Blood Rights

Another book with good writing, but slow paced, uninteresting plot. I liked the characters and the setting. The first person narrative style was well executed, giving a instant sense of bonding with the protagonists. But an excessive amount of time is spent in the characters head, a real deal breaker for this otherwise potentially good story.

SUMMARY

Chrysabelle is a Comarré, something of a blood whore for the high nobility vampires. She is trained form birth to be the perfect “geisha” for her buyers. Their type if very rare, that's why they are so much valued. Their blood taste much better than normal humans, and they have a condition that makes them produce too much blood, needing to be drained daily, or else they start to fell really bad.

Malkolm is a vampire, something of a renegade within the community. He quit drinking blood some 50 years ago, because of a curse. Every victim he kills becomes a voice in his head and so he lives drinks the blood of animals and blood bags to survive. This is barely enough for him, and he is constantly figthing an unbelievable hunger.

Chrysabelle's lord, a very powerful Elder vampire is found dead. She flees fearing being used as a scapegoat for his murder. Her aunt, a rich ex Comarre who got her freedom at a very high personal cost, helps her to escape. She gives her the name of a mortal who might be able to help. At the club she is supposed to meet him, Malkolm find her and pulls her out of there to protect her, because if any other vampire saw her, he would immediately know what she is, because her blood has a irresistible smell to their kind.

He of courses fail to mention this to her, and she therefore assumes that he smelled her blood and can't help but drink her to death. She has some magical artifacts that can inflict wound on vampires, and so she attacks him and flees. Later on they meet again, this time he captures and imprisons her until he decides what to do with her.


ANALYSIS

I stopped reading after more then a page worth of descriptions of how much of a tortured soul Malkolm is. This is how much I need to know about his torment: “I hear voices in my head, and they won't let me in peace”. This, that's it, not pages upon pages of the same thing. This kind of information intended to give readers an idea of how he feels needs to be spaced out throughput the book, not put together in the beginning.

I can't help but feel a little cringey about the plot. A vampire is going insane of hunger and a girl who goes insane if she doesn't give blood. They hate and mistrust each other when they first meet. I wonder what will happen?

The antagonist was very cliche. She was too obviously evil, and we get many pages of her POV narration as well, that were not that interesting.

There is some Vampire The Masquerade feel to the vampires organization in to clans and meetings. It was presented as an info dump, but I liked the reference to the RPG.

Read 2:15 / 10:47 21%

I really wanted to like this one, but the more I read, the less I liked it. It had a somewhat interesting premise, but I thought it dragged a lot. Plus the characters were flat, especially the very over-the-top evil villain who likes snakes and can't remember the name of anyone beneath her even if she's been around them a zillion times. Some contrived scenes and cheesy dialogue didn't help things, and I'm not planning to continue the series.

Everyone seems to really like this book and I wanted to give it a chance since it was the start of a series, but it just wasn't for me.

Detailed Review: http://www.fantasybookcafe.com/2011/12/review-of-blood-rights-by-kristen-painter/