Crimson City [Mass Market Paperback]

Escaping the execution, Warrior vampire Fleur Dumont, now rightful head of her family following her brothers' deaths, feels humans are responsible after witnessing the assassin, a "mech", a mechanically enhanced human being. Joining forces with Dain Reston, a member of Crimson City's Battlefield Operations team, and a bitter man following his wife's death at the hands of a vampire, the pair find themselves attempting to untangle a mystery involving all 3 races in Crimson City. As more deaths occur, unrest is high in the city and in danger of escalating out of control.

There's loads of action and mystery in this book, as well as some fascinating characters who I hope crop up in future publications. For fans of dark fantasy we have supernatural races and hints of demonic experimentation, and for lovers of romance there is plenty of passion between Fleur and Dain. Despite their deepening feelings, both hide scarred pasts; Fleur breaking strict vampire code by converting a human lover, resulting in her losing her seat as rightful ruler of her family, and Dain, haunted by a wife he cannot remember and a new love he can never have.

I now eagerly look forward to reading, "A Taste of Crimson" by the marvellous Marjorie M Liu. There also appears to be another 2 further books within the "Crimson City" series, "Through a Crimson Veil" by Patti O' Shea and "A Darker Crimson" by Carolyn Jewel - I'll certainly be ordering all these books.

Vampires live lives of luxury, eating drinking and being merry in rich skyscrapers. They live from the use of blood banks, band together for mutual support and protection, and keep each other from doing anything criminal--like allowing their dark natures to gain ascendancy. They seem like really nice moral people.

The humans however, are traitorous, murderous, and revenge driven. All they seem to care about is regaining their dominance over the world by killing all those not human. They even create human cyborgs like Frankenstein's monster to use as killing machines, not caring about the men they use to do this. Wiping memories with evil dispatch,they blithely create killing machines.

The werewolves are the least understood in the city. Hardly ever seen, except for one memorable occasion in the book, they represent the lowest caste of people,and therefore easy to blame for things.

Standing aside from all, and loyal to no one are the rogue vampires--made vampires, or humans that have been bitten. These men and woman are vampires that either wanted to be vamps, or were made vamps against their wills, and could not adapt to their new realities. They hate everyone, and represent wild card in the city. Acting like mercenaries, they have no loyalty beyond themselves.

I gave this book four stars, because there is always room for improvement no matter how good a book is. Make no mistake, this book is very good.

Mark E. Cooper
The Warrior Within

This book was pretty good, lots of excitement and surprises, and I empathised with the characters. However, I don't think it read quite right - the heroine comes to power relatively unexperienced (although through no fault of her own) and kept making mistakes which were really obvious to the reader (and which therefore annoyed me). Also, the sexual tension between hero and heroine developed too quickly for my taste.

See what you think:

"And then, like a slideshow when a new image clicks into place, the sky was suddenly filled with vampires.

Both he and Cyd cringed back into their seats. He could feel the fangs' energy - their angry energy - in his body.

And then, like a ten-ton weight, something came down on the hood of the car, the weight smashing it onto the pavement. The car's headlights crushed instantly and went out. Both Dain and Cyd hit their heads on the roof of the car as it rebounded from the momentum; and when Dain finally looked up next, he was staring into the eyes of a very beautiful, very pissed-off female standing on the hood of his car, the green night vision strobe illuminating her for only seconds at time.

Dain had his gun out in a flash, pointing it at her through the windshield.

The strobe swept across her body once more, and he realized that her face was spattered with blood and she had a bandage wrapped around her shoulder. No wonder she was so hyped up. Her lips curled away from her teeth. He couldn't tell from where he sat if they were filed or human, but everything else about her screamed vampire. She held a very powerful short-nosed pistol up to the windshield between them, pointing her gun directly at his."