Hello Kittens!

I owe you — shoulda posted yesterday.  Let me make it up to you: here is a review of Pamela Palmer’s A BLOOD SEDUCTION.

Pamela Palmer is an author who has interested me ever since she came to the Virginia Festival of the Book last year and spoke words of wisdom.  I noticed she had a die-hard core of fans in the audience who, from their hoots n hollers were there to see her, only her.

A BLOOD SEDUCTION is the first in her new VAMP CITY series.  For those of you who grok her Feral Warrior series, A LOVE UNTAMED is also coming out soon.

In A BLOOD SEDUCTION Our heroine Quinn starts off experiencing ever-increasing weirdness in her life, while hovering over her younger computer-geek bro and his would-be girlfriend Lily.  People are disappearing from D.C. and soon enough, Lily is one of them.  Searching for Lily with brother in tow, Quinn is sucked into Vamp City — an alternative dark  world to D.C. where cruel vampires rule, and humans are slaves.  (I mean, it’s literally dark — there is no sun) There are also werewolves lurking in the swamplands and other fey creatures treading about that are no help to Quinn at all.  Soon she’s fighting to find her brother, to save her brother, and along the way to escape rape, torture, and becoming immortal (and thus stuck) in Vamp City.

Along the way she slams into Arturo. As we see, Quinn adapts to her circumstances.  Part of that adaptation is the building connection between her and Arturo.  No matter how little either of them wants to get involved, it’s just happening between them.

In this new series, Pamela does several things that I really like.  She explores the kind of Urban Fantasy where old, new, and really old mix together.  We’ve got modern day yellow jeeps mixing with civil-war era frocks n decor.  Some gladiator style entertainment is tossed in as well.

Palmer creates a world so harsh that the hero is quite horribly flawed and yet still a nice guy by comparison.  No “oh at first he seemed so awful and dangerous, but really he’s not”.   [I am usually quite peeved by that kind of backsies move in romance novels.]  No, Arturo is a slippery character that Quinn most definitely shouldn’t trust.  But she doesn’t have a choice.

Pamela Palmer knows how to keep her readers turning the pages.  Brace yourself, though, this novel is definitely part of a series.  Nothing is really resolved by the end–probably because everyone is too busy scrambling around to simply stay alive. Palmer is remorseless in her willingness to let her characters almost succeed in finishing their goal or mission and then dragging them right back to the beginning again.  She creates an adaptable heroine, a very flawed yet understanding hero–and by trapping them in Vamp City she shows us that she is one very cruel author.  ;>