Author: MaryJanice Davidson
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!
Why the second novel (or any novel) in a series would need a twelve-page prologue is as much as mystery as it is missed with glee by me; been there, skipped that, moving on to chapter one! I started out Liking volume one of this series. It wasn't spectacular but it was an ok read and it was a fast read. This one I started out pretty much the same way, but it went downhill faster than the first one did, to the point where it went beyond my ability to stay with it!
This series has run to some ten novels, so it can hardly be described as a failure. I liked the first one in the series well enough to want to see the follow-up, but in reading this follow-up now, I can’t say I have an interest in pursuing this series any further. I just didn’t like this sequel well enough - or at all after the first half of it. I started out thinking the story was OK, but after reading to about half-way through, it seemed to me it wasn't really going anywhere or showing me anything new or interesting.
It’s a really fast read, but I don’t feel involved with any of the characters and I don’t feel engaged in the stories which are being told. They're ok, and that's the problem, they're only ok, nothing special. They do beat the pants off the god-awful Charlaine Harris Southern Vampire series! I love the TV show, but the novels sucked worse than the vampires did. These novels are significantly better than that, but they're just not really my idea of a truly enthralling read, and the simplistic PoV in this novel finally started getting to me.
In this volume, Betsy Taylor, vampire queen, moves into a new home - which is a mansion - meets a little girl named Marie who, it's patently obvious, is a ghost, and Betsy is beseeched by her vampire acquaintances to take on the Blade Warriors, a church youth organization which is murdering vampires at the behest of some anonymous benefactor - or rather, malefactor. Betsy at first refuses to step up to her vampire queen responsibilities; that is until they attack her personally, and also attack a vampire friend she likes. In the end, there is no war: she makes friends with the vampire killers, overpowering their antagonism with tea and biscuits. This was amusing, but not really that funny and not really very entertaining - like I said, it was ok, but nothing special.
It was at that point, and in the next few pages that I found I couldn't engage with the material. It didn’t draw me in or make me want to find out what would happen next. The problem with this story, I think, in a nutshell is that Betsy is never in any danger, never has any real problem, and there is never any real conflict, no problems to solve, nothing to worry about. It’s more like a child's story ("Betsy the Happy Vampire") than a story for the age group Betsy is actually in, but the graphic depictions of adult life, and vampire life, of course mean it isn't a child's story at all, and that unholy combination simply doesn’t work. It’s very childlike in its simplicity and fruity goodness, and it inevitably becomes sickly, like eating too much of a rich desert. If you put a cream filling in a cake and eat a slice, its wonderful, but if you remove the cake and try eating only the cream filling, after the first taste, it’s nasty. That's how this novel is - all cream filling and no cake! I have no choice but to rate this one warty!
