Review: Adultery by Paulo Coelho

Meh.

Paulo Coelho comes to me well-recommended.  I'm told The Alchemist is a life-changing book and Aleph is captivating.  Maybe I should have started with one of those.

I can't say I loved Adultery.  It wasn't terrible, and this is a virtue of Paulo Coelho being everything as a writer I was told he would be.  His style is accessible and conversational.  You can blow through large chunks of text while sipping a coffee or a beer and you're never left grasping at what happened.  However this story, while well told, wasn't terribly compelling.

Adultery is the running inner monologue of a woman in her 30's who has everything she can ask for -- perfect children, a husband who adores her, a fulfilling career, the ability to flit about the world at a whim -- and yet is terribly unhappy, largely because she chooses to be.  She inexplicably one day blows a politician (who happens to be the ex-boyfriend from high school that she was so into that she fantasized about him constantly through her adolescence), and that kick-starts a vicious cycle self-hatred and bad decision-making, all while her doting husband tries desperately to help her find her way of whatever depression and melancholy she happens to be in.

I find characters who do the  super-entitled pity party ("woe is me, I have everything) to be grating, especially when they narrate the story, as in Adultery and  Douglas Brunt's Ghosts of Manhattan. It's hard to empathize with them as a reader because for me at least, it's impossible to understand them, especially when at the end, they haven't changed very much because their lives are so insular, so perfect, they're not required to.  Adultery's narrator, Linda, almost ruins two marriages -- her own and her lover's -- and never has to face the consequences. She's spared the humbling embarrassment of having to say she cheated, while putting her lover in a position to lie to his wife's face.  At the end of the day, her relationship with her husband somehow ends up stronger because she realizes that she has it all and decides it's not a prison.  I mean... come on.  Reading this calls up some advice my dad once gave me: the worst thing you can give a woman is everything she wants.

I will say this: Paulo Coelho's style is everything it's cracked up to be.

Pros: Easy Read, crackling style
Cons: Whiny narrator, no significant character change at the end.

2 out of 5 stars.

Review: Assassin's Code

It's time I started reviewing the stuff I consume again, be it books, music, movies, or whatever.  I'm not a critic by trade, just someone who likes stuff.  I'm involved in Goodreads' reading challenge.  12 books, 1 year.  I think I'm going to beat that.

I skipped my review of the first book I read this year, Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon.  We'll get to that later this week.  For now though, I give you my review of Jonathan Maberry's Assassin's Code, the fourth book in his series featuring Department of Military Sciences agent Joe Ledger.

I've become a big fan of the Joe Ledger series. I look at it as the popcorn movie in my TBR list. Are we getting deep, life changing events? No. Are we getting radical philosophical shifts? Of course not. But what we are getting is fast-paced, highly entertaining action. And I'll take it.

The fourth novel chronicling the adventures of Joe Ledger and Echo Team is set primarily in the Middle East, where the covert rescue of American political prisoners in Iran put Joe directly in the middle of two longtime warring factions: Arklight, a group of highly trained (and long-lived) female warriors, and the Red Order, The Catholic Church's secret group of vampire assassins. Yes, you read that right. Feeding this powder keg are eight nuclear weapons, stolen and hidden all over the world, set to blow at a moment's notice.

This is, like I said, the fourth in a series. Jonathan Maberry isn't breaking new ground. The series has a very James Bond-esque thrill ride, and I'm okay with that. Yes, it got a little hokey, especially toward the end, but it was hugely entertaining! And considering what I read right before I picked this up, that was enough.

4 stars.

Pros: Fun to read, intense action

Cons: A little hokey, hard to catch up if you haven't read the series.

Stuff I Read in 2015

For the last couple of years, I joined Goodreads.com's reading challenge, where you set out to read a certain amount of books in a year and then try to get through them all.  In 2015, I tried to do 12, but managed to finish 11 (the last one, Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, I just was too tired in December to get through).  I picked a few books by favorite authors, some by people that I've never read.  Some were surprisingly bad, others were better than I expected, and one was The Martian.

So today, let's give you the rundown of what I read last year, listed alphabetically.

52-Pickup by Elmore Leonard:  I read Get Shorty and Be Cool when I was in my early 20's and decided I was a fan of Elmore Leonard.  I named one of my characters in my most recent novel in his honor (Dutch).  I started this book expecting it to be an awesomely gritty crime story.  Instead, I found it to be horribly dated, what with the free-flowing racial slurs and very outdated sensibilities.  It was written in the 70's though, so I won't say he had lost touch, but the book definitely did not age well.  2 stars.

Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk: Palahniuk is another favorite of mine, having read six or seven of his books, including Fight Club and Choke.  Beautiful You is the story of a woman who is made to be the guinea pig for a new generation of sex toy designed by a powerful businessman that has disastrous side effects up to and including death.  These sex toys have turned women all over the world into masturbation addicts, and only the guinea pic, through mastery of her own sexuality, has a chance of stopping his plan for world domination.  It's a well-written, off the wall story that I had a ton of fun with.  4 stars.

The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach:  Yes, the Go The Fuck To Sleep guy.  I liked another book of his (Rage is Back) and gave The Dead Run a look.  I'm glad I did.  In it, Mansbach weaves together a noir/supernatural tale that weaves together a smuggling story with a cult worshiping an immortal Incan priest.  What really impressed me more than anything is that it seems Mansbach has a deep respect for ancient myths and legends regarding older cultures, and sprinkles that stuff liberally in the last two books of his I read (Rage is Back also had a mystic aspect to it, along with deep roots in B-boy culture.  Another day though...).  It was a great thrill ride and quite a compelling page-turner.  Adam Mansbach is more than a gimmick children's writer.  4 stars.

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore by Walter Mosley:  I have a Walter Mosley book that I haven't gotten around to reading, but when I saw the premise to this one, I had to pick it up.  Porn mega-star Debbie Dare retires after the death of her cheating, abusive, porn-producer husband dies and finds herself burdened with the enormous debt her husband incurred to various LA lowlifes.  In addition to figuring that out, she must reconcile with her family, his family, and the son she had when she was a teenager.  It's a great setup, but it never quite got past "simmer" for me.  I found myself engrossed enough to read it in a day and a half, but never quite got the payoff I was looking for.  Not bad, but not great either.  3 stars.

The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry:  Book Two in his Joe Ledger series, of which I had read one and three and loved.  The Dragon Factory features Joe Ledger and his DMS team pursuing a group of geneticists descended from Josef Mengele, who have created genetically engineered mythological creatures (dragons, unicorns, etc) for hunters sport... and to create an unstoppable army of fearsome potential to rule the world after a virus clears out all who do not fit the Nazi ideal of the Master Race.  Yeah, I know, completely off the walls, batshit crazy.  But wow, was this a fun action movie of a read.  4 stars.

Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard:  My second Elmore Leonard book of 2015 led me to realize that I'm not as big a fan of his as I thought.  Which is a shame.  He follows two ex-hippie bombers as they try to extort a million dollars from someone they ran with back in the day, and the detective trying to stop them.  Fairly bland, very dated.  But I got through it in a day.  3 stars.

Ghosts of Manhattan by Douglas Brunt:  Well-written story about a guy working at Bear Stearns at the the onset of the 2008 financial crisis... well-written in the sense that the story was well told.  The protagonist, however, a very wealthy trader who is suddenly having a crisis of conscience with his lifestyle (oh, no, the hooker and blow life has too many hookers and too much blow... woe is me) rang completely hollow with me.  I found him to be completely unlikable and his "struggle" didn't seem to be much of one at all.  Liked the story, hated the storyteller.  3 stars.

The Martian by Andy Weir:  The first manned mission to Mars leaves a man stranded on the surface after a freak dust storm, and he has to "science the shit out of this" to survive the estimated 600+ days it will take to wait for rescue.  Brilliant and compelling, science-fiction close enough to realistic with an ease of access akin to Bill Nye The Science Guy.  Thoroughly engrossing, we see the hero, Mark Watney, use science and humor to keep himself alive, hopeful and sane, alone on a barren planet, presumed dead, and billions of miles from home.  Can't say enough good things about this.  Read it.  Now.  5 stars.

Monster by A. Lee Martinez:  I underestimated this one going in, thinking it was kind of kiddie-fluff.  Mistake.  This turned out to be a solid supernatural read about a color-changing monster hunter and his paper-man sidekick, protecting a normal human from the magical forces trying to get to her.  I'm not usually into fantasy stuff, but this was pretty fun to read.  4 stars.

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore: The latest by my current favorite author, Secondhand Souls is the sequel to A Dirty Job. The sequel finds a resurrected Charlie Asher and his friends Lily, Audrey,  retired detective Alphonse Rivera and Minty Fresh, once again battle the mythical Morrigan for the souls of the recently departed in San Francisco while their new master, Minty's cousin Lemon Fresh seeks to ascend (or descend) and become a new god of Death.  I'm a massive fan of Christopher Moore, and A Dirty Job was the first book of his that I read, so naturally Secondhand Souls was incredibly fun for me.  If you haven't read the earlier book, then very little of it will makes sense to you at first.  But I think you'll still enjoy it as Moore's engaging and riotously funny style gets you over that hump.  4 stars.

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore:  This sequel to Fool puts Pocket the Jester in Italy as he finds himself in the middle of Shakespeare's Othello, and with old friends and a new pet sea serpent, seeks to stop a coup.  I wasn't as big a fan of Fool as I was of Christopher Moore's other stuff, but it wasn't bad.  It was original and funny.  This is kind of like the joke you love and makes you smile, but you've heard it before so you don't enjoy it quite so much.  3 stars.

There you go.  11 books, one year.  Not bad, but this year, let's see if I can do more...

Review: Aerie by Anne Riley

I met Anne Riley at an author event at Jan's Paperbacks in Portland, Oregon this past summer.  We shared a table, talked writing and sold some books.  She's a very interesting and pleasant lady with roots in the area, and I have to say in the past year involving promotion of my own work, that one day in July was probably the best day possible.  At the end of the day we exchanged purchases of work.  Anne read and reviewed The Favorite, and I read Aerie with every intention of reviewing it.  I'm horribly late.  That introduction (and a hearty apology to Anne) aside, here's my review of Aerie.

Aerie by Anne Riley

Okay, I don't do romance novels.

I'm not normally for overtly sticky stories about longing and temptation, about the internal struggle between what you want and what's good for you, about the normally melodramatic reasons why a hero or heroine would deny themselves the right person that's standing right in front of them.  Nothing against the genre, but I always found those stories to be kind of hokey.  So, all things being honest and equal, it's hard to say that I opened the book with an open mind.

It didn't take long to convince me.

Aerie tosses aside the normal convention of impossibly many hero and damsel-in-distress, and instead plays a budding romance against a strong workplace drama and with legal and techno elements.  It's sounds like a weird recipe that shouldn't work when you say it out loud, but like a peanut-butter bacon cheeseburger the first bite is surprisingly satisfying of all tastes.

The story centers on high powered systems analyst Cara Larson, whose tech firm Pyramid is contracted by Liam Scofield, CEO of an outdoor-wear company, to help develop a computerized distribution and payment system for his company.  The year is 1991 and the system is quite literally ahead of it's pre-worldwide web time.  The potential of this system to revolutionize the way business is done is recognized by Cara's bosses at Pyramid as well as the lawyers working for Liam's company WindWear, so when they systematically try to cut Liam out of his potentially billion-dollar idea, Cara and Liam work frantically to save it.  In the midst of this is the love-at-first-sight drama between Cara and Liam, the potential romantic rival in Liam's lawyer Lauren Janelle, and even a heaping helping of corporate greed.

Anne Riley's mastery of the tech aspects of Aerie draw you into a realistic world of pre-Internet computer jargon that is easy enough to follow even if you don't have a degree in computer engineering.  She makes that part of the world she's created plausible and accessible, which is no easy feat, making us care about the product everyone is fighting over.  However that would mean nothing without good characters.  Ms. Riley's leads, Cara and Liam, are very well-developed and even if you are like me and not a romance buff, how and why they're into each other makes sense, even though for much of the book their organizations are pitted against each other.  It's very West Side Story.

Anne Riley has created a very appealing romantic story that, like the movie Jerry Maguire, slips the romance in under a Trojan Horse of typically guy stuff, like money and tech.  Even though the romantic part seemed a little hokey to me, I really enjoyed this book.

Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Review: Coyote Blue

Over the last seven years, Christopher Moore has become one of my favorite authors.  To
date, he has published 13 novels and counting.  I own every one, and it's his second,
Coyote Blue, that ranks among my favorites.  Equal parts love story and supernatural
comedy, Moore shows off his unique talent for putting the ordinary guy through an
extraordinary paranormal wringer.

Coyote Blue follows Sam Hunter, a California insurance salesman who has all the
trappings of the good life as well as a closely guarded secret: he's really Samson
Hunts Alone, a member of the Crow tribe who ran away from home after accidentally
killing a cop.  his life is turned completely inside out when he meets the stunning
flower-child, Calliope Kincaid and -- immediately after -- the Native-American
trickster god Coyote.  The chance encounter with Calliope leads Sam on an unlikely road
trip across the American West with the trickster at his side as he chases his newfound
love back toward his childhood home and the past he ran away from.

Right away, you see that Moore has a much tighter grasp on his characters than he did
in his debut.  Whereas Practical Demonkeeping's Augustus Brine (who is mentioned in a
cameo) acted as a lens through which we observed the inhabitants of Pine Cove, Sam
Hunter is undoubtedly the star of the show.  This is his journey and it makes for a
much more intimate story as we watch him grow as a person over the course of his
adventure.  We watch his priorities shift and we watch him accept a part of himself
long thought buried.  The secondary characters, Coyote -- an immature immortal god --
and Calliope -- who starts out as the free-loving counterpart to Sam's very grounded
life -- both go through journeys of their own, but neither one is as compelling as that
of the lead character.  His growth is fantastic and quite relateable.

Coyote Blue is Christopher Moore refining the very distinct voice we saw flashes of in
Practical Demonkeeping.  It's alternatively funny and heartwarming and always fun.
Highly recommended.

Rating: 9 of 10.

Review: Rage Is Back

Take one part teen angst, one part drugged-out mysticism, and one part ode to old-school B-Boy culture, mix well, and you have "Rage Is Back," the latest from Adam Mansbach.  If the name sounds familiar, it's because he created a surge of controversy with a children's book for adults called "Go The Fuck To Sleep."

"Rage Is Back" follows 18 year-old Kilroy Dondi Vance, son of 80's graffiti icon Billy Rage.  Dondi is a relbellious, disillusioned smart-ass from the outset as he whines about the events that led him to couch-surf with several friends, and change is set in motion when a member of Billy Rage's old crew informs Dondi that his father has returned to New York.  It seems that on the night that Dondi was born, Billy witnessed a delusional police officer, which sends a grief-stricken Rage on a one-man graffiti campaign against the officer.  And when the city responds by threatening jail time and a $2 million fine, Billy skips town, heading to Mexico without his wife or his infant son.  Rage's return coincides  with the mayoral campaign of the same cop that murdered his friend, so Dondi, Rage, and every graffiti artist they can find devise a plan to bring this cop down.

I found the narrative a bit stunted, filtered mainly through Dondi's eyes, leaving a healthy dose of annoying teen smugness to much of the first act.  This is cleaned up by the middle of the book as Dondi deals with his daddy issues and starts to grow up, aided by a vision quest brought about by a mystical, South American hallucinogen.  This does make the early parts of the story drag as Dondi is the self-righteous snot we all want to slap across the face.  He's initially not a very likable narrator, and is self aware enough to mention as  much.

Thematically, Mansbach touches on quite a few things that we can all relate to, such as the realization that once upon a time, our parents were "cool," or that once we focus our -- well, rage -- we can accomplish great things.  He did his homework here as he frequently references mid-to-late 80's hip-hop culture as well as the graffiti phenomenon from the time.  I personally found the mystic, hippie-ish, drugged out portions to be a bit unnecessary, but overall the story works.

By no means is Rage Is Back perfect.  The lack of a likable narrator nearly torpedoes the story in the first 50 pages.  The story, if you stick with it, is thoroughly enjoyable, and easily recommended as a way to pass a summer day.

Rating: 6 of 10.

Review: Practical Demonkeeping

Christopher Moore is far and away my favorite author.  I own every novel he's written,
read most of them multiple times, and no longer require any information other than the
fact a new one is coming out to pre-order.  Admittedly, I read his often hilarious
works out of order, and it's a good thing.  Had I started with his first published
novel, Practical Demonkeeping, I'd either be incredibly impressed by his evolution over
the last 20 years or I would have been shocked his career lasted this long.  That's not
to say it's a bad book, just not one to hinge the two decades of success he's had.

Set in the fictional small town of Pine Cove, California, Practical Demonkeeping
introduces us to an entire town of slightly-off, small-town characters, all of whom
have slightly-off, small town issues.  From the owner of the local bait shop/general
store, to the workers in the local diner, to the local bar where everyone knows your
name, Pine Cove is an "everyone-knows-everyone" setting.  So when Travis O'Hearn shows
up with his sometimes-invisible demon, Catch, all hell breaks loose.  You see, Catch
eats people, and has been eating people for a very long time, and the sudden
disappearance and death of people in tiny Pine Cove sets the town on its ear.  A djinn
tasked with defeating Catch has also traveled to Pine Cove and aligns itself with the
local bait shop owner, Augustus Brine, and they search for a way to stem Catch's
appetite for destruction.

Moore does a really good job of taking stock characters and making them into a
believable small town. These are characters he re-uses in several of his later works,
which extends the payoff in investing in these characters.  Having read his entire
bibliography, it is difficult to separate this from the larger universe he's created in
Pine Cove, but when you do you find that this story is the weakest of them all.  Again,
not to say it's bad, just to say I'm spoiled by his later work.  I wouldn't recommend
someone new to this author read this novel first.  It is however, worth reading.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Review: Sacre Bleu

Christopher Moore's latest -- and heftiest -- novel, Sacre Bleu, is one more example of the man's mad and hilarious genius as he explores art and the color blue.  Yes, he wrote a novel about the color blue.  And it's awesome.

Set France in 1890, shortly after the suicide of Vincent Van Gogh, Sacre Bleu follows Lucien Lessard, and baker and aspiring artist who, after an encounter with a mysterious dwarf known only as the Colorman,, paints a masterpiece of his longtime love Juliette in the nude.  That brings him and his artist circle of the day, most notably his best friend, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, in contact with the muse spirit known only as Bleu, and a deadly chase around Europe by the Colorman.

For the last six years, Christopher Moore has been my personal favorite author.  His novels, even the ones (okay, one) I didn't like as much, leave me alternately howling in laughter and deep in thought.  Sacre Bleu is no exception.  The signature, casually conversational style of Christopher Moore is on full display here in this narrative as he shifts between the adventure in the 1890's and the back story millennia ago.  This runs longer than all his previous work -- by a significant margin -- and the only complaint I have is that it's not as accessible to new fans as it could be.  It takes a while to get to the meat of the story, and with 390 pages of story, non-fans could get understandably discouraged  My advice is to start with something a little less daunting (Like Lamb, A Dirty Job, or his Bloodsucking Fiends Trilogy) to get your feet wet with the author, then dive into this one.  The fans will love this one, though and with good reason.  All the hallmarks of Christopher Moore are here: relatable, average Joe heroes, increasingly supernatural phenomenon, improbable love.  They combine into a wonderfully fun package I highly recommend.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Review: Patient Zero

Jonathan Maberry's first entry in the Joe Ledger series, Patient Zero, drops you into a world that's eerily similar to the present, where terrorism is a continuing threat and religious fundamentalist diehards are finding new and deadly ways to kill infidels. As Joe states in the opening line, "when you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, there's either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills. And there's nothing wrong with my skills."

When a well-funded jihadist group, led by the dangerous and mysterious El Mujahid and his wife Amirah, begin using a terrifying bio-weapon that turns its victims into mindless, contagious, and ravenous zombies, Joe is hastily recruited by the ultra-secret Department of Military Sciences to run Echo Team, a strike squad of hardened ex-soldiers, and combat the threat. What follows is the longest week in Joe's life as he deals with threat from the terrorists, their backers, a traitor on the squad, and his own personal demons.

Maberry's storytelling is impressive. The story is broken down into chunks, long when they need to be and short when they need to be, that moves the plot along briskly. Joe is a darkly charismatic and adept hero, equal parts Dirty Harry, Sam Spade, and Ethan Hunt. Intelligent and resourceful, brutal and reluctant. The parts of the story that are told through his viewpoint are fast and funny, and attempt with varying amounts of success to place the camera squarely behind our heads. It is novelized form of a first-person shooter. The parts that don't directly follow Joe are a bit hamstrung bythe fact that the other characters are caricatures of moustache-twirling evil. The smug British capitalist is typically slimy and the terrorist characters follow every statement with their version of an evil laugh (Allah akhbar). There's also a sex scene that, save for the tacked on purpose it serves, feels a bit out of place and unnecessary.

The triumph of Patient Zero is that the credibility of the threat is very palpable. Much of the science is real as are most of the diseases and pathology, which creates an entirely believable atmosphere of "this could happen." The action scenes are very well staged and the swerve thrown in at the final act is pretty cool. For all the issues I had with the book, I rather enjoyed it and recommend it pretty highly.

Rating: 7 of 10.

Review: The Newsroom: We Just Decided To

I had given up on scripted TV.

Great drama was sparse.  Intelligent television got canceled after barely a chance, and somewhere along the line, entertainment veered toward sensationalism with a particular focus on the drunken misadventures of Italian-American twentysomethings who referred to themselves in the derogatory.  Thank goodness for Aaron Sorkin, producer of The West Wing, because within the first nine minutes of HBO's The Newsroom, I was sold.  This is DVR-worthy.

Jeff Daniels does a remarkable job as beleaguered anchorman Will McAvoy, who while on an interview panel at Northwestern University, gets pressured into answering a question that went against his journalistic integrity.  What follows is a five minute pipe-bomb of a rant as to why America is NOT the greatest country on the planet.  (The answer will be the subject of my next blog entry.)   He returns from a three-week exile to find his entire staff turned over and faces the realization that he's not the man he used to be in many of the most important ways.  McAvoy's boss, played by Law & Order's Sam Waterston, hires his ex-girlfriend as his new executive producer, and she tries to get him back to being a newsman.

I never watched a Sorkin series.  Didn't catch a single episode of The West Wing.  I came away thinking maybe I should have.  I can't think of too much TV that left me with goosebumps.

The rest of the supporting cast was incredible as well, but this was Jeff Daniels' star vehicle.   His initial breakdown that set events in motion is something I wish I would see in news today.  Again, that's the subject of another blog.

Intelligent TV is back again, people.  We should watch it while we got it.

Book Review: 13 Bullets

13 Bullets by David Wellington

From the Author:

All the official rpeorts say they are dead -- extinct since the late '80s, when a fed named Arkely nailed the last vampire in a fight that nearly killed him. But the evidence proves otherwise.

When a state trooper named Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, it is Arkeley who gets the assignment -- who else? He's been expecting such a call to come eventually. sure it has been years since any signs of an attack, but Arkely knows what most people don't: there is one left. In an abandoned asylum she is rotting, plotting and biding her time in a way only the undead can.

Caxton is out of her league on this case and more than a little afraid, but the fed made it plain that there is only one way out. but the worst thing is the feeling that the vampires want more than her blood. They want her for a reason, one she can't guess; a reason her sphinxlike partner knows but won't say; a reason she has to find out -- or die trying.

Now there are only 13 bullets between Caxton and Arkeley and the vampires. There are only 13 bullets between us, the living and them, the damned.

Review:

* * * * * * * * 8 of 10.

No, this is not a new novel. This has been around for a few years, and I just had the pleasure of reading it. And all I have to say is thank you.

This book treats vampires like they should be, something to be feared. after years of suffering through the Twilights and True Bloods of the world, it's good to see someone finally make vampires evil again. Cold, cunning and calculating, Wellington's vampires are more sociopath than romantic, more animal than outcast, and definitely more serial killer than brooding loner He even makes fun of those types, skewering them viciously in every blood-soaked page. Our heroes, Caxton and Arkeley seem in danger every moment they are matched up with one of these monstrous foes, and seem like they'll barely survive each other -- him, the grim, secretive, scarred veteran of the havoc these monsters can wreak, and her, the dangerously inexperienced rookie to such horrors -- much less an onslaught of these predators. It all makes for a very tense read, chewing up page after page of action.

This is an aweome read, and a rather cool intro to this series. Thank you, Mr. Wellington, for making vampires fun again.