#vampire reviews

[elisaintime]

A no-boys-allowed vampire coven terrorizes modern day Berlin--but is it female empowerment or a cautionary tale?? Either way, 2010's We Are the Night aka Wir Sind Die Nacht was a much needed breakthrough to Germany's epic vampire film drought.

[cold-reviews]

The Fire Within My Heart (Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series #1) Review

Ayshen Irfan @thevampireaesthetic kindly sent me a copy of this book to review. I will start by saying I have immense respect for them as a self-published author. I think that’s frankly kick ass and incredibly inspiring. The last couple of chapters especially gripped me and I have a lot of thoughts I wish to convey. I’ll try to keep the first part spoiler free and then add some thoughts after going more in-depth. Disclaimer: These are just my personal thoughts, not aimed to hurt or offend anybody. If you disagree or have a different opinion that is just as valid. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. I strongly encourage anyone to form their own opinions by reading this book regardless of what I have to say about it.

Review:

The Fire Within My Heart follows Scarlet as she is catapulted into the world of the supernatural after being horrifically murdered by a serial killer and next granted immortality when the vampire Nikolaus finds her before she can take her last breath. Throughout the book, we follow her navigating seeking justice for her murderer, her new supernatural existence, and her complicated romantic relationship with her vampire master.

The story unfolds in a rich universe mixing your classic vampires with high fantasy and the arcane. I’d say that for the most part, the lore of the world and the supernatural powers are explained and described in a way that makes it easy to follow and doesn’t feel too heavy.

It has a great cast of characters. I think it’s very apparent in the text that the author has a great affection for their characters and there are some great character dynamics. I especially loved the ragtag family dynamic that develops amongst the most unlikely of supernatural creatures. The strength of the story in my opinion is really the characters and their strong and yet at times troubled ties to each other.

There are undoubtedly some heavy themes in here of death and violence and very questionable morals at best but the book manages to balance it with humor. There are tropes in here that I loved as well. The main character and her vampire master share a special bond almost like a contracted demon in which they can feel each other's pain and emotion. I thought it an interesting layer to their dynamic and I’m curious to see how it will develop. That said, the romance here is not a slow burner and the attraction between the two is apparent instantly. Some people might enjoy that, although for me personally, it felt a little rushed and I didn’t quite buy into the justification that the vassal/master relationship justified the instant attraction.

Ayshen's iteration of vampires takes the symbolism of vampires and makes it very literal. The sensual and tempting are explicit. It’s described in various places how vampirism in this book is quite literally sex, orgasmic, all the guilty pleasures you know you shouldn’t enjoy but do. An iteration I’m inclined to think writes itself into a wave of continued contemporary vampire fiction. It’s an evolution in vampire fiction that I’m interested in but haven’t read enough contemporary works of this sort to form a conclusive theory on.

The language in the book I feel can best be described as purple although I know this tends to have a pejorative meaning and that’s not my intention. It’s very rich with descriptions. Illustrious with poetic and ornate metaphors and imagery. I find that it’s very much a matter of taste whether this style is something that engages you or not. Personally, there were some parts I loved and found beautifully phrased and cleverly constructed. In some scenes, I appreciated how detailed a picture I was painted to imagine. Without any spoilers, I can’t come up with examples but in general, everything has a very gothic and decadent vibe. Other times I found it a bit redundant. I didn’t always care to get a detailed description of every character's outfit and sometimes I felt like the description of rooms or feelings stunted the pace of the narrative. I’d forget where a conversation was going or had to be reminded what the characters were doing amongst all the beautifully described scenery. Towards the end, I felt it may have added unintentional suspended tension waiting for the plot to move on or for someone to reply.

I’m still not sure what to make of Scarlet, the main girl of the book. She seems like she has the potential to be a great strong female character. First-person narratives are hard because the narrating character is under the constant scrutiny of the reader. I loved when she’d put Nikolaus in his place and insist on her independence. That to me was the real meat of the story. At other times I couldn’t sympathize with her in scenes where I’m pretty certain I was supposed to. She seemed very self-aware almost as if the narrator anticipated the reader's judgment. In general, I think I would have liked Scarlet better if she wasn’t so carefully written to be sympathetic and likable, I found myself almost rooting for someone to corrupt her a little to make her more interesting emotionally.

My final thoughts will contain light spoilers, you have been warned.

This mix of vampires and high fantasy is something I’ve only encountered in Empire of the Vampire and I’d say it’s a fun subgenre of vampire fiction that can be fun to explore but It’s not a genre I normally gravitate to. I think that my experience with the book is very much affected by the fact that romance and fantasy are two genres I’m somewhat cautious with. I think people who are avid readers of these two genres are gonna love this book. For me, all the supernatural stuff about her exploring her heritage and powers just wasn’t that interesting to me and all the feeling of aura and metaphysical battles just got too aloof. I felt like some of the potential of the plot was wasted on it. I would have loved it if the serial killer wasn’t a supernatural creature for example. I would have loved it if there had been a point to his murders. I would have loved it if Scarlet’s gift for reading memories played a bigger part in finding him. I got very excited at first thinking they were gonna go around and revive the undead to read their memories and piece together a puzzle to catch the killer, like the vampire version of Pushing Daisies. Instead, she reads the memories of ten zombies in paraphrase just to practice and then subtracts the killer’s identity the first time she tries. Even that I thought could have led to more. Like when discussing altering a memory could prove fatal I thought “oh! She can’t just sit and watch the victim be murdered, she’s going to alter the memory!” but no. I’m left to conclude that some of these things might not get a payoff until later books perhaps and furthermore that the serial killer plot wasn’t the focal point of the story. As much as I would have liked a more intriguing mystery, the priority in the story was on Scarlet figuring out what she was, and to some people, that’s a riveting story too. Her being a nymph is almost more centralized than all the vampire stuff.

I found the most gripping part of the story to be the strange dynamic she has with Nikolaus. The climax of the book to me is the confrontation she has with him right after he kills her killer, robbing her of the justice they all worked so hard to get her. The way he reveals himself to her. Reveals that he takes pleasure in her fear, how she’s just another vulnerable woman to him who gave herself to him blinded by his beauty. The fact that he isn’t at all very different from the person who murdered her, he loves murder himself. There’s so much at stake here, one because she can’t sever her ties to him because of the master/vassal relationship, and two because not only has he revealed this but he also proved to be terribly selfish and emotionally inept in a situation where she needed his understanding and support the most. He turns out to be more harrowing in my eyes than the two-dimensional serial killer. This was a moment I felt actually had some weight to it because it was built throughout the book. Their lust at first sight, magical connection, and insecurities come to a collision. After this fight, when there wasn’t a confrontation later, no talk or apology, no consequence I was left looking at my kindle in disbelief haha. I really hope this goes somewhere in further books. There’s potential for some interesting outcomes. Either Nikolaus becomes powerful enough to control Scarlet and their love turns into hatred, or Scarlet somehow manages to become the master because her powers keep growing too, what would that do to his wounded pride and desire to own her? Maybe they do sever the connection, I can almost see a sort of Geralt and Yennifer dilemma here of not knowing if you’re in love or just under a spell. Or perhaps Nikolaus manages to admit his faults?

In conclusion: This is a typical contemporary iteration of vampires with an arcane fantasy twist. The plot is a little simple to give way to the main character's self-exploration. The mystery of the narrative is just a backdrop to project the complicated character dynamic between the two protagonists but it does hold its punch. For anyone who enjoys romance and fantasy with ornate language, this might just be your thing. I had some hesitations with the genre but ultimately still found lots of things to like about it and I’m curious to see how the story develops further.

Thank you again, very much for letting me read this. I appreciate the art you put into the world and the bravery it takes to share it. You can buy the book on amazon.

[espanolbot2]

Vampire Reviews: John Carpenter’s Vampires

Oh hey, new Maven review! Yay! Also part of that weird subgenre of vampire fiction where they seem to like hanging out in really sunny places where logically they’d be at more risk if suddenly exposed during the day time.

What with Dusk till Dawn’s Mexican setting, Near Dark’s general American South West setting, Lost Boys and Buffy both being in California etc.

It seemed to be enough of a thing that when Seven Days of Night had vampires heading into the Arctic Circle to take advantage of the longer nights it seemingly came off as a subversion of those earlier examples, which were themselves a subversion of the more gloomy European based gothic examples that preceded them.

[justplainsimon]

Knowing that Elisa is asexual kinda makes her review of hellsing and how sexless yet deep the relationships are and hearing her interpret them... is like... really profound like, i jived with it back in 2016, but like, I really GET IT now

[aka-noodleart]

Have any of y'all read The Company of Death by Elisa Hansen? It's a near-future post-apocalyptic fantasy featuring zombies, vampires androids, and the personification of death. And it's queer!

[luanna801]

When you're on tour around Europe, just, y'know, living your best life of indulgence and vice, you gotta have your doctor with you, 'cause what if you OD? What if you get syphilis? Have your doctor with you, it's smart. Also they were kind of, like, frenemies.

Elisa Hansen, Vampire Reviews: The Vampyre

[hellsyeschezapocalypse]

Vampire Reviews: This is My Blood

A biblical twist on vampire lore or a vampire twist on biblical lore. What if one of Jesus's friends was a vampire? Who was Mary Magdalene: smithsonianmag.co...

[hekate1308]

Thank God someone finally said this because I know it will come in handy