Ian S McCain

N.B. I received a free, signed copy of this book through the First Reads program.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's definitely an interesting take on the vampire mythos. I felt that the scenes set in older Romania were quite believable in the way the characters behaved. I also thought the gang characters were mostly believable, even if some of the speech seemed out of place, though I did not grow up with gangs.

I don't have very many complaints about this book, and most of those are stylisticaesthetic complaints. My primary complaint about the content is that I didn't realize that this was meant to be the first in a series and it ends in a bit of a cliffhanger. As far as other complaints...all dialogue is presented with a double-dash before the dialogue rather than quotation marks surrounding the dialogue, which took some getting used to in the beginning. Second, page numbers on the left hand pages are by the binding rather than the outside of the page where they usually are located. Finally, the cover kept making me think that I spilled something on it, as if you catch only one or two of the blood drops out of the corner of your eye or something, it can appear as if there's a reddish-brown liquid on it. I fell for that one far too many times.

I did have a favorite quotation from the book which I felt was worth marking during my progress updates: "And you certainly won't sparkle like some sort of rare shimmering diamond."… (altro)