the horrific events described in If Angels Burn , has escaped from captivity and arrives in Chicago, full of angst and knowing that he cannot be sure of being able to control himself from going totally berserk when met with difficult situations. He feels like he needs to redeem himself for past events and plans to start by exacting revenge on a group of men who mutilated a young protégé of the doctor who healed him. In Chicago, heiress Jema Shaw is trying to live a normal life in the shadow of ...

Originally published in July 2004, in 2 parts Book 25 in my first 52 books challenge. I have edited this review slightly for the sake of clarity. I think it's fitting to post this now, since I am again taking an interest in paranormal literature. Author: Christopher Frayling (author & editor), et al. Year published: 1991 Pages: 429 Genre: Literary theory, literature Sub-genre(s): Vampire stories Where got: Public library I had considerable interest in vampire stories when I was studying English literature at university, and even wrote a final essay on Dracula for an interesting course I took on horror literature. I used this book as one of my sources, but never read it all the way through, only concentrating on the first part, which traces the history of vampires in literature. The contents of the book: The first part of the book is Frayling’s dissertation on the vampire in literature. Although vampire stories owe much to folk-tales they made the jump into l...

I found the first two books in this series at the library, and dearly hope they will buy the remaining six in the series. I feel I need to read these books because I think that while Viehl has done a good job of making the spin-off Kyndred books that I have been reading independent of the Darkyn books, I feel I need to know more about the world and background they take place in. Year published: 2005 Series and no.: Darkyn, #1 Genre: Urban fantasy, paranormal romance Setting & time: Chicago and New Orleans, USA, with scenes in Rome, Italy; 2000’s Chicago reconstructive surgeon Dr. Alexandra Keller repeatedly refuses to see an out-of town patient despite his increasingly urgent and generous offers of reimbursement, because she doesn’t want to leave the patients under her care for the time it would take to examine him and do the surgery in New Orleans, which he is not willing to leave. But Michael Cyprien is not used to people saying ‘no’ to him and has her kidnapped and brought to...

Here is the opening line: "Imps?" I blinked in surprise at the completely unexpected question. "I beg your pardon?" "Imps? You are imp removals, ja? " The woman who had answered the buzzer connected to an expensive cream-colored stone building didn't look insane, but how many people meet you at the door by asking if you were there to remove imps? On it goes from there, a wacky, funny, sexy urban fantasy adventure that sometimes reads more like a parody of the genre.

When the publishing date of this book was pushed forward, it left Lynn Viehl’s publisher unable to print and send out advance reading copies (known in the publishing industry simply as ARCs), Lynn decided to take matters into her own hands and offered the readers of her blog, Paperback Writer a chance to read the book by sending out e-ARCS, in exchange for reviews (the offer has now expired). This book will be in bookshops on October 6th. This is the first book in a spin-off series from the Darkyn books by Viehl, featuring some characters readers of that series will be familiar with. Year published: 2009 (coming in October) Genre: Urban fantasy Series: The Kyndred (#1) Setting & time: (mostly) Atlanta, Georgia; contemporary. For those who want to be totally surprised by this book: potential SPOILERS coming up. …. … .. . .. … …. The Story: Jessa Bellamy has a psychic talent that has helped her build a business that screens job applicants for companies, but someone has discover...

Year published: 2003 Genre: Paranormal romance, mystery Setting & time: The Czech Rebublic, modern timeless The Story: Joy Randall doesn’t believe in the existence of vampires. Nevertheless, she humours her best friend Roxy – who does believe – and goes with her to the Czech Republic to seek them out. The vampires Roxy wants to find are the “dark ones”, tortured but not really evil vampires that best-selling author C.J. Dante writes about. These dark ones are always male, and they can be saved from eternal damnation only if they find their Beloved , human women who are their soul-mates. Almost immediately after they arrive, one of those dark ones makes mental contact with Joy, and she has recurring visions where she shares his feelings and he calls her his beloved. He has to be one of the three men who are fighting for her attention, but which one? There is gorgeous Dominic, the owner of a travelling goth fair; handsome, smart, likeable Christian, a local resident; and tall, sex...

Is this a sexy cover, or what? This is the cover for the British edition of one of Katie MacAlister's paranormal romances. It's well-designed and well-balanced and the red colour (my scanner didn't quite reproduce it as red as it really is), the woman with a crossbow and the gothic lettering (not to mention the title) leaves no-one in doubt that it is a vampire story, probably a thriller, possibly a horror story, while the title playfully suggests romance. The only problem is, it‘s misleading. No woman in the book wears a dress covered with bats under a full moon, and there is certainly no female vampire (or even vampyre) killer in the story. This, in my book, is enough to make it a bad cover, however well-designed and sexy. The American cover, while cheesy as hell, at least isn't misleading, except maybe by overemphasising the romance aspect: Honestly, though, if I had to choose, I think I would take the British cover, misleading as it is, because at least it's coo...

Year published: 2005 Genre: Supernatural mystery thriller Setting & time: The USA, Europe and Turkey, 15th to 21st century Warning: minor SPOILERS ahead The Story: The story is narrated by a historian who tells the story of a desperate hunt for Dracula. Mysterious books have been delivered to several people, mostly librarians and historians, that suggest that someone wants them to know that Dracula lives. But once they begin searching for clues as to his whereabouts, they are warned off (or are they? - I suspect they are being tested rather than warned) by a mysterious force that they suspect is Dracula himself. The hunt covers several centuries, through the research the searchers have to do to uncover the truth, but the main story begins in the 1930s and spans the middle decades of the 20th century and tells of three generations of historians who race against time to discover the secret location of Dracula's tomb and just what it is he wants with them. Technique and plot:...

Genre: Paranormal romance Year of publication: 2004 Setting & time: Toronto, Canada; present day Some themes: Love, jealousy, madness, sex Story: Rachel Garrett has been stuck on the night shift in the morgue for three years and thinks it sucks. A madman is stalking Etienne Argeneau and trying to kill him, 1) out of professional jealousy and, 2) because Etienne is a vampire and the stalker has watched too many episodes of Buffy . One night, after a nearly successful assassination, Etienne is brought to the morgue with a bullet in his heart and Rachel saves his life by pulling it out. The second time they meet is when he is again brought in, and this time the stalker has followed and when he tries to behead Etienne, Rachel gets in the way and is mortally wounded and Etienne turns her into a vampire to save her life. At first she is incredulous and thinks she must be comatose and dreaming, but then she begins to accept what has happened and she and Etienne enter into a sexual re...

Author: Mary Janice Davidson Year published: 2004 Pages: 255 First in a series. The Story: Elizabeth “Betsy” Taylor is a talkative, shallow shoe-addict with an attitude that comes her in good steed but also causes problems when she is struck by a car and rises two days later as a vampire (read the book to find out why). The discovery that her stepmother has stolen all her designer shoes and intended to bury her wearing a pink suit (a colour she hates) and cheap shoes initially upsets her more than being dead. Everything indicates that she is the new Queen of the vampires: she can enter churches, touch crosses and say “God” without any discomfort; instead of burning her, holy water only makes her sneeze; daylight just makes her sleepy; and dogs and people are attracted to her like iron filings to a magnet. Not to mention that men get horny just looking at her, something she has never experienced before. She soon discovers that there are two vampire clans in the city: Nostradamus’s c...