cyphomandra

These are spin-offs from her Blood series (see earlier entry), which are urban horror/fantasy set in Toronto and feature the vampire bastard son of Henry VIIIth and ex-cop PI who’s going blind teaming up to fight crime, a combination which induces a certain amount of eye-rolling in this particular readership segment. The Smoke series follows Tony, who’s a street kid in the first Blood book (the only one I’ve read) and ends up in a relationship with the vampire bastard (bastard vampire? Where’s my list of adjectival order when I need it?) sometime later. He’s broken it off by the time this starts, which is the first thing that got me interested – it’s presented as your standard very intensive blood feeding/dominance thing, and it’s all too common for that to be the ideal vampire books strive for. Tony, however, has obviously found this a little too overwhelming and claustrophobic (yes, yes, projecting, I know), and has moved on, albeit with regrets. Instead, he works as a production assistant on Canada’s highest rating syndicated vampire detective show...

( Smoke and Shadows. )

( Smoke and Mirrors. )

( Smoke and Ashes. )

Apparently there won’t be any more of these unless sales suddenly pick up, which I think is a shame. What I’d like would more ones about Tony, on the small-scale horror level, with no overwhelming demons or transdimensional portals (and ideally no vampires, but Henry as a walk-on's fine), but that is apparently not what the market wants.