Book Review: Never Trust a Vampire (Strange Allies - Book 1)
Never Trust a Vampire (Strange Allies - Book 1) by Vivian Lane
4 stars (probably closer to 3)
Category: Adult
Note: I read this as included in the Magick and Monsters anthology.
Summary: Agent Seven (aka Della) is a paladin (monster slayer) who works for The Agency. She gets hired by a vampire named Adam to help him take out his evil master Juliet. Though Adam is handsome and charming and capable, Seven has trouble trusting him and the whole idea of being friends with him is laughable considering she’s been trained to never trust a vampire, even if he claims that he never takes human lives and works to help her take down monsters.
Comments: Think the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, but with less. There’s no comedic, every day man Scooby crew backing her up. She does have a tech researcher with her named Amelia who we barely see. The personalities in this are bland, Seven doesn’t have the fun personality quirks that Buffy had, nor much of a backstory either. She is tough as nails, and bad ass, but nothing that really stands out from all the other tough slay-first, ask questions later female Buffy-wannabes out there in indie fiction. Adam is, yes, our Angel stand in, the hot vampire with a heart of gold, drawn to our tough slayer, mainly because he likes teasing and messing with her. Her trying to keep Adam at arms' length and sniping at him just because he's a vampire, does get tiresome over the course of the book. The villains were the usual standard cardboard villains (and Juliet is more than a little like Darla from the Buffy series), though I did like her life after Juliet where she went on mission after mission slaying monsters other than vampires. And I did like his Renfield (Darius). There was also this odd secondary story that the book opened on with this immortal friend of Adam’s who was convinced he’s found his destined mate reincarnated in one of Della’s friends and was determined to follow her around the country until she would accept him (which felt creepy and stalker), and then that plotline immediately got dropped after the first chapter and didn’t get mentioned, not once during the course of the book. I started wondering if I’d just dreamed that I had read that scene, or if I had read a sample from a different book and only thought it belonged with this one. And then it came back in the very last chapter of this story.
4 stars (probably closer to 3)
Category: Adult
Note: I read this as included in the Magick and Monsters anthology.
Summary: Agent Seven (aka Della) is a paladin (monster slayer) who works for The Agency. She gets hired by a vampire named Adam to help him take out his evil master Juliet. Though Adam is handsome and charming and capable, Seven has trouble trusting him and the whole idea of being friends with him is laughable considering she’s been trained to never trust a vampire, even if he claims that he never takes human lives and works to help her take down monsters.
Comments: Think the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, but with less. There’s no comedic, every day man Scooby crew backing her up. She does have a tech researcher with her named Amelia who we barely see. The personalities in this are bland, Seven doesn’t have the fun personality quirks that Buffy had, nor much of a backstory either. She is tough as nails, and bad ass, but nothing that really stands out from all the other tough slay-first, ask questions later female Buffy-wannabes out there in indie fiction. Adam is, yes, our Angel stand in, the hot vampire with a heart of gold, drawn to our tough slayer, mainly because he likes teasing and messing with her. Her trying to keep Adam at arms' length and sniping at him just because he's a vampire, does get tiresome over the course of the book. The villains were the usual standard cardboard villains (and Juliet is more than a little like Darla from the Buffy series), though I did like her life after Juliet where she went on mission after mission slaying monsters other than vampires. And I did like his Renfield (Darius). There was also this odd secondary story that the book opened on with this immortal friend of Adam’s who was convinced he’s found his destined mate reincarnated in one of Della’s friends and was determined to follow her around the country until she would accept him (which felt creepy and stalker), and then that plotline immediately got dropped after the first chapter and didn’t get mentioned, not once during the course of the book. I started wondering if I’d just dreamed that I had read that scene, or if I had read a sample from a different book and only thought it belonged with this one. And then it came back in the very last chapter of this story.