Vampire’s Call – review

Director: Kabat Esosa Egbon

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

Vampire’s Call is a Nigerian vampire film… it has that in its favour as we have not (thus far) visited Nigeria in our search for vampire media from around the world. However Nollywood is one of the largest film producing industries in the world. Regional location often dictates whether the film is shot in the Igbo or Edo language, though Vampire’s Call has been shot in English. I apologise for the state of the screenshots through this review as the film was watched via YouTube.

So, being from Nigeria is in the film’s favour but little else is. The Nollywood output is shot on video primarily but the pacing, story and effects were all suspect, to be candidly honest. The worst offender was pacing but we will get to that after the description of the film… this will spoil a lot.

Stephanie Okereke as Lisa

At a village compound the women sit and gossip as a car pulls in. A woman, Lisa (Stephanie Okereke), gets out of the car dressed in a business suit. She is greeted by her grandmother (Nora Roberts). It is five years since she had visited, five years since her parents died. Later (talking to her Grandfather (Justus Esiri)) we discover that she has been in England – though he got England and the US mixed up – and she is a medical doctor. She asks where her Grandpa is, it seems her Auntie Maggie died and he and the menfolk have been to her – the women are waiting their return.

skeleton

Lisa has a sleep and dreams. In her dream she carries flowers into the graveyard but thunder sounds out and she drops the flowers and walks into the depths of the graveyard as though she is in a trance, as howls (suspiciously wolf like ones at that) sound through the night. She reaches a house and sees a skeleton stood before it, with a glowing heart within the rib cage, and the cgi so poor that it makes you wish they had just used a plastic skeleton. She awakens to be told by her niece that grandpa is back.

When the cars arrive the women fall into a wailing histrionic that I found fascinating because such funereal wailing is, presumably, cultural. Just as fascinating was the party that occurred that evening, a glimpse into Nigerian custom one hopes. I said that the film had little going for it but such glimpses are worthwhile, also worthwhile was some of the music played in the soundtrack, which was rather beautiful. During the wake Lisa seems to go into a trance having heard a voice calling her, she nearly walks out of the compound when her niece stops her. No one goes out at night.

Muna Obiekwe as Max

The next day Lisa goes to the graveyard to see her parents and is warned by her grandmother to get back before dark. She tells her parents’ graves that she is having strange dreams and is still there after night falls. She hears movement and a howl and legs it, seeing goats with their throats ripped on the way back. In a dream that night she sees a man, Max (Muna Obiekwe), he has fangs.

victim of the vampire

She goes to visit an Auntie (note I don’t know whether Auntie is an actual relative or a respectful title and have used it as the former). She hopes to see her friend Vera (Jennifer Uzoma) but is told Vera is dead. The flashback is much more detailed, clearly, than the tale Lisa is told and has details that Vera’s mother could never know but, essentially, Vera kept going out at night to look after the animals because something was killing them (despite being told not to, and beaten by her father for doing so). Eventually she vanished and, days later, several bodies were found with their throats ripped out, including Vera.

dream dancing

Lisa talks to Grandma, who says that something evil is in the village, leaving people drained of blood with marks on the right side of their necks. Lisa puts it all together and asks herself whether there is a vampire in the village and then dreams of a room both black and red, she wears red and Max comes to her in black and they dance. Lisa slips out at night and finds the house, sees the dancing room and a man led as though dead. She speaks to her grandfather, though says nothing of what she suspects or has seen, and he tells her a story of the past.

CGI monster

In this story there is a warrior called Chioke (Muna Obiekwe) and, at the same time, a cgi monster with no discernible texturing, which attacked men, women, children and animals. The warriors were called and asked to kill it but the one who survived would become next in line to be king and marry the priestess. Of course Chioke wins but is wounded and tended by an outcast called Chioma (Stephanie Okereke) – known as the scarlet woman as she became pregnant out of wedlock, was denied by the father and the baby miscarried. They, of course, fall in love and when he returns, Chioke’s decision to marry her greatly upsets the priestess (whose rant cuts of half way through for the credits).

Chioma and Chioke

Which, obviously, is where the film ends. No resolution, no proper reveal of the vampirism source (ok we know that Max/Lisa are Chioke/Chioma because we recognise them, but even that part of the story hasn’t been revealed to the viewer yet), indeed nothing much has happened at all. Bad storytelling, worse pacing. I am reliably informed that Vampire’s Call 2 is not a sequel but a story continuation but… as I write this I haven’t yet seen it.

hanging around the graveyard

Perhaps I shouldn’t review this in isolation but, given 1.5 hours of the film, it should stand up to individual scrutiny. Another 1.5 hours is not going to help the acres of interminable boredom that stretch through most of this, fended off by the occasional cultural glimpse or lovely piece of music scattered amongst the soundtrack, but encouraged by acting that is actually not acting but talking through the script, stilted, un-emotive and just plain poor. The bad moments of cgi should have been avoided altogether. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Dracula’s Journal

The Blurb: Open at your peril!

Open Dracula’s Tomb – if you dare – to unearth his journals, filled with his horrible history, side-splitting secrets and ghoulish giggles. But be alert for Dracula making a POP-UP appearance!

The Mention: This is a 1998 children’s volume by Colin McNaughton and the reason for a mention rather than a review is that it is really aimed at a young audience and I doubted I’d do a review justice. It is, however, filled with all the bad vampire puns you (or your child) could want and I loved the way it didn’t sugar coat things – keeping things as horrible as a kid would demand.

Bright pictures – and a pop-up Dracula; it is the sort of volume I wish that I had found for my son when he was younger. However, let us be truthful, it’s the kind of guilty pleasure that many a genre fan would keep hidden amongst their book-case, a throw-back to childhood that we can sneak out and have a sly giggle about. With that in mind I’d like to thank Paul and Teresa, who purchased the volume for me for Christmas – duly read and neatly hidden in the bookcase for the next time I want to recapture halcyon days.

My Stepdad's a Freakin' Vampire – review

Director: David Matheny

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

With a title like My Stepdad's a Freakin' Vampire you feel like you are going to get one of three things. Either a fun, campy romp that has cult written over it, or maybe a real stinker of a B movie or, finally, a Disney movie (okay the "freakin’" in the title is out of place but it otherwise fits into some of their pedigree).

What we actually got was none of the above. It isn’t a real stinker, not by real stinker values… that’s not to say it is a work of genius, just not a real stinker. It certainly isn’t a Disney but, by the opening credits, it seemed to aim for fun, campy romp, the credits wobbling away in such a manner that it seemed deliberate and hip.

Lahcen Anajjar as Rusty

The film is about Rusty (Lahcen Anajjar) and he isn’t exactly a n’er-do-well. His room is full of prestidigitator paraphernalia – it turns out that his dear departed father was a stage magician – and he certainly is wanting to be a showman. He has little respect for his new step-dad, Richard (Larry Peterson), who seems to dislike him (in a less than malevolent way, as the film starts, but given the title you know that isn’t going to last).

the other side of Richard

In the eyes of Stan, police officer and dad of Rusty’s best friend Travis (Brandon Martin), Rusty is disrespectful and gets Travis into trouble at school. The principle, known to Rusty as Mr B (Jeremy Spencer), dispairs – but then it is his own brother, Chuck (Casey Myers) , who has supplied the blade for Rusty’s science project trick guillotine. With mom out of town, however, Richard is going to show a new side of himself to Rusty.

a vampire

Richard is not only a vampire, he is the leader of all vampires. His vampire army are trapped in another dimension and the key was given to a bloodline of a knight to protect… that would be Rusty’s bloodline and the reason Richard married his mom. The vampire lore is a bit funky, however. Richard can walk in the sunlight – but his vampire brethren, when released, cannot.

impaled by broom

Gert (John Redmond), the school janitor, is a vampire hunter and runs a line in stakes. Indeed he rescues the boys from a turned Chuck by staking him with a broom. All well and good, but the stake doesn’t kill him, neither does self-impalement later. So, why the vampire hunter bothers with stakes… who knows, probably because they are meant to be used. They do discover that running a vampire down in a truck makes it explode in green goo. It is also the only film where you will see a vampire decapitated, the head continue to talk and then be microwaved (at least I think it is the only film, but stand to be corrected). At one point the dead are raised and you’d think they’d be zombies (as they are the long dead) but they seem to be vampires too.

hand from the earth

The problem with the film is threefold really. First is the characters. Teen boys run down someone and they think it is a Halloween reveller. They freak, of course, but as soon as they realise it is a vampire they are suddenly fine and dandy… the reaction didn’t work and I felt that a lot through the film, the characters were just slightly off-kilter. Next is the production and it is really a shame because I thought it teetered on the edge of being rather good for the budget, but stayed teetering and never quite crossed over. There is a mugginess to the film (which I can’t explain better than that, in honesty).

the raised dead

Finally there are the effects. Again, for the budget, they weren’t entirely bad. But… to illustrate… 15 year old number one son walked in as I watched the film and commented “worst effects ever”. Now he is being unfair (or, more honestly, I’ve not exposed him to the worst effects in other vampire movies), however the remark was telling. All I can really do is repeat that, for the budget, I have seen worse and that they gave them a go at least.

Which is the theme for the film, I’m afraid… they gave it a go at least… but I wasn’t as impressed as I should have been and the film gets 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention and a Christmas Indulgence

Merry Christmas one and all from Taliesin Meets the Vampires. I’ve just sat down to watch one of the greatest comedy/road trip movies ever constructed by the Film Industry – the Cannonball Run. A plethora of stars and silliness (and, unfortunately, different subtitles from the old VHS, for Jackie Chan’s bits, on the UK DVD – but that can’t be helped).

But why the honourable mention? It is a bit of an indulgence on my part as there is no vampire in the film but you might recall the Doctor that Victor (Dom DeLuise) secures for the ambulance that he and JJ (Burt Reynolds) take on the race. Well his name was Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing (Jack Elam).

An absolute indulgence on my part, but hey, it’s my blog… J …. Anyway, have a great day, may you and your loved ones be safe and less spurious programming will recommence after the holidays.

The Imdb page can be found here.

Blade – the anime – review

Director: Mitsuyuki Masuhara

First aired: 2011

Contains spoilers

I really wanted to like this, I truly did. Blade was one of four Marvel Anime series produced for the Japanese market in 2011 – it is due to have a re-dub and be released in the US – and ran alongside Iron man, Wolverine and the X-Men. I haven’t seen the others but this review is of the Japanese release with English subtitles.

As I say I really wanted to like this, I love the Blade franchise but this just didn’t float my boat. The series follows Blade (Akio Ohtsuka) as he travels through Japan and other Far Eastern countries tracking down Deacon Frost (Tsutomu Isobe) – the vampire who turned his mother and gave Blade the curse of vampirism – albeit as a daywalker.

Blade's mother bitten

We get the background to Blade through the series – his past transposed to England, where he was found and helped by Noah Van Helsing (Osamu Saka), who developed the serum Blade uses to keep his blood thirst at bay and appears in occasional episodes of the anime (and also loans Blade his vampire hunting Dog, Razor). Blade is also accompanied by young vampire hunter Makoto (Maaya Sakamoto). At first she hunts Blade as he killed her father, after he was turned, but later they become vampire hunting partners.

fighting a Suikou

As I say their hunt takes them across Asia and, as such, we meet a variety of local vampires including Suikou, a feline based vampire that I can’t find a corresponding myth for, the Mandurugos, which is an aswang variant and is depicted as a bird like vampire, and the Manananggal, notorious for splitting its body in half. All work for Existence, Frost’s vampire network, and the series suggests that he has genetically manipulated these creatures into existence. Frost’s goal is to supplant the purebloods and become ruler of the world (and use Blade to create a daywalking strain of vampires).

Deacon Frost

One thing that was nice was that the series did go into Frost’s backstory and revealed a college professor who lost his son to vampires and sought revenge on them. In some respects he is not unlike Blade, but Frost clearly went mad, infected himself with vampirism (a strain he created, that has given him a distinctive four fanged bite) and twisted into megalomania. The normal Blade vampire rules seem to be in place with regards silver, beheading, staking and sunlight. They allergy to garlic has been removed but, whilst religion is not a normal factor, a shaman blesses some water which causes it to be deadly to vampires.

Blade and Wolverine

The purebloods seem arrogant but not actually effectual (though we discover they use familiar bats, giving a crap bat moment). Part way through the series Blade does run into Wolverine (Rikiya Koyama) but this is not as fun as it might have been and, I’m afraid, that is the moto for the entire series… not as fun as it might have been. The series bobbed along but never really carried me with it. Instead I forced myself to follow it downstream. Whilst accepting that Blade is meant to be stoic, I never really bought in to the other characters.

The animation itself was nothing to write home about either. So much more could have been done with both the animation and the story and it seemed a bit of a shame that nothing more was done with it. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Competition results and apologies

Firstly, can I congratulate Scott Swisher who is the winner of the Discovery of Witches giveaway.

Secondly can I apologise that Taliesin Meets the Vampires has been a tad sporadic over the last few weeks. I have been in the last throes of finishing a Foundation Degree and it has eaten a lot of time up, and I haven’t as many backed up articles as I would normally like.

However a normal service should resume post the festive season and we have upcoming reviews of, amongst other things, the Blade anime and My Step-dad’s a Freakin’ Vampire.

For those wondering about my mentioned, in a couple of places, reference book on the vampire in the media, the project was put on temporary hiatus whilst I completed the degree. It is mainly completed, though following comments from initial readers I do want to add a further chapter in. Hopefully I will work on that over Yule for an early 2012 release.

Honourable Mention: Lady Blood

Once upon a time, in 1990 in fact, there was a film called Baby Blood and it was a French, gore-fest black comedy that played with the concept of the evil within. I rather enjoyed it, but did caveat my review with the fact that it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

Cut forward 18 years and a sequel is produced, directed by Jean-Marc Vincent. The film made it onto the first Bram Stoker Film Festival short list but was pulled from the festival by the time we arrived, by the organisers I understand. The film has received German and French DVD releases but nothing in the English language market. However, thanks to the power of fan-subs I have now been able to watch the film.

Emmanuelle Escourrou as Yanka

Positively it does have Emmanuelle Escourrou reprising her role as Yanka – transformed now from the ‘abused circus worker come murderess, pregnant with the baby from Hell’ into ‘mother and super-cop’. That said, this is an honourable mention, as I doubt you’d find much more than a flimsy vampiric aspect (a ‘cannibal killer’ is being hunted by the police) unless you had seen the first film. Indeed, I very much doubt a casual viewer would get what was going on if they were unaware of the first film. The film is also played as straight horror, this loses all the nuances that the black comedy aspect offered the first film.

Bénédicte Mathieu as Christine

The film begins with newspaper clippings regarding the events of the first film, and these will not serve to clarify Yanka’s connection to the creature, for the casual viewer, nor does it help those who know the first film as new characters are thrown into the fray including a woman, arrested it seems for the murders Yanka committed. The woman is named Christine Pollack (Bénédicte Mathieu) and she seems to have a psychic connection to the creature (why we don’t know) and her point in the film was actually fairly lost on me. She does say something that nearly hit the vampire bell, as it were. The fan-subs translate her words as describing the creature as “the thing that comes from the blood” – which made little sense, could it have been “for the blood” – I’m afraid my French is very limited so I can’t say.

the first host

The creature (or squid like baby) at the end of the first film escaped into the sea and it is from there it emerged, attacking a fisherman and then entering and possessing a swimmer. Where has it been for the intervening years and how did it survive? We don’t know and yet the creature offered a voice-over at the beginning of the first film and spoke to Yanka through the film. In this we are lost. The creature first attacks its host’s girlfriend, beating her and devouring her face. In the first film it was clear that it was blood the foetal creature needed, in this it seems to be flesh.

host looking unwell

The creature can pass from person to person (and we see a tentacle appear from the hosts mouth, passing to the new host). At first its hosts seem a bit zombified, certainly one of them has hanging skin that it staples to pass as human and the walking function is jerky. However there is the controlling intelligence behind them. Eventually the main tell is the consistent sunglasses, worn to hide the white eyes. There was no real sense of paranoia built around who could be the host and, indeed, Yanka had nose bleeds when in the creature’s vicinity but this early warning system wasn’t really worked on. When it vacated a body the flesh seemed to melt from the last host – this is not explored.

transfering

A sub-plot about gangsters seemed ill-founded and tagged on unfortunately, most of the other cops were just cypher characters. There was some attempt to expand on her new partner but both Yanka and he were little more than cardboard cut-outs of characters, Yanka a little more rounded because I had seen the first film. There were also some bizarre continuity/suspension of belief moments. The creature’s host having a blood stained mouth seemed not to raise a comment in a club he went to and the blood seemed to mysteriously appear on and vanish from his face between angle changes.

white eyes

This was, all told, an unworthy sequel to the original, it lost everything that made the first film memorable and became an average creature feature with a twist in the ending so clichéd that you just sat waiting for it to happen. If I were to do a cold ‘Vamp or Not?’ on this it would come out not, and the fact that it changed so much else within the film’s premise, story and genre meant that I didn’t want to review it as a vampire film. That said, if you know the first film then this possesses a genre interest, hence the honourable mention.

The imdb page is here.

Being Human (US – season 1) – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2011

Contains spoilers

When I first heard about a US remake of Being Human I was less than enthusiastic, after all the UK series was patchy in parts but had developed a great pedigree. The original pilot episode (which sinfully is not available on DVD) was a magnificent piece of comedy drama with more than a touch of Withnail and I and brought us the tale of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost sharing a house and trying to be human.

a touch of gore

The first season changed two of the main cast members but maintained the pilot’s background story. The comedy remained, but its focus and style shifted and it wasn’t consistent in its writing. Season 2 still had weak moments but had some marvellous moments, edging just ahead of the first season. Unfortunately Season 3 squandered its strong moments, more than the first two seasons, with some plot-holes as well as unrealistic and sensationalist writing.

werewolf, US style

So, a US version, the actors (by the initial publicity shots) seemed too polished – they weren’t, to be fair – and I wondered why the producers would bother. However, by the end of the UK season 3 we knew that the vampire character Mitchell was out of any subsequent series and recently (at the time of writing this review) it seemed the werewolf character George was not to be reprised by Russell Tovey – honestly, I am left wondering what the point of a fourth season would be but it also meant that the future of the franchise has to be placed well and truly in the US series’ hands.

unusual flatmates

Well, the series was both familiar and new. The series used the basic plot of the pilot episode and the first UK series, with some aspects lifted from the later UK series, but then really changed the show. The show was played straight, with some incidental humour, the character names all changed as did storylines, with character development and dynamics shifting because of the way the script writers changed the actions and events around. Mitchell became Aiden (Sam Witwer), George became Josh (Sam Huntington) and Annie became Sally (Meaghan Rath). Looking strictly at the vampire aspects; Aiden attacks and leaves his date, Rebecca (Sarah Allen), for dead at the head of the first show, falling from his not-live-blood wagon. She is turned on the orders of Bishop (Mark Pellegrino) – who is the Herrick equivalent - and Bishop then uses her through the series to try and get Aiden back into his vampire fold.

the Dutch during the day

The show changed, very much, the vampire dynamics. Bishop still plots for a vampiric uprising, as it were, but is going against the elders – Bishop may run Boston but it is at the whim of the Dutch. Interestingly they sleep through the daylight hours, either in coffins or suspended in burlap sacks (because it is traditional, not because they have to) and live a rural life that is a juxtaposition of an almost puritanical lifestyle mingled with truly monstrous appetites and vampiric behaviour, where the urban vampires are comfortable in the light and have blood dens where willing victims offer a taste of their blood.

no invitation

There was some major lore changes as well. Gone is the entire religious theme, which played a part in the UK series. There is no indication that a cross (or in Josh’s case a Star of David) can hold a vampire off and whilst a hospital priest does come into the story he does not repel the vampires with faith but is a vampire, recruiting new vampires for Bishop. Garlic comes into play but causes a mild allergic reaction that forces the vampires to show their true, vampiric face. Vampires who enter a domicile without invitation start to decay or burn away.

Mark Pellegrino as Bishop

Interestingly Juniper is added into lore, Juniper being able to cause a temporary, rigor mortis like paralysis in a vampire. Both a stake through the heart and beheading will kill a vampire and when they die they crumble into dust. To turn a victim into a vampire they must be fed vampire blood. Interestingly the Aiden character is significantly older than his UK counterpart – coming in at around two hundred – he also does an unfortunate line in being the maudlin vampire.

vampire on camera

Significantly vampires now have reflections and can be filmed. This changes the dynamic of the entire storyline (as it might have developed) as there is no sneaking in and out of places as Mitchell did in the UK series because CCTV wouldn’t catch him. The storyline of the young boy, Bernie (Jason Spevack) , being befriended by Aiden and taking a vampire porn disc created by Rebecca is still there but changes as the disc clearly shows a male and female participant – the mother simply separating Aiden from her son as a pervert, without the Daily Mail-esque false accusations of child molestation and the hysteria thereafter. This story also shows how the writers changed the show’s dynamic (with this and some other storylines) by having the story run over two episodes.

Sally is unwell

The acting is strong throughout, though Aiden is a bit of a whinger. Josh, as a character, is probably the most unchanged – though it is his sister and not his ex he meets in the early episode, leading to a reconciliation (of sorts) with his parents in this season (rather than season 3 of the UK storyline) and some of the other events of later UK seasons are introduced in this season. Sally’s backstory is much the same, though her character is drawn as intelligent rather than scatter-brained, but her ghostly interactions are more limited in this season, she has a ghost on ghost relationship briefly and her murderer tries to have her exorcised – which left her looking rather ghoulish for a while. One thing I did notice was that there was an obvious estrangement from nudity, even the vampire porn disc had a maintanance of underwear (and then an on-screen reaction to off-screen boobs) - that felt odd after a certain HBO vampire series.

Nora and Josh

Over all I cannot say that this was any better or worse than the best of the UK seasons – it was different and I think that the overall writing was more solid, with more realistic reactions/impacts than later seasons of the UK series. The dynamics and character development, I think, were so changed by the end of the season that I genuinely look forward to seeing where they take this. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

;)Q

Dominion – review

Author: Scott M Baker

First Published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: The exciting conclusion of The Vampire Hunters

After being hidden away for centuries, the Vampyrnomicon, the Book of the Undead, is finally unearthed, and with it the terrible secret of the vampires' origins. The discovery of the Vampyrnomicon gives Drake Matthews the means to defeat the Master and eradicate the vampire threat, but it also provides Chiang Shih with the knowledge she needs to make her masters immortal.

Now more powerful than ever, Chiang Shih raises an army of the undead and creates a vampire nation in Washington D.C. Her attempt to assassinate Drake and his colleagues nearly cripples the hunters, but fails to kill them all. Driven by vengeance, and with his band of hunters swelled by unlikely allies, Drake leads the group into the infested city.

With the fate of humankind hanging in the balance, hunters and vampires wage the final epic battle in the streets of the nation's capital to determine who will hold dominion over the Earth.

The review: Dominion is the final book of the Vampire Hunters Trilogy, following on from the Vampire Hunters and Vampyrnomicon.

If Baker drew things down a notch, action-wise, in the second book, allowing his characters to grow and develop, then this volume reverses that pace change and accelerates into balls out action. I was genuinely very impressed with the pace that Baker lent his book, with any momentary lull nothing more than an eye in the storm.

The Hunters finally find the vampyrnomicon, in this volume, though they do not keep it for long. The book is revealed to be the vampire bible and Chiang Shih, the daywalking über-vampire from the earlier volumes, is revealed to be nothing less than the antichrist, born at the same time as Christ and living the opposite life, inherently evil to his good and daughter of Satan. The vampyrnomicon contains an incantation that will allow her to make all the vampires daywalkers.

It also reveals the way she can die, and that is by staking with wood taken from Christ’s crucifix – of course finding a piece of the true cross is going to be less than easy. There are new hunters introduced in the volume and they were perhaps a little thin character-wise, as Baker did such a good job rounding out his primary characters in the last volume, but the aim of the book is clearly one of charging to the conclusion at breakneck speed and so that can easily be forgiven. This was a very good conclusion to the series and is recommended. 7.5 out of 10.

The book can be purchased directly from Pill Hill Publishing or via Amazon.

Competition Time

Towards the beginning of the year I reviewed the novel a Discovery of Witches a book centred around Oxford and on the shadowy underworld of daemons, vampires and witches.

The book receives a US paperback release on 27th December 2011 and to celebrate Penguin have promised one lucky TMtV reader a free copy of the book – there are no country restrictions with this giveaway.

All you need to do – to be lucky enough to win the book – is leave a comment on this post, with your name and an e-mail address. One lucky winner will be chosen at random, the competition closes midnight 21.12.11 (GMT). The judge’s decision (that would be me) is final.

Best of luck, and for those that miss out, the link to the Amazon US page for the book is below:

Blue Bloods – review

Author: Melissa de la Cruz

First published: 2006

Contains spoilers

Blurb: They’re young, fabulous and fanged…

And they rule Manhattan from the trendy uptown clubs to the downtown boutiques. Fifteen-year-old Schuyler Van Alen has never quite fit in at her exclusive prep school – she’s more of a vintage than a Versace girl – but all that’s about to change…

Because Schuyler has just found out that she’s a Bluue Blood. The Blue Bloods are the city’s glamorous and secret vampire elite. They’re young, beautiful and powerful. But now they’re being murdered. And Schuyler must find out who – or what – is behind it, before she’s next.

The review: It was rather nice that the Amazon Vine programme coincided with my own passion for reading and reviewing vampire related material and, though this was clearly aimed at a teen market, it did a lot right – eventually.

This creates a level of lore that is rather interesting as the Blue Bloods are not just vampires, they are fallen angels. Their immortality comes through recycling themselves, dying and being reborn (from their blood) by choice and growing to age until their blood releases their memories of their previous cycles. They have laws governing how much they can feed from a human, they can choose to live beyond the cycle and they cannot die by any conventional means.

This is all well and good and explains why the first half of the book was so frustrating. Forgetting the fact that the idea of an Upper Class prep school was one that came across as alien to me and the fact that the book is written to the target audience (teen) and could have benefited from a much more adult orientation to the language. The reason it was frustrating was because it felt like de la Cruz was trying to hide the nature of these creatures, revealing nothing, hidden from the reader as it was from the main character. However the prose flipped perspectives to those who knew the truth and still it was purposefully hidden from the reader. This might have worked had it not been for the cover and the blurb… hardly the author’s fault but it was still frustrating.

I said that they could not die by conventional means (or indeed by any of the normal vampire slaying techniques) and yet they are being murdered. Because of this the young generation (who are the ones being targeted) are informed early of their heritage. The idea of the hunters hunted was nice, of a creature or creatures bigger and badder than the bogeyman – the identity of which I won’t spoil. It made me sit up and take notice, it brought a sense of urgency into the prose and it made me overlook some slight character issues.

These issues were mainly born out of the reactions and attitudes of a certain character who turns out to be a Red Blood (the name for humans) retainer to the Blue Bloods and yet the reactions that had earlier been described to us didn’t fit that role at all. Also, one wondered at teen vampires who suddenly gain the memories of countless past lives but not the wisdom of the ages, leaving characters perhaps as bratty and spoilt as they had been in their human-esque life before the blood took hold.

Nevertheless the book had me intrigued from the moment the unusual lore was revealed and I will certainly look to the other books in the series. 6 out of 10.

Honourable Mention: the Sorcerer and the White Snake

The Sorcerer and the White Snake is a 2011 film by Tony Ching Siu-Tung that works on the premise that the technology now exists to put a lot of mythological and magical elements into a film that were impossible in the past. It doesn’t lead to a realistic looking film, per-se, but the look of the film works well in its unreality.

The main film concerns the white snake (Eva Huang), a snake demon called Susu. She and her sister green snake (Charlene Choi), who is named Qingqing, see a group of men picking herbs on a mountainside. Her sister decides to scare one of the men, Xu Xian (Raymond Lam), manifesting as a snake and making him fall from the mountain into a lake. There he would have drowned but white snake takes human form and dives in after him.

Susu the white snake

As she saves him she kisses him and passes some of her life essence into him, thus the two merge life essence and fall in love. When she later finds him they agree to marry but the local Buddhist Abbott, Fahai (Jet Li), captures demons and traps them so that they might meditate on their evil ways. He recognises Susu for what she is but also recognises that she has acted benevolently so far. He gives her one chance to leave the mortal realm. Of course she and Xu Xian are in love and she doesn’t leave, causing a tragic chain of events to follow.

bitten by a bat demon

That is not what this honourable mention is for, however. During the film we see a few demon hunts and the first to mention is the hunt for a bat demon. The bat demon attacks folks and bites their necks, drinking their blood – sound familiar? Fahai and his pupil Neng Ren (Wen Zhang) track the demon to a festival. Unfortunately Neng Ren’s demon detecting compass seems to be playing up, mainly because he makes a new friend in the form of Qingqing.

fighting bat demons

Eventually, however, he tracks the demon to a boat. He leaps atop it and fights some female bat demons who transform into flocks of bats. He defeats those but is captured by the main demon (who is in a man-bat kind of form). The bat demon bites Neng Ren. Fahai comes to his rescue and defeats the bat demon, capturing it as they fall into a chasm of fire (in another realm presumably).

Neng Ren changes

Unfortunately Neng Ren has been poisoned and, when Fahai gets him back to the temple, it is feared that he will die. His fate is worse than that. He starts transforming into a bat demon himself – growing fangs and long ears, his hands turning into one with three digits and large claws and, eventually sprouting wings. Worse, having run away and contemplated suicide, Qingqing tricks him into trying to bite him, eating meat and drinking blood – stripping away his monkhood.

fox spirits draining life

The bat demon was very vampire, with the bat-form, the blood drinking and the ability to mortals into its own kind. The other mentionable moment was when Fahai hunts down the demons plaguing a town. They are fox-spirits and these are a traditional Chinese myth form that most definitely often crosses into vampire territory (or vice-versa, to be fair). In this case, when in human form the foxes take on female form and suck the life force out of their victims.

I rather enjoyed the Sorcerer and the White Snake, it was a doomed love story but had a marvellous mythical landscape in which to play. The imdb page is here.