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Sep. 22nd, 2010 11:41 amI am not usually much of a paranormal romance reader, and I tend to think brooding vampires are overplayed, but I have just read an enormously endearing paranormal romance/vampire novel that trumps all my prejudices against the genre. ETA: The book in question is Alaya Dawn Johnson's Moonshine. KIND OF A CRUCIAL DETAIL TO FORGET, apologies!
Possibly this is at least partly because the book set in 1920's New York, and is chock-full of fringe, flappers, and characters exclaiming that this or that is the bat's pajamas. The costume-drama effect also helps with visualization! ( Cut for mental casting and BABY VAMPIRE SPOT CONLON. )
This aside, though, I also found the heroine just enormously endearing. Zephyr comes from a famous Montana family of vampire-and-other-supernatural-creatures hunters, but after moving to the big city she discovered ACTIVISM, stopped staking vampires, and started volunteering at the local blood bank. Zephyr is basically the kind of person who never met a social cause she didn't like. She's vociferously involved in thirty-one different societies on topics ranging from supernatural rights to birth control, she volunteers at the soup kitchen and teaches night classes to immigrants and vampires (and immigrant vampires), and she's a vegetarian to boot (even trickier in 1920's New York than it is now). She can hold her own in a fight when necessary, but as far as paranormal heroines go, she is less Anita Blake and more Reg Shoe. I kind of love this; I might not know a lot of people who stock silver bullets, but aside from this I totally know people like Zephyr.
After giving the last of her cash to one of her vampire students with a hard-luck story (he has three children at home! And the youngest is sick with tuberculosis!) Zephyr finds herself hard up for rent money. Enter Amir the djinn, who hires her to investigate the whereabuts of shady possibly-vampire mob boss Rinaldo. Zephyr thinks Amir is hot, but he is also a bit suspicious - and, worst of all, "had apparently not heard of a social movement since the schoolmarms took away his legal alcohol" (LE GASP.) Various hijinks and plot developments ensue, including a half-friendly-half-antagonistic partnership with Lily, a socialite reporter in search of a scoop; aforementioned tutoring of a gang of of evil baby vampires; and the inconvenient appearance of Zephyr's parents. I especially enjoyed the way that vampire-and-other-related politics interwove with the actual issues of the time - how, for example, do the Temperance Society ladies feel about alcoholic blood for vampires? What's a bigger deal, Amir's supernatural powers or his skin color? How much harder is it for a vampire when they also don't know how to speak English yet? These weren't gone into in depth, but they were all there, and I loved what there was. And I hope there end up being many more books in the series, because I would totally read a dozen of them.
Possibly this is at least partly because the book set in 1920's New York, and is chock-full of fringe, flappers, and characters exclaiming that this or that is the bat's pajamas. The costume-drama effect also helps with visualization! ( Cut for mental casting and BABY VAMPIRE SPOT CONLON. )
This aside, though, I also found the heroine just enormously endearing. Zephyr comes from a famous Montana family of vampire-and-other-supernatural-creatures hunters, but after moving to the big city she discovered ACTIVISM, stopped staking vampires, and started volunteering at the local blood bank. Zephyr is basically the kind of person who never met a social cause she didn't like. She's vociferously involved in thirty-one different societies on topics ranging from supernatural rights to birth control, she volunteers at the soup kitchen and teaches night classes to immigrants and vampires (and immigrant vampires), and she's a vegetarian to boot (even trickier in 1920's New York than it is now). She can hold her own in a fight when necessary, but as far as paranormal heroines go, she is less Anita Blake and more Reg Shoe. I kind of love this; I might not know a lot of people who stock silver bullets, but aside from this I totally know people like Zephyr.
After giving the last of her cash to one of her vampire students with a hard-luck story (he has three children at home! And the youngest is sick with tuberculosis!) Zephyr finds herself hard up for rent money. Enter Amir the djinn, who hires her to investigate the whereabuts of shady possibly-vampire mob boss Rinaldo. Zephyr thinks Amir is hot, but he is also a bit suspicious - and, worst of all, "had apparently not heard of a social movement since the schoolmarms took away his legal alcohol" (LE GASP.) Various hijinks and plot developments ensue, including a half-friendly-half-antagonistic partnership with Lily, a socialite reporter in search of a scoop; aforementioned tutoring of a gang of of evil baby vampires; and the inconvenient appearance of Zephyr's parents. I especially enjoyed the way that vampire-and-other-related politics interwove with the actual issues of the time - how, for example, do the Temperance Society ladies feel about alcoholic blood for vampires? What's a bigger deal, Amir's supernatural powers or his skin color? How much harder is it for a vampire when they also don't know how to speak English yet? These weren't gone into in depth, but they were all there, and I loved what there was. And I hope there end up being many more books in the series, because I would totally read a dozen of them.
