Rating: WORTHY!
This is a first person PoV novel which for me is usually worst person PoV. I don't like the person because it's usually done badly and gets in the way of telling a good story. Here's the author explaining what a poor choice of voice it was, at the start of a later chapter:
** Note: Since I was not present for Krystal's experience after she was taken from my apartment, she has requested to tell this part of the story in her own words, rather than have it relayed. Therefore, the next two chapters will recount a part of the tale I cannot vouch for, as I did not witness it firsthand.**As it happens, the voice wasn't completely nauseating so obviously this author can write it, although first hand is two words, not one. If in doubt, dash it out: first-hand!
It takes chutzpah to try to hawk a novel which has the words "utterly uninteresting" embedded in the very title. Fred is an accountant. He's lackluster, timid, and was alternately bullied and ignored in high school, yet he elects to attend the ten-year reunion. He's fortunate that it's at night, because as a vampire, he cannot go out in daylight.
Despite enjoying eternal youth, endless longevity, and vampire 'super powers" such as strength and night vision, Fred is still retiring and intimidated by the school jocks and the school hotties. He does take satisfaction in knowing that as they age and wrinkle, and spread around the middle, he will continue to be slim, strong, and youthful. He contemplates a future where he could visit his nemesis in his retirement home just to make fun of him, but quickly decides he should probably just confine himself to dancing on his grave instead.
He doesn't expect to see any of his nerd acquaintances at the reunion - not friends, even, just acquaintances - so he's rather surprised when Krystal sits down beside him at his lonely table. He asks her about her work, and she promptly makes an excuse to go to the bathroom. He doesn't expect to see her again, but when the lights go out in the gym and he discovers the doors are locked, he makes his way up to the commentator's box high in the rafters to hide out, and he's surprised to find her trussed to a table up there.
He's even more surprised when she finally reveals that she works for a secret government agency which keeps paranormals under control, and he's more than disturbed to discover that the school reunion has been targeted by a hungry pack of werewolves.
This is the start of not so much a story, but a series of chronologically-ordered vignettes which are amusing, engrossing, inventive, original and self contained, although linked to one another. It was interesting to me to read this not only because it's original and offers a really interesting alternative take on vampires, but also because I reviewed a book containing a similar arrangement of stories recently. That book was so repetitive and uninventive that it was boring and not a worthy read. This one, even though it used a similar format, was quite the opposite.
That's not to say there were no issues with it. There are nearly always issues! The question is whether the author can offer you enough of a solid story to make the issues relatively unimportant when it comes to overall enjoyment. This author has an interesting way with words, and often that's fine, but in some cases I was wondering what he meant. "...[T]hat was not a burden with which I had been shouldered" is not good phraseology! "That was not a burden I was used to shouldering" would have made more sense.
In another case, I read, "Ah, the crux of vanity." I can see what he means, but shuddered to read it rendered like that. There were other cases where too many words were used. This is a case of using non-words like 'irregardless' when 'regardless' does perfectly fine. In this case, the author wrote: "...formerly abandoned church..." He meant an abandoned church. A formerly abandoned church is one which is now back in service (pun intended!). There was only one out-and-out spelling error that I noticed, which was "damndest", and which is missing an 'e', and one case of using the wrong word: "...which clearing wasn't feeding." I think he meant "which clearly wasn't feeding." One final one was "We tread slowly across the plush red carpet" when the author obviously meant "we trod".
A spell checker would have caught only a couple of these errors. You need a good editor or beta readers to catch the others. It wasn't all bad though, by any means. The writing in general was commendable and I enjoyed reading this. We get an object lesson in how to avoid using 'inch' as a verb, for example: "She pulled it inward inch by inch" (as opposed to "she inched it in" which is what a writer who loves English less than this author does might have fed their readers).
I was nonetheless disturbed to see yet another writer who is evidently convinced that you can't say 'female character' in your novel without qualifying it by adding "beautiful". We got: "I didn't have a lot of experience with beautiful women asking me out..." and "... it had certainly made her beautiful."
This was the main female character who had been some other sort of persona non grata in high school, and who had been evidently over-weight. How she managed to evidently slim down and turn beautiful post-high-school isn't explained, but the explanation I really wanted was why? Why could she not still be the nerd (or whatever she was) from school? Why did she have to be rendered "beautiful" to make her acceptable, thereby loudly instructing all the real girls who had high school experiences like hers, that they're really still losers because they're are not now slim and beautiful? It's an insult to women everywhere regardless of who they are and how they look. I wish writers wouldn't do this so routinely that it's become very nearly a rule.
That complaint aside, I did, as I've indicated, really warm to this story and to the characters. It moved quickly, told interesting and original stories, and was an engrossing read, so I rate it worthy regardless of the issues I've raised, while hooping for better in the next outing with this author!
