Sex and the Single Vampire / Katie MacAlister

Sex and the Single Vampire

category: fantasy, author:

Katie MacAlister

book 2 of Dark Ones
published by Hodder,
original copyright 2004, read in July 2010

Agamedes' opinion: 7 out of 10

Take the wide-eyed, forgetting-to-breath-while-kissing love of Twilight, replace that "love" with "lust", add the magic from the Harry Dresden books but without the underlying urge to do right. Make the heroine a lovable drip and add lots of humour. That's the essence of Sex and the Single Vampire.

Oh, and if you like all that, let me remind you of The Hunted, with its vampires, humans, cross-cultural love -- and heavy sex. Nothing to do with Single Vampire -- just a less famous but good book to read :-)

Another story which does have relevance, is the movie, The Frighteneres. Sure, the movie has no vampires. But it does have ghosts. And the Frighteners ghosts are very similar -- in their fluffy, friendly style -- to the ghosts of Single Vampire.

What I seem to be saying is, there is an awful lot of derivative material in Single Vampire. The truth of it is -- I have not read many contemporary vampire stories and am only now realising the overlaps and similarities in the genre... Unless, of course, I have read so few that I am completely mistaken!

If there really are overlaps, I make no pretense to claim that one is a copy of the other... Any book is a combination of ideas, some old, some new. What makes a good book is the way in which those ideas are used.

Sex and the Single Vampire takes a combination of ideas, some of which are definitely original, others may not be. The author... ummm...

The author. The author is "Katie MacAlister". So it says on the cover. On the inside, though, "The right of Marthe Alends to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her..." Marthe Alends?!

As far as I can tell (from a brief search of the internet) Alends has written one historical, romantic novel and several textbooks on genealogy. Search for her name and you get Katie MacAlister, with no visible link. So, I guess, the author is Alends, publishing as MacAlister. And why not... So, to continue:

The author has combined ideas old and new, original and copied -- and written a vampire romance with humour and sex. A very enjoyable book.

..o0o..

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