Review: The Devil Wears Whatever He Wants!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 18, 2011
Imagine that you get the job of your dreams, the paycheck of the uber rich, the travel and expense account of the golden parachute crowd and then you fall in love with a dark, handsome stranger who runs the company that just hired you. So far so good, right?Imagine the shock, then, to discover the company is run by some very, very, very, very, very old vampires--and oh by the way, Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome drinks a cocktail called Bulls Blood, but I'm not saying a word about what that does or doesn't mean. Most of the other employees of SNAP think he's Gay, and who knows what he was into a few hundred years ago. I mean, really--you can't be that endlessly gorgeous and not have everyone fall in love with you at least sometime...even in 1493, or whatever. In this century, though, he's decidedly heterosexual, in that slightly ambiguous, but not really, metrosexual kind of way. Tall, Dark, Handsome and Sensitive, but not Lilith Fair sensitive--Strong sensitive.With this somewhat implausible beginning, author Michele Drier begins SNAP: The World Unfolds. Drier's protagonist, Maxmillia Gwenoch, top editor of SNAP, a celebrity media mega-company with offices--well, everywhere--starts her new career as SNAP's top human corporate employee. It's enough to give Human Resource professionals everywhere anemia.Without giving up the, may I say the word, delicious intrigues and plotlines, I have to say that Drier's witty repartee is ripe with understatement, and then hyperbole and then, just to spice it up, drop dead cinema-speak, the kind that goes so well with those proverbial Hollywood air kisses. Among my favorites in this class of well-timed one-liners were the wonderful outtakes from her mother's mantras--Example: Don't get involved with someone prettier than you; they know it. (Did Drier's mother know my mother?).At first, I wondered why a writer of Drier's abundant talent would pursue the vampire genre, but I have to say, she pulled me in, and I kept reading. Her vampires are sophisticated, urbane, worldly, clever and just bitchy enough to be interesting. I found some of the female vampires edgy and beautiful enough to be worthy of their own HBO show, and I look forward to the future roles of the characters called Demons, who are somewhere between babysitter and martial arts killers. All in a night's work!Drier has a second in this delightful series coming out in spring of 2012 called SNAP: New Talent. Watch for it, and pick up this hefty first one for many long nights of bloody good fun!