Undead and Unfinished (Undead Series) [Paperback]

I am not surprised that this ninth instalment in the comedy series which combines chick lit romantic comedy and vampire thriller has been getting mixed reviews. It's very much a "marmite" book which some readers will like and others hate.

On the plus side, there's some new twists in the incongruous way the story mixes up "Sex in the City" with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which had me laughing out loud several times. On the minus side it's a bit all over the place, particularly with a rather bizarre form of time travel which dominates the book, and you have to work to follow what's going on in places.

And in particular, the shock ending in the three-page epilogue will have made most readers who like the characters of Betsy and Laura feel they've been kicked in the stomach.

Without wishing to "spoil" the story in this book or the next one, let's just say that Betsy and Laura travel to the future - one possible future, anyway - and meet versions of their possible future selves. It's immediately obvious that both this future and the people they might become are pretty horrible, and the shock ending in the epilogue shows just how horrible.

In the next book Betsy will return home to find herself in a slightly altered timeline. It is not clear which timeline leads to the horrible future: our heroine is willing to take extreme measures to stop that future coming true, but is she in danger of paradoxically creating it through her efforts? We'll probably find out several books down the line ...

Elizabeth Sinclair, nee Taylor, (who prefers to be called Betsy) is a fashionista and former model, who to her own astonishment has become Queen of the Vampires. She has some unusually difficult family and relationship problems

* A sister who is the antichrist, and is rebelling against her parent the devil by trying to be good (but has some lethal ideas about how to do so)

* A husband who is King of the vampires

* A baby half-brother, whose guardian she has been since her father and stepmother died, who may have some unusual characteristics of his own, and

* said stepmother occasionally comes back as a ghost to haunt Betsy, when she's not being the head receptionist to Satan in hell.

The plotlines of the first six books were more or less resolved in number six, "Undead and Uneasy." The seventh, "Undead and Unworthy," kicked off what Mary Janice Davidson calls a new "story arc." This book, "Undead and Unwelcome" is the third part of that new story. The full list of Queen Betsy stories to date is

1) "Undead and Unwed (Undead Series)"
2) "Undead and Unemployed (Undead Series)"
3) "Undead and Unappreciated (Undead Series)"
4) "Undead and Unreturnable (Undead Series)"
5) "Undead and Unpopular (Undead 5)"
6) "Undead and Uneasy"
7) "Undead and Unworthy (Undead 7)"
8) "Undead and Unwelcome (Undead 8)"
9) This book, "Undead and Unfinished"
10) "Undead and Undermined (Undead/Queen Betsy)"

There is also a "Queen Betsy" novella, set at about the same time as book six, in Davidson's collection "Dead Over Heels," one of the three paranormal romance stories in that volume.

In my opinion you will get most out of these books if you read them in order. I would start with "Undead and Unwed" and work on from there.

Most of the "Queen Betsy" books are told in the first person by Betsy Sinclair/Taylor. However, one of the twists in this volume is that while most of it is narrated by a 21st century Betsy who was born a little over 30 years ago, dying and becoming queen of the vampires quite recently, a few sections of this one are narrated by a very different Betsy - I'd better not say more for fear of spoiling the story.

The first words of the series are "The day I died started out bad and got worse in a hurry."

Betsy is a former model and is still a fashion fanatic. At the start of the series, on the morning of her disastrous 30th birthday, she is working as a secretary. Her main interests are designer shoes, designer clothes, and her cat. In quick succession she gets fired, loses her cat, and is killed in a car accident. It is a great surprise to her when she rises again as a most unusual vampire. It is even more of a surprise when, through a sequence of bizarre events, she becomes queen of the vampires.

At the start of this ninth book, Betsy and her husband Sinclair have some serious rows: meanwhile Betsy and her sister Laura are invited to Hell by the devil. Betsy suspects that, of course, the devil is up to no good, but she has no idea how weird the events which follow will be ...

Mary Davidson has great fun by mixing up the vampire genre as in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or Laurell Hamilton's "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter" series and Chick-Lit romantic comedy as in "Sex and the City." This series is way over the top, fairly sexy, and often very funny.

An interesting comparison with other authors who have written entertaining comedies by combining incongruous genres would be with Marianne Mancusi and Robert Frezza.

In the same way that this book gets plenty of laughs by combining chick lit with Vampires, Frezza write two very funny books which combined Vampires and Science Fiction ("Mclendon's Syndrome" and "The VMR Theory") and Mancusi combined chick lit with time travel in "A Connecticut Fashionista at King Arthur's Court" and "A Hoboken Hipster in Sherwood Forest." Anyone who likes this book is likely to enjoy all four of those, and vice versa, if you have read and enjoyed any of those books you will probably like this one.

OK, this is never going to win the Booker Prize or any other great award for classic literature, and it is fairly raunchy, so not suitable for children. However, if you have the right sort of sense of humour, it is good fun. If you enjoyed the rest of the series, you will probably like "Undead and Unfinished" but be warned about the sting in the tail!

I hadn't read any reviews of this before I picked up the latest installment to this series, the ending was therefore a shock.

I'm not sure whether the plot twist(s) introduced by MJD will either crush the series, or bring a new depth to it, but I can see why so many fans of the series were upset. This book firmly moves the series from slapstick fluff to dark comedy. Some aspects are made more disturbing simply because they are written by this author in this series.

The main premise is the sudden escalation of issues for Laura, and Betsy trying to help Laura deal with them a new job offer. With changes to Laura's talents emerging, what ensues is a bit of time travel. The time travel has all the major trappings we associate with it, namely how will Betsy's interferance change the future? And if it does should it?

Whilst I appreciated the glimpses into history (and the future) there were a few times when I was made to feel uncomfortable about certain characters and their potential development. I agree with other reviewers that that things just felt off and a bit sinister.

My main issue with this book is that the whole plot felt rushed and improvised, as if the author decided to tie up loose ends. Or just throw it in for crazy kicks. I actually want to go back to previous books and figure out if she had set this up all along.

I sincerely hope that in the next book Betsy will grow up and make some necessary changes to prevent certain things from happening.

"I should have realized that an innocent quest for fine leather footwear would have ended up with me in hell and the Antichrist freaking out..."

As usual, Betsy Taylor's life is a mishmash of disasters, especially since her sister happens to be the Antichrist. But unfortunately everything explodes in a big splattery boom in "Undead and Unfinished," which seems to be half "Christmas Carol" and half chick-lit version of Dante's "Inferno" -- and Davidson seems to have changed her mind halfway through the book about what she was writing.

Betsy has her usual array of problems -- Sinclair is being moody, Satan is dropping in uninvited, and Laura is having bizarre pains and blackouts (she ends up naked "on the spoon"). It turns out that Laura is sort of suffering from withdrawal from Hell, and the only remedy is to take a tour of Satan's domain and exercise some of her demonic powers.

Of course, Betsy comes along for the ride -- and soon she and Laura are going on a wild careening trip through time and space. Specifically, stuff that will shape the life of the Vampire Queen, her family and friends, taking her to 1600s Salem, the 1920s, and the start of the series... as well as a terrifying glimpse into what is to come.

Simply put, "Undead and Unfinished" has some truly awesome moments, and Davidson even fills in some backstory gaps that have never really been dealt with, such as Sinclair's history. And it has the usual pop culture references and deliciously fluffy humor (such as Betsy sacrificing something precious to her in order to summon the devil, instead of the usual virgin).

But "Undead and Unfinished" feels like Davidson was never entirely sure what kind of book she wanted to write, so she threw all her ideas in a blender and hit "liquiefy" -- so we end up with a book that makes instant jumps from cute to serious, and from serious to horrifying. And while the future scenario is both ghastly and fascinating, Davidson cuts away from it too quickly and Betsy doesn't seem half as upset by it as she should be.

Most of the book is Betsy and Laura romping through time, including an interlude in Puritan Salem that (while fun) feels like filler. What's more, the trip to Hell and Laura's problems are forgotten pretty quickly, and most of the plot from the first several chapters (Sinclair's anger, Betsy's Thanksgiving rants) is pretty much swept off the table in favor of very slow-moving jumps through time.

"Undead and Unfinished" is an unsteady mishmash of the slow, the dark and the light -- and while Davidson introduces some fascinating twists, the book itself is a scattered mess.