Review: Somewhat thin human-vampire erotica and horror
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 7, 2013
BEHIND BLUE EYES, by D.M. Wolfenden.After several generations of family history illustrating vampire-human conflict, two main characters emerge, the older vampire Cain and innocent human Mia, who meet when she's 9. The story centers around his protection of her and they find an instant caring for one another.The story begins in the UK and there's a fair bit of British jargon and phraseology, but once the scene shifts to the US that language is hard to relate. There are many wording repetitions, e.g., "he healed very quickly" that become gong-like in the reader's mind, but despite the short declarative sentences the book generally reads well.Overall it seems as though written by an adult with good grammar who is intentionally writing for a 10-year-old. But this is no book for kids, as illustrated by Mia's descriptions of how she was beaten and sexually fondled by her stepfather. Somehow that did not make Mia sympathetic, but rather shallow. The abuse does not result in Mia's growth and so appears more titillation than character development. Mia remains rather flat and suggestible throughout the story.The book could use editing, there is repeated misuse of appositive construction. There are many mentions of minor characters and their activities that appear to be scene or character development but which lead nowhere and turn out to be unimportant.I felt I was being told the story but not being shown the story. Much of the content is one character relating past events to another, or the narrator writing as in a journal. This kind of writing quickly becomes uninteresting and does not allow the reader to make guesses about what's coming. In short, it suffocates the reader's interest in the characters and the story. The descriptions of action work better and provoke more identification with the characters.When we first meet Mia her speech and actions are consistent with a young girl's, which is charming until one notices that everybody else, including the narrator, speaks at the same third-grade level, and Mia herself never grows up, although she is 18 when the story ends.In the story arc you see a lot of plotting to sell Mia as a sex slave, then a lot of torture as Cain brings the perpetrators to cruel justice. Mia has little inner life, and does not react the way a young girl or woman would to the sexual assaults she suffers. As a young girl she is afraid of being around stepfather Phil, her first abuser, and that seems realistic enough, but as the story goes on, plausible reactions to further abuse don't develop and she merely continues on. Mia does not show the personality required of a lead character.The bad guys and gals are indeed bad, and they all come to gruesome ends, which makes the book a kind of morality play with blood, gore, and genitalia.Cain, the secondary character, never grows a personality. He's like a benevolent stalker, who becomes young Mia's protector and hovers in the shadows of her life, sworn to protect her yet not able to prevent the bad mostly sexual things that happen to her. Then he is able to swoop in and wreak bloody vengeance. So it's a love story between a human and a vampire in the end.The plot would benefit from paring down the unimportant side stories, and focusing on the growth arcs of the main characters, such as who they are and who they become. As is, it's a somewhat thin human-vampire romance with lots of sexual titillation.