Archive for Best Vampire stories
Best Vampire Stories: The Real Werewives of Vampire County
Posted by: | CommentsThe Real Werewives of Vampire County by Alexandra Ivy, Angie Fox, Tami Dane and Jess Haines
Whoever thought of this should get a gold star, because this little collection of four very tongue firmly in cheek stories is a real treat. Each of the stories takes a fun look at the whole werewolf romance genre (if you can actually call it that) and more or less turns it sideways.
The first in the book is Where Darkness Lives and Ivy uses this opportunity to give us fans a bit of a backstory to the “bitch of all bitches” Sophia from her series “Guardians of Eternity”. Of course, Sophia says she won’t fall for the new bodyguard but we all know where this one is going! Plenty of hot scenes and lots of very clever dramatic play for a short story, but then we all know Ivy is capable of it!
Murder on Wysteria Land is next and has to be my fave of the bunch. Sure the mystery in it wasn’t the main part of the story, but the humor definitely was. When tomboy weregal Heather has to go undercover with a hot looking vamp to uncover a murder in a very toni part of town, well let’s just say that her need to look svelte all the time leaves her peeling outa clothes regardless of who is watching! This is just a plain fun story.
The third story, Werewolves in Chic Clothing is one of those who dunnit stories that is really more about the characters. Gal moves into fiancés house to find that his last wife, who died in mysterious ways looked just like her. It is a kind of bluebeard story for modern times with a paranormal twist. But the characters of the others wives was precious.
We finish with What’s Yours is Mine- probably the weakest story but still a great read. Tiffany wants to join up with a pack of werewolves in a very exclusive gated community. There is plenty of back story to set up the twist ending, and I don’t want to give anything away. Let’s just say that everything is not always the way it appears, even with werewolves.
All in all The Real Werewives of Vampire County is a cute set of stories about the not so private lives of a quartet of women werewolves who just want to have fun.
Best Vampire Stories: The Vampire that Started Them All
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Most of us think of the very first vampire book as being Dracula by Bram Stoker. It is true that this version of a vampire is one of the more popular ones, and the first version to make it to celluloid. But it isn’t the first vampire story, there were many before it.
In fact, the earliest vampire stories were old folk tales that almost every civilization had of creatures that roamed the night and drank the blood of those unlucky enough to be caught by them. But the first published book was The Vampyre and was published in 1819. It was thought at first to be written by a man who was the rock star of his age, Lord Byron. In truth, it was written by his doctor John Polidori. It was based on a story concept Byron had conceived during the famous ghost-story contest that spawned Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but he never completed it. Polidori took the idea of the narrator who falls in with a mysterious artistocrat who it turns out is a vampire. Of course, the creature just happens to remind one of Lord Byron, which didn’t exactly please him. But from this story was born the idea of the wealthy gentleman vampire. Even today the story holds up well as a smart tale of mystery.
The book at the time launched a huge vampire craze complete with theatre based on the idea, an opera and several sequels to the original. There was even a French translation by Dumas of the book. So you can see that even without the mass media we have today, the story of the vampire had just as much impact when it first arrived close to 200 years ago.
The vampire story has been around a long time, and I think it will continue to haunt us and fascinate us, no matter what form it takes.
Best Vampire Stories: Angel’s Flight
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Title: Angel’s Flight
Author: Nalini Singh
Release: February 28, 2012
Genre: Urban Vampire
Four novellas filled with angels of awesome and dangerous beauty, vampires with charm and sly ruthlessness, and a guild of hunters who are all too human. This is the world that Singh has built so successfully you will never want to leave. In Angel’s Flight, angels run everything, and vampires wield power but not without a cost. For angels will choose amongst them who will gain near-immortality, and when granted, it will cost them one hundred years of servitude to the angels. When a vampire runs rogue from this responsibility, that is when the Hunters Guild is called in, to bring the errant vampire to earth and to the angel they have wronged. It is a tricky and often dangerous job, but coveted by many.
The stories tell the tales of three sets of characters within this world, all with back stories of love, lust and danger. Angel’s Pawn brings us the cajun vampire charmer Janvier, who plays a new role of assisting Guild Hunter Ashwini instead of his usual one of hunted. Together they must bring in an errant vampire to the angel of Atlanta, and deal with the heat that rises between them along the way.
The second novella, Angel’s Judgment, brings Sara into the spotlight. In the novels from the series she is usually a background character, but here we see her as the new Guild Director and working a case of a vampire killer on the loose with the Guild’s own “Slayer” Deacon. Soon the two become more than partners, as the heat builds and the danger grows.
In Angel’s Wolf we meet the vampire Noel, recovering from a savage beating and struggling to regain some sense of emotional balance. When he is sent to the angel Nimra to help find out who is trying to kill her, he unexpectedly finds an angel with a fierce reputation and yet gentleness beneath that could be his road to healing. So many of the angels in this series are awesome creatures of unearthly power and might – this story is actually a welcome view into the other side of the angels.
Although the other three stories are actually reprints from other books, brought together here for the first time, the final story, Angels Dance is a totally new one. I love it when any series that deals with long lived creatures like this decide to take us into the past and that is just what this story does. We are taken back 400 years, to witness the birth of a love affair between the wing-wounded Jessamy and Galen. He sees Jess as the isolated and lonely woman she is, and takes her soaring in more ways than one. It is a lovely tale of romance and longing, and the mysteries they solve together as angels are a great foil for this relationship to be grown.
Even if you have never read the series, these novellas are a great introduction to a cast of characters and a world so well-conceived you will be searching out the rest of the series. Angels Flight is the perfect set of stories to take you out of your world and into one you will want to return to again and again.
