9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I hoped it would be, January 25, 2002
This review is from: Candle Bay (Paperback)
Some of the reviews of Candle Bay I read compared it to work by Laurell K Hamilton. I agree that Thorne was influenced by Hamilton's style, and employs some similar horror/sex shock techniques. But Candle Bay reminded me more of some Ann Rice vampire tales. That's not necessarily a good thing.
I enjoyed Candle Bay overall and I think the plot is entertaining, if a bit convoluted at times (Julian is running so many schemes it's a bit amazing he can keep them all straight!). The main vampire characters - Julian and the Darling family vamps - are well-explained, well-defined and interesting throughout. The twins got on my nerves but I think they were supposed to.
Amanda -- the MAIN human character and unknowing catalyst for the brewing vampire war -- is the main thing about Candle Bay that really disappointed me. Amanda is a very thinly-based character; you have very little interaction with her beyong her reacting to the other characters (and Candle Bay itself). I never had a strong sense of who she was, or where she came from. There was nothing that convinced me she was special enough, interesting enough or dazzling enough for two vampires (and two generations of vamps!) to fight over. Anita Blake she is not.
The book ends with a cliffhanger, so I assume we will see more of the Darling clan and their potential new vamp member, Amanda. I hope she's a more interesting vampire than she was human in Candle Bay.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sink your teeth into this!, July 31, 2001
This review is from: Candle Bay (Paperback)
I finished this book in two days. Tamara Thorne is one of the few authors who can mix horror and humor without watering down either. The focus of the plot is a mafia style war between two families of vampires. There is also a dash of romance and quite a bit of sex, but don't worry-this is not a typical 'vampire romance', expect plently of gore and gothic atmosphere. Highly recommended for fans of Laurell Hamilton. A vampire novel with plenty of juice!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don Vampire di Corleone, June 17, 2002
This review is from: Candle Bay (Paperback)
This story draws on so many disparate elements that it shouldn't work at all, but it does, and quite well.
Fresh-faced Amanda goes to work as San Francisco's Candle Bay hotel concierge, straight out of college. She's a lover of horror stories, but is completely oblivious to the fact that her employers, the Darling family, are an old vampire clan, and the Darlings do everything in their hypnotic power to keep her unaware. The Darlings have an ongoing gang-war with another vampire family, the Dantes, and are presently hosting one of the original trueborn vampire race - an extreme rarity, in the world - Julian Valentyne.
Julian comes bearing a gift: a precious, hitherto believed to be mythical elixir, that prolongs even vampire longevity and heals humans more quickly than usual, which is a valuable commodity to vampires whose hotel business is a front for a revolving food supply - the Darlings feed (lightly) on their sleeping guests, hypnotically erasing their memories of the nocturnal encounter, and being able to eliminate the wounds on their meals' throats before morning helps.
Julian is hardly an altruist, however. He has ulterior motives. He seeks a fabled treasure beneath the Darlings' hotel. Toward keeping his benefactor host family confused as to his true intentions, he turns them into drug addicts, exacerbates tensions between them and the Dantes, and works his charms on Amanda - who is the reincarnation of his sole human love, from Atlantis - to win her away from the attentions of Stephen Darling.
It may even be of importance for Julian to succeed in finding the treasure, despite his horrendous tactics - if he doesn't, both the human and vampire races may soon find themselves extinct.
This book succeeds on pure style and panache. It reads not like a horror novel, but like an epic black comedy - a good portion of the early part of the story is spent chasing the body of a murdered guest in a laundry cart, in true 1930s Hollywood comedy form. The dialogue is snappy, the characters credibly handled. Stephen and Amanda are the straightforward star-crossed lovers; sexy Barbara Steele-ish vamp Natasha is the hotel's CEO; Uncle Ori is obsessed with The Godfather, playing the soundtrack at family meetings; brother Ivor is a strong, silent brooder and thinker; and the psychopathic (but oddly charming) pre-teenage twins, Ivy and Lucy, are Wednesday and Pugsley Addams as serial killers.
This book is a lot of fun. It reads like a better-plotted Queen of the Damned, with more humorously likeable characters. Its only real flaws are a too-abrupt ending and a curious lack of developmental attention to human heroine Amanda. But the Darling family are delightfully demented and well-drawn, and the lengthy story moves at a pretty good clip.
Pass the AB-negative. Cheers!
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