Customer Reviews

Dark Angels: Lesbian Vampire Erotica

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm writing this review about the ebook edition itself, not the story contents. I know that's frowned upon, but I felt it was important to inform others to save potential disappointment.

I'm a vampire fan from since I was a kid, so when I saw this while browsing Amazon one day quite a while back I put it on my wishlist. At that time no page count was listed on the product page. Yesterday a friend sent me this book as a birthday gift and I'm so disappointed I'm returning it. IMO it's just not worth the current asking price (nine bucks).

The entire ebook has less than 1500 locations. (The book listing now states it has 145 pages.) By the time you move through the front matter and introduction the stories only take up around 1200 locations. To put that into perspective, I looked at all the other anthologies on my Kindle (I have several), and not a single one of them contained fewer than 4500 locations. Most of them were over 5000. And I paid less for all but one of those anthologies.

The other issue is that this Cleis Press ebook edition is in the Dreaded Topaz Format, which makes for ugly reading. And though I didn't use this book long enough to experience it, Topaz can also cause all sorts of odd behavior on Kindles. (The heavily bloated file size, over 1 MB, should have been a tip off to me this is a Topaz book, but I didn't notice when putting it on my wishlist.)

These two things may not be issues for many people looking for this kind of book and that's great. But for people who do care, I'm putting the info out there.

I'm not sure what I was expecting out of lesbian vampire erotica, but I feel like I was left longing after reading this one. The stories had great plots, but that's half the problem - the stories ended up focusing more on the plots than the erotic aspects themselves which was a bit disappointing. I also, while I don't know why I hadn't considered it, didn't imagine that the focus of lesbian vampires would be drinking of a woman's monthly gift which is the focus on many of the eleven stories that were kept in these 144 pages of the book.

The vampires weren't exactly what I was expecting either, but it wasn't bad. It wasn't like the vampires were lovey-dovey and touchy feely, but it was obvious from the first couple stories that the female vampires portrayed in this series were going to be strong-willed, sexy, and go after what they want - through seduction not through rape or violence. It's something I definitely appreciated since it's much hotter to read about the "victim" falling for the vampire instead of the vampire having to just take it. Once "taken", it usually led to some light kissing, flirting, or light teasing. There wasn't much in the way of hard-core lesbian sex in this - it was mostly flirting and light sex. However, a couple stories did get a little bit more detailed which I appreciated.

I guess I'm not a hardcore vampire lover either, but I found that some of the stories went too far into history for me to stay interested. The historical aspects just didn't seem to fit in well with the book itself unfortunately - they just aren't erotic.

Overall, this would be a good choice for someone who loves reading about vampire seduction and learning about vampire history. But for me, I was expecting lots of hot vampire sex, and I just didn't get it.

Eleven short stories, and I recommend every one (except "The Bloody Countess," which is a TRUE story and way too gory for my tastes). But honestly, the part that I enjoyed the most may have been the introduction by Pam Kesey, in which Kesey links the modern vampire legend to ancient goddess mythology.

I have yet to finish reading the book but happy with what I have read so far.