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May. 29th, 2011 11:50 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
seekingferret.livejournal.com9) Blood Pressure by Terence Taylor
It's sequel to Taylor's excellent vampire/zombie novel Bite Marks, and I believe it's book 2 of what will eventually be a trilogy. It jumps the action 20 years ahead, from the 1986 New York of the original novel to Summer 2007. Taylor is fantastic at grounding his story in that particular sense of time and place. He's a New Yorker and much of the novel feels like it was written as a love story to his favorite parts of the city. And since in Summer 2007 I had just graduated college and was living in an East Village apartment while trying to figure out what to do with my life, I really appreciated the little details he stuck in that represented his city. Several major events in the story take place in a club that was three doors down from my apartment.
Though its vampires, zombies, voodoo, and mummies in modern New York would make it urban fantasy ( and it is clearly marketed as such), I don't think it felt like classic urban fantasy. Instead, I'd compare the story to the work of contemporary fantasists like Susanna Clarke, with its rich secret histories, sprawling cityscapes, and vivid and complex characters. The first book in the series weaves the Hindenburg disaster, Jack the Ripper, and the AIDs crisis into its vampire lore, while this one makes Zora Neale Hurston a crucial character and opens with a reinterpretation of a news story I remember vividly from Summer '07- the eruption of a water main near Grand Central Terminal.
Taylor keeps most of the characters from the first book around, in new configurations and life positions, and adds a bunch of new and interesting faces, including some only alluded to in Bite Marks. By the end, there are a lot of characters to deal with in the final confrontation scene, and I like what he does with all of them. I was just as surprised by the ending of this book as I was by the ending of Bite Marks, and the ending of Bite Marks is spectacular.
I just hope that book 3 comes out soon, because I really can't wait to see the whole gang team up against newbadguyiwontspoil. And I really, really can't wait to see what Lopez has up her superbadass sleeve. Oh man, I really hope that book three is All Lopez All The Time.
tags: a: taylor terence, african-american, urban fantasy, vampire
It's sequel to Taylor's excellent vampire/zombie novel Bite Marks, and I believe it's book 2 of what will eventually be a trilogy. It jumps the action 20 years ahead, from the 1986 New York of the original novel to Summer 2007. Taylor is fantastic at grounding his story in that particular sense of time and place. He's a New Yorker and much of the novel feels like it was written as a love story to his favorite parts of the city. And since in Summer 2007 I had just graduated college and was living in an East Village apartment while trying to figure out what to do with my life, I really appreciated the little details he stuck in that represented his city. Several major events in the story take place in a club that was three doors down from my apartment.
Though its vampires, zombies, voodoo, and mummies in modern New York would make it urban fantasy ( and it is clearly marketed as such), I don't think it felt like classic urban fantasy. Instead, I'd compare the story to the work of contemporary fantasists like Susanna Clarke, with its rich secret histories, sprawling cityscapes, and vivid and complex characters. The first book in the series weaves the Hindenburg disaster, Jack the Ripper, and the AIDs crisis into its vampire lore, while this one makes Zora Neale Hurston a crucial character and opens with a reinterpretation of a news story I remember vividly from Summer '07- the eruption of a water main near Grand Central Terminal.
Taylor keeps most of the characters from the first book around, in new configurations and life positions, and adds a bunch of new and interesting faces, including some only alluded to in Bite Marks. By the end, there are a lot of characters to deal with in the final confrontation scene, and I like what he does with all of them. I was just as surprised by the ending of this book as I was by the ending of Bite Marks, and the ending of Bite Marks is spectacular.
I just hope that book 3 comes out soon, because I really can't wait to see the whole gang team up against newbadguyiwontspoil. And I really, really can't wait to see what Lopez has up her superbadass sleeve. Oh man, I really hope that book three is All Lopez All The Time.
tags: a: taylor terence, african-american, urban fantasy, vampire
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