Review: ~ Review by Beverley
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2014
3.75 of 5 starsFor original review see The Prism Book Alliance Blog onlineThis is a difficult novella to review for several reasons. The main reason being that this novella is Vol. 3.1 in a series called ‘The Narcoleptic Vampire’. The premise for this series is intriguing and a little complex, which is why I found this novella a little difficult to read. I found it a little difficult to engage with characters when I was constantly trying to work out the background to the plot. This was my problem though, and I’m sure wouldn’t happen if this novella was read in order with those previous in this series being read first.My second reason is the religious subject matter again, I hope it is explained a little more in the previous volumes. However, as I am not well acquainted with the Book of Revelations in the Bible, a lot of the reasoning behind the post apocalyptic world this story is set in, I found confusing. There are a lot of mentions of the ‘Rapture’ and it seems many people, and they fear all the children, have suddenly disappeared. Many see this as a biblical ‘end of days’ and call this time the ‘Tribulation’ and, as would seem predictable, either join groups for power or ‘get’ religion. Though the presence of so many supernatural beings is not explained here.Whilst out searching for children, another element I was not sure of the reasoning behind, Zeek finds a badly injured human called Thorn who has almost total amnesia. Most of the story, from then on, is regarding  Thorn, who he is and the mutual attraction between him and Zeek, a vampire. As Zeek lives with ‘Willow”s group of assorted vampires and supernatural beings, Thorn is taken there to recover and to be investigated. This is where knowledge of the back story would have been very useful, as I was a little lost in this strange mix of supernatural beings who seem to have no compunction about killing humans who were on the ‘wrong side’, but were lead by a zealously, religious, Christian vampire.My third difficulty is that the element, that I congratulate the author for undertaking, is a spoiler, and I would be wrong to write about it here. I will just say that it’s the first time I have read about this example of nature in all her variety, and it is treated well in this novella. I had many problems with the christian back story but that is not for this review.An interesting vignette better read in conjunction with the novels in this series, which are I believe m/f romances.