Book Review: Amnesia Bites (Shady Arcade - Book 1)
Amnesia Bites (Shady Arcade - Book 1) by Sharon Stevenson
4 stars
Category: Adult
Note: Only $0.99 cents on Amazon.
Summary: Zack is a private detective (who seems to spend next to no time actually working). Because of a vampire attack, he lost his memories and now has a vampire bodyguard posing as his secretary. But now he has to understand and navigate the paranormal world around him with all of its politics and factions compromising the small town.
Comments: This is really a paranormal cozy, kind of like the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. It’s got a quaint, small town and different types of paranormal beings (vampires, necromancers who control the vampires since they’re technically dead, and Zack with his psychic touch power), with a larger population than the basic humans. Zack has no memory, so we really don’t know much about his history. He is a psychic schizophrenic with multiple personalities talking to him. One problem I had with this was that the side characters all have very generic names and personalities, so I kept getting them all confused (specifically I got Kenny and Rick and mixed up frequently and I mixed up Cassandra, Amira, and Mary several times as well). The other problem I had with it was that in tradition of cozies, it doesn’t delve into emotions and keeps everything at a superficial, surface level. Sex is treated as a cheap thing here and characters think nothing about sleeping around. Zack is in his office rather constantly but he does next to no work. How does he pay his bills? During the course of this book, he had one client (a kid who couldn’t pay him) and that subplot got tied up by halfway into the book. One thing I never got was that Zack was a victim of a vampire attack, but for some reason the council assigned him a vampire bodyguard. I did like the character of Larry who was teenage and suddenly found himself in the middle of the paranormal world and had to get used to a whole new set of rules while he had the control and patience of a teenager.
This is written by a British author, who’s definition of arcade is apparently totally different from mine, which I had to remind myself rather constantly. With the series title Shady Arcade, I expected a darkened gaming room with a young adult cast, but it actually refers to a cluster of businesses and shops which is what us Americans would call a plaza or a mall. I was also expecting the mystery of the missing girl to be the central focus, but it was barely a foot note with the focus being on mostly the struggle for power between the vampires and necromancers.
In all, the story doesn’t really encourage me to read more, but I do want to know what happened to Zack’s parents and what will happen to Larry.
4 stars
Category: Adult
Note: Only $0.99 cents on Amazon.
Summary: Zack is a private detective (who seems to spend next to no time actually working). Because of a vampire attack, he lost his memories and now has a vampire bodyguard posing as his secretary. But now he has to understand and navigate the paranormal world around him with all of its politics and factions compromising the small town.
Comments: This is really a paranormal cozy, kind of like the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. It’s got a quaint, small town and different types of paranormal beings (vampires, necromancers who control the vampires since they’re technically dead, and Zack with his psychic touch power), with a larger population than the basic humans. Zack has no memory, so we really don’t know much about his history. He is a psychic schizophrenic with multiple personalities talking to him. One problem I had with this was that the side characters all have very generic names and personalities, so I kept getting them all confused (specifically I got Kenny and Rick and mixed up frequently and I mixed up Cassandra, Amira, and Mary several times as well). The other problem I had with it was that in tradition of cozies, it doesn’t delve into emotions and keeps everything at a superficial, surface level. Sex is treated as a cheap thing here and characters think nothing about sleeping around. Zack is in his office rather constantly but he does next to no work. How does he pay his bills? During the course of this book, he had one client (a kid who couldn’t pay him) and that subplot got tied up by halfway into the book. One thing I never got was that Zack was a victim of a vampire attack, but for some reason the council assigned him a vampire bodyguard. I did like the character of Larry who was teenage and suddenly found himself in the middle of the paranormal world and had to get used to a whole new set of rules while he had the control and patience of a teenager.
This is written by a British author, who’s definition of arcade is apparently totally different from mine, which I had to remind myself rather constantly. With the series title Shady Arcade, I expected a darkened gaming room with a young adult cast, but it actually refers to a cluster of businesses and shops which is what us Americans would call a plaza or a mall. I was also expecting the mystery of the missing girl to be the central focus, but it was barely a foot note with the focus being on mostly the struggle for power between the vampires and necromancers.
In all, the story doesn’t really encourage me to read more, but I do want to know what happened to Zack’s parents and what will happen to Larry.