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Title: Blood & Fire
Series: V-Wars #2
Editor: Jonathan Maberry
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 292
Words: 106.5K

Synopsis:

A collection of short stories that continue the look at vampires as they manifest throughout the world and how they and the humans of the world react.

My Thoughts:

A big fat sigh. Some more graphic sex, some more “vampires are just people” and some more of everything I complained about from the first book.

In many ways, it felt like the various authors were writing their own take on vampires without consulting the editor or having any master plan. One author presents them as soulless horrors who have lost all their humanity while another presents them as more human than the humans around them. It was a very mixed message.

Jonathan Maberry, the editor, has his own series called Joe Ledger, that'll I'll be checking out. I ran across a short story or two featuring Ledger that I enjoyed, so I'm hoping I'll have better luck with that.

★☆☆☆☆ ( )

Ready for the next book

I love sifi and horror, so a good story and I'm all in.
A world full of vampires, all kinds of vampires, and not the twilight vampires, I'm talking destroy your soul vampires, it doesn't get much better than this. ( )

V Wars: Blood and Fire is the sequel to V Wars: A Chronicle of the Vampire Wars. Blood and Fire, like its prequel, is written by several authors, James A. Moore, Joe McKinney,Jonathan Maberry, Kevin J. Anderson, Larry Correia, Scott Sigler, Weston Ochse, and Yvonne Navarro. Each author is responsible for writing one or more of the fifteen different stories that make up the whole. I read the series out of order, reading the first, third and then this the second. The second book bridges gap between first and third. It fills in where the different types of vamps come from and introduces some of the new characters, like The Hippo.

The events in Blood and Fire take place one year after the dormant DNA activates turning some humans into vampires. A truce has been in effect for several months concluding what is called the Vampire War. As the book begins, the truce goes up in flames and the second Vampire War begins. As with the first book, my favorite thread was by Yvonne Navarro. I really enjoy the character she created in Moonie. I would love to see Moonie have a book of her own. The character of The Hippo is wonderful. He is also in the third book but this book does a wonderful job of introducing him and explaining his behavior (and he have some behavior that needs explaining).

The book chronicles events through different viewpoints, the vampires and people. Some of the characters are simply trying to survive while others are driving events towards a cataclysm. They vary from soldiers (both vampire and human), a reporter, a consultant whose expertise is vampires and folklore and others who are trying to keep out of harm’s way. Not all vampires are evil and not all humans are good. I think that is one of the strengths of this series, the large grey areas where one expects only black and white.

The narration by Gabrielle de Cuir, Jamye Grant, Richard Gilliland, Roxanne Hernandez, Stephen Hoye, Arthur Morey, and Stefan Rudnicki is very good. I had no problems with any section or characterisations. The production values were excellent.

I am fortunate that my local library system subscribes to hoopla service which gives patrons access to digital content. I checked V Wars: Blood and Fire out from hoopla, streaming it on my tablet and downloading it onto my smart phone.

I would rate it 4 out of 5 stars overall: Plot 4, Performance 5, Production 5, and Attention holding 4.
( )

ABR's full V Wars: Blood and Fire: New Stories of the Vampire Wars audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

V-Wars: Blood and Fire is the second of the Chronicles of the Vampire Wars. I really the first book and couldn’t wait until this arrived. V-Wars introduced us to the L1V1, or Ice Virus. After a bacteria is released from melting glaciers in Antarctica, it unlocked latent “Junk DNA” that triggers a transformation into vampirism in select individuals. The ancestry of a person determines what type of vampire they will become. There are many different variation of vampire, each with its own unique characteristics.

Blood and Fire picks up one year after the V-Wars. It’s a good continuation of the story, with familiar characters and some new faces too. This was a really fun ride, in my opinion. There are some fresh new takes on vampire lore in these anthologies, and I love ever bit of it. There are vampures that feed on blood, some feed on flesh, and others even feed on life energy. Werewolves are prominent and considered another genetic trait of the L1V1. Draugr, of Norse Mythology, make an appearance in one hell of a story that was heartbreaking, devastatingly brutal, and enthralling.

Some very good authors contributed to this anthology, and I enjoyed all of them. Some that stand out are; Jonathan Maberry, whom contributes the majority of the plot and edited the whole thing, was fantastic. If you’re familiar with his work, this will come as no shock. He tells the story of Luther Swan, a folklorist who is considered the foremost in vampire mythologies and turns into somewhat the face of the wars. Scott Sigler’s Hippo was a fun and disturbing story that only Sigler could pull off so well. Larry Correia tells the story of a soldier-turned-vampire who has the training and knowledge to make the vampire army something it wasn’t before…an organized and terrifying threat to the human race. James A. Moore continues the story of a former enforcer for the Triad who feeds off the energy of living things. One of the lighter stories in the book, its humor is a nice break in the middle of all the gritty and dark stories surrounding it. Most of the stories were very good, all were entertaining, these were just the standouts.

The audio production was as good as anything I’ve heard. There’s no background noise, nor is there any unnecessary audible breathing that you get from some narrators. Stefan Rudnicki leads the way narrating most of Maberry’s stories and, without any real surprise, he steals the show. The opening few minutes of the book he delivers a killer portrayal of Luther Swan, it immediately sucked me into the whole book. The rest of the performances measured up pretty well, with only one or two that were not as good as the rest. That being said, I think all of them would be very good on their own. Especially considering they’re surrounded by the likes of Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir, who also puts on a supreme performance. Having never heard her work before these books, I was impressed and put her on my watchlist.

Audiobook provided for review by the publisher. ( )