Genre: Paranormal, Vampire
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
Unlike their Blood Brethren, Warner and Seth are vampires who subsist on talent. They have been enemies for centuries, competing to feed on artists with the most prodigious musical gifts, and country blues singer Wade Dixon is no exception.
But the pursuit and capture of Dixon unleashes unexpected forces that carry these combatants from the earthly realm to a dangerous land of eternal night where they must work together or die alone.
The Review
Although it starts in New Orleans, a classic setting for vampires over the years, Jerry Wheeler’s “Pangs” takes vampire lore in a fascinating new direction. His three-part novel focuses on two particular vampires, who are not blood drinkers, but feed on the essence of their victims. In the case of Warner and his archnemesis of many centuries, Seth, they compete over musical talent—feeding on the raw talent of musicians. It’s a strange premise, but it largely works, especially with New Orleans as its backdrop.
The real core of this book is the difference between Warner and Seth. Warner is compassionate, and never drains all the talent from his sources. Seth, on the other hand, is cold-hearted, and unconcerned with what happens to his scores after he gets what he wants from them. This creates a fascinating dialogue in the first section, “A Thirst for Talent.”
These “essence drinkers” can kill—simply by draining the life essence out of someone. This potential deadliness comes to the fore in the second installment, “Pangs,” in which Warner finds himself dragged unwillingly into Seth’s ancient backstory and forced to confront the creature who made him. The shift in this part of the trilogy is into a bigger, stranger, more metaphysical world. Warner is forced to explore the other powers that vampires have—magic, which is something not usually linked to vampire lore beyond a few basic vampire tricks. The easy-going Warner has to fight for his life against beings he never imagined before.
The third and final part of the book is “Lord of the Land,” and takes the reader well beyond the realm of familiar vampire lore, into a place that is more of a metaphysical fantasy. Warner has to find his way back to the world he knows, in a “Lord of the Rings” kind of quest. He has to find out how far his own compassionate nature will take him.
At first this finale felt abrupt and incomplete to me; because it didn’t give me what I wanted and expected. However, after considering it for a while, I realized that the author intentionally confounds the reader’s expectations in order to make a larger statement about compassion and forgiveness.
Four stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
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