Smorgasbord Fantasia

Clay and Susan Griffith’s first book in a new series, Vampire Empire is now perhaps a couple of years old. I know that the third book has just come out recently and I had almost missed out on this delightful series because of my ever growing TBR pile.  But here I make amends and stand absolved of that mistake, I tore through the first book Greyfriar. An absolutely delightful read. Been long since I read a book that is so much fun. It’s not heavy on your senses and takes us on a flight of imagination through an alternate course of world history still thriving on Steampunk technology and cleaved into two halves, the human empire and that of the vampires.  In 1870, the year of the Great Killing, Vampires took over the Northern half of the world and laid to waste the entire human settlement who fled to the southern hemisphere. Now two great super powers exist in the human world – the Equatorial empire and the American republic. At the beginning of the story ...

I finished the much-hyped Passage by Justin Cronin last week. What did I feel about it?  I felt spent. Drained. Exultant that I finally have been inducted into the elite few who now know for certain, what lies beyond the passage. A tad bit frustrated with the ending. But aglow with a sense of achievement for having conquered this monster. Monster it truly is – what with being compared to a weapon to ward (literally strike out at the effing vampire using this 800-pages tome, LOL) off evil in some remote villages of Romania – this book has definitely had some brickbats coming its way – but all things considered, Justin Cronin has a winner here.  Some amazingly drawn out characters whom you fall in love with, brilliant evocative prose, stunning action set-pieces – all backing up an “intelligent” vampires book. Mind numbing Horror, Intelligent Science Fiction, Bleak Post-Apocalyptic, dark Western – you may fit the book into all these genres and not be wrong. Th...