Bloody Good [Paperback]

Georgia Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2009

While the sounds of battle echo through the sky, a lady doctor has more than enough trouble to keep her busy even in a sleepy hamlet outside London. But the threat is nearer home than Alice knows. German agents have infiltrated her beloved countryside - Nazis who can fly, read minds, and live forever. They're not just fascists. They're vampires. Alice has no time for fantasy, but when the corpses start appearing sucked dry, she'll have to accept help where she can get it. If that includes a lowly Conscientious Objector who says he's no coward though he refuses to fight, and her very own grandmother, a sane, sensible woman who insists that she's a Devonshire Pixie, so be it. Indeed, whatever it takes to defend home and country from an evil both ancient and terrifyingly modern...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In Evans's sparkling debut, mythic Others from English folklore must band together to protect their homeland during WWII. When country doctor Alice Doyle encounters a mysterious stranger injured in the woods, his quick recovery and disappearance leave her puzzled. Then a farmer is found dead and drained of blood, trouble brews at a secret munitions plant, and conscientious objector Peter Watson begins making eyes at Alice. Gerhardt Eiche, a Nazi vampire with sabotage and conquest on his mind, hides among villagers and refugees, many of whom—including Alice and Peter—are not quite what they seem. Treating childhood stories of fairy folk as historical records, Evans presents convincing characters in an intriguing story that will have readers eager to dive into Bloody Awful and Bloody Right, due later this summer. (June)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Kensington; 1 edition (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758234813
• ISBN-13: 978-0758234810
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,368,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Georgia Evans is the pseudonym I use for my Fantasy books. I'm better known as Rosemary Laurey.

The Brytewood books are a different venture from my Paranormal Romance and this series is very special to me as I grew up in the Mole Valley - the setting for my imaginary village - and some of my earliest childhood memories are of seeing the damage wrought on the area by the Blitz, and listening to stories from my mother, grandmother, aunts and older cousins on how they coped with rationing, bombs, the blackout and shortages of all sorts.

These books are a testament to the hundreds of thousands of women who struggled, did without, and made do under dire conditions and survived the war and to those who didn't.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best New Fantasy Series I've Found in 3 Years, July 13, 2009

By 

SailorLawyer (Annapolis, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bloody Good (Paperback)

If Mary Stewart and Charlotte McLeod had collaborated on a paranormal novel about rural English village life in early WWII, I think the result might have been something like this. Author Georgia Evans has written a tale that accurately incorporates the uncertainty and hardship of the Blitz into a larger story line that includes romance (a really good one!), magic, intrigue, and all the absorbing social detail you could expect of a really well-written "cozy." In fact, Evans' portrayal of the daily lives and attitudes of her characters has an authentic feel I would compare to Rhys Bowen and Mary Stewart novels of similar setting. The tone is light--impressively so, given the seriousness of some subject matter--but never silly, and Evans has written her paranormal elements (vampires, witches, pixies, etc.) into the tale with a deftness that makes their existence seem no more unbelievable than that of the Nazis. I think the similarity of the cover art to that of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels is probably not an accident.

The characters of "Bloody Good" are likable and well-crafted, and the prologue establishes a premise that should comfortably stretch over several more novels while still providing readers of "Bloody Good" with the ingredients for a proper ending. This book could function perfectly well as a stand-alone novel but, even still, I ran out and bought "Bloody Awful" as soon as I finished.

I noticed another reviewer complained of the book being politically inconsistent and I have to disagree. Because this book is really the first installment of a series, many plot elements have not yet been explained, but everything so far revealed has been consistent with the idea of vampires who sympathize with the Nazi agenda while also pursuing their own goals. Also, the inclusion of facts about the Holocaust (for which the same reviewer seemed to be arguing) would have been puzzling and perhaps anachronistic in a novel about the English countryside in 1940, when the average English citizen had little or no knowledge of the genocide taking place of mainland Europe.

If "Bloody Good" has a weakness, it's probably that the climax is a bit anti-climactic; the disposal of the bad guy is pretty abrupt. I greatly enjoyed exploring the world and characters Georgia Evan's has created here, however, and eagerly look forward to the "Bloody Right."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Entertaining, January 8, 2010

By 

Book Chick City (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bloody Good (Paperback)

This is the first book in Georgia Evans' World War 2 paranormal series. I found this book really easy to get into from the first page and I was taken to a place that is quintessentially English, with lots of tea drinking and gossiping. This is quite true of English culture, we do like to drink lots of tea, and we do like to sit around and have a good gossip while drinking it: it's just what we do!

There's great atmosphere to this book and you really get an essence of English country life during the war. The characters are well rounded, interesting and likable. There is Alice, the very attractive village doctor; Helena, her grandmother and Devonshire Pixie; the village bobby, Sgt Howell Pendragon, the resident shapeshifting dragon; Gloria, the district nurse and werefox; Samuel, the local grocer and elf; and Peter, Alice's love interest, who is just plain human and can't believe these people exist. And, of course not forgetting, the German, vampire nazis...

Although this story is set around the time of WW2, it's emphasis is more on the characters in the village and the vampires. The war is merely a backdrop and doesn't get too bogged down with lots of historical data. This isn't a frightening, scary or gory read, it's light, fun and easy reading. A bit like Agatha Christie but with vampires, and without the mystery, and Miss Marple... but you get the idea - the feeling of an old fashioned story with old fashioned values.

The dialogue flows easily and is quite humorous at times with no swearing. So, that's why when I got to the loves scenes, I was shocked! After many chapters of innocent Alice, dear old grandma Helena and lots of old fashioned tea drinking - WHAM! Sex! Using words that made me blush! Now, I'm no prude but this was so out of context that it made me cringe rather than feel all hot and bothered. Sometimes I think certain explicit words are used that really don't have to be. If certain words that were used were toned down a touch, it would have been much more successful, but instead I winced and squirmed in discomfort. Saying that, I did enjoy reading about the relationship between Alice and Peter, most of the time it was sweet and innocent and much needed in a time of war.

Verdict:

However, overall this book is very entertaining, light-hearted and fun and I would definitely recommend it, (as long as you can cope with the explicit sex scenes!).

(I gave this book 7/10 on my blog)

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Can You Go Wrong With Nazi Vampires?, July 11, 2009

By 

Tracy Davis (California, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bloody Good (Paperback)

I choose this book because the concept of Nazi vampires was just too hard to resist. And certainly, Evans delivers on the atmosphere of WWII England: the rationing, the blackouts, the evacuees from London; and the protagonists (Dr. Alice Doyle and Peter Watson) are empathetic. What I missed, however, is the Nazi vampires making more of an impact; although the book starts off with the invasion of four bloodsuckers, only one gets any depth (and I didn't think it enough), and their evil plot to overthrow England doesn't really seem to be of importance in the overall sequence of events. The human (and 'Other' human-like) characters fare well, and would be at home in any Masterpiece Theatre miniseries; think of it as 'All Creatures Great and Small' with vampires, pixies and dragons. What disconcerted me in all this, and what I personally thought out of place, were the rather explicit love scenes; it was as if another author stepped in with some graphic text. I will read at least one more of the series to see if it gels with me. I think this novel worth reading, but I don't think it lived up to the concept.