Blood Law
Dell, 400 pages, $7.99
ISBN: 978-0-553-59267-2
It’s possible that you might want a gift for a romance reader. I don’t think I’m off base in assuming that romances are a bit outside the comfort range of the average Analog reader. If you’re picturing Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, and lurid Harlequin paperbacks, don’t worry—this isn’t going to hurt anywhere near as much as you fear.
So far we’ve had viral vampires in The Passage and aquatic vampires in The Ocean Dark; now you’re going to have to bear with me as we take a cautious step into paranormal romance territory. It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been watching popular culture that vampires are big these days. We’ve been fairly insulated inside the safe confines of the SF/fantasy fields, but the fact is that international treaties now mandate that 7 out of 10 books published must contain at least one vampire. Paranormal romance authors have been doing more than their part so that SF writers don’t have to.
Truth is, there are many different ways to write vampires, and some of them are much more palatable than others.
Take Alexandra (“Alex”) Sabian, for example. She’s a vampire...but she’s also an enforcer with the FBPI (the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigators). To escape the pressures of the big-city preternatural crime scene, she transfers to a quiet Mississippi town where half the 6,000-odd population are vampires.
Things aren’t as bucolic as she hopes, though: the local sheriff is a vampire-hating bigot, and there are a lot of tensions between the humans and the vampires.
When those tensions begin to erupt in a series of gruesome murders of innocent vampires, Alex calls the home office for backup. They send the worst person possible: Varik Baudelaire, who just happens to be Alex’s ex-boyfriend. In the course of catching the vampire-killers, typical romantic difficulties ensue between Alex and Varik.
There’s enough of a love story here to interest any romance reader, but there’s much more. Jeannie Holmes does a masterful job of imagining and depicting the implications of a society in which vampires are another group in the multicultural stew. She uses many of the same tools and techniques as an SF writer exploring a premise (as Shusterman did in Unwind, for example). Alex Sabian is a great character, and she’s slated to return next year in a sequel.
Spread the love: Give Blood Law to your favorite romance reader. You will be thanked.