Review: Debt or Sleep Bankruptcy
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 5, 2013
Because I stayed up until way past my bedtime reading and finally went to sleep when my NOOK (yeah, I said it Amazon - I own a Nook!) hit me in the face.  Ms. Anderson has written vampire stories before (e.g., The Covenant, Blind Date with a vampire, Kristen's Addiction), but in “Crimson Debt” she has created a fresh new spin on her previous vampire mythos by; expanding the creatures within (such as witches, werewolves (oh my!)), describing a mysterious and interesting vampire hierarchy, and Auditors (humans immune to vampire glamour), who protect humans in human/vampire interactions and enforce these laws if they are broken.*SPOILER ALERT*The use of first-person point of view (POV) takes some getting used to, but it does help the reader connect more quickly with the character, so I certainly felt Addison’s conflicted relationship about vampires, however I often felt that she protested a little too much.  When I asked myself why I felt this way, it was because I needed to know more about her job as an auditor.  Yes, there were lots of conflict, but without knowing why that conflict is there, there’s no tension.  What would have helped me agree with her protestations would have been another description of human/vampire crime scene.  There are a lot of examples of Anderson telling us why Addison is conflicted about Corbin, but what helped me connect and understand her mistrust was the Crimson Debt crime scene towards the end of the novel.  I thought if we had another on-the-job scene with Addison in the beginning describing a horrific human/vampire or a ‘typical’ day for her, I would have understood and believed this mistrust she had for Corbin and it would have made her trust, love, and submission (at the end of the novel) more satisfying as a reader.The one thing I didn’t like about the single POV was that we never ‘heard’ from Corbin.  I know I’m weird, but I like knowing what’s in a guy’s head and I thought if we had Corbin’s POV it would have created more depth to his character’s motivation and increased the tension and conflict between him and the other characters (what did he really think of Roderick or Celeste?).  Corbin seemed like the only vampire who wasn't a psychopath (besides Taylor) and this was a result of his turning (‘born into darkness’ – I like this phrase) and his past.  Anderson has experience switching first-person POV with the H/H (e.g., Dirty Girl and Hunger Moon Rising) and I wondered why she didn't do it for this book?I would recommend this book to Anderson fans that enjoyed the “Brides of the Kindred” series and her vampire books.  Because this is the first book, some time was spent describing the H/H for Book 2 and secondary characters to develop this new world.  EA also provided some much anticipated sneak-peaks into Book 2 in her Born to Darkness series and (patiently waiting for) Book 8 of her Brides of the Kindred.