Dead on My Feet (The Halflife Chronicles) [Mass Market Paperback]

Wm. Mark Simmons (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Halflife Chronicles | Publication Date: September 6, 2005

A year ago, Chris Csejthe (pronounced "Say-thee") was completely human-then a blood transfusion with the Lord of the Undead changed everything. Now he is a hunted man, sought by human and vampire alike for the secrets he knows and the powers that his mutated blood may bestow. So far he's dodged undead assassins, werewolves, a 6,000-year-old Egyptian necromancer, and Vlad Dracula himself. But now he's really got problems. The dead are turning up on his doorstep after dark to ask for justice and the police want to know where all those corpses are coming from. Undead terrorists are testing a doomsday virus on his new hometown and he's caught in the crossfire between a white supremacist militia and the resurrected Civil War dead. His werewolf lover, jealous of his dead wife's ghost, has left him. And the centuries-old and still very beautiful (and very deadly) Countess Bathory is determined to have his uniquely transformed blood for her own dark purposes. Now, more than ever, life sucks!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this lighthearted and somewhat jumbled contemporary vampire tale, a sequel to Simmons's One Foot in the Grave (1996), vampire Chris Haim has more problems than merely protecting his secret. He must contend with faction fights among the vampires, as well as pursuit by representatives of those factions and by a few other odd beings to boot, and he must distinguish real from fake psychics in New Orleans' voudun community. Haim is also trying to keep his personal relationships straight, since his old lover, Lupe the werewolf, is potentially jealous of his new one, Deirdre, and a jealous werewolf can ruin your whole day. Plots and subplots and vignettes abound, involving Vlad Dracula, Erzebet Batory the Blood Countess, biotechnology and a biowar conspiracy using tailored viruses that makes less than cheery reading in the middle of the SARS epidemic. Simmons's experience in the visual media probably explains the intense development of some scenes that otherwise seem the mark of a first-time author. Readers unfamiliar with Haim's previous outing may have trouble getting into the story, but fans of the early Terry Pratchett or Eric Flint's Joe fantasies will enjoy the humorous bits.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"[One Foot in the Grave] relentlessly combines thought and action . . . a fun book."

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Baen (September 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416509100
• ISBN-13: 978-1416509103
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book you'll sink your teeth into, May 27, 2003

By 

K. Maxwell "katmax1" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Dead on My Feet (Hardcover)

I've been waiting a long time for this book to come out, as I very much enjoyed its predecessor "one foot in the grave". Chris Cséjthe the almost-vampire is back. Now living in Monroe he's working as a part time private investigator and university lecturer, and life is pretty good for him with the exception that his werewolf lover, Lupé, has left him because she couldn't stand the competition from his late wife's ghost taking up Chris's attention.

Things unexpectedly start to unravel for Chris when he takes a case to investigate if a local psychic is the real thing. It turns out she is and she has some dire warnings for him. Then another vampire turns up in town and tries to kill him and the local corpses start turning up on his doorstep asking him to dispense justice for them because he stands between life and the undead - and the local police are NOT impressed.

This is a wise-cracking, literary and fast moving novel. Chris reads like an old friend. Once you start this book you'll want to see how it ends as Chris is pushed to his limits and finds out more about himself and his new powers than he ever guessed.

I'm already looking forward to the next book in this series, and hoping its as much fun as the first two books. If you like your vampire/supernatural novels with a twist that doesn't rely on sex and excessive blood then these books are worth reading, but start with the first book to get the most out of this one. Though I do hope the next book will tie up some threads left dangling at the end of this one. (eg what happened to his secretary and her sick nephew etc)

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Hair of the Dog That Bit You..., December 28, 2005

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Dead on My Feet (The Halflife Chronicles) (Mass Market Paperback)

For some reason, between this story and One Foot In The Grave, Simmons developed an agenda. Chris Csejthe is a good guy who gets bitten by Dracula, loses his wife and child, and then gets bitten again, this time by a werewolf. In the original story this was more than enough and the question of spiritual implications really never became an issue. This time a significant amount of the story is dedicated to Csejthe's insistence that there's no soul to lose and no God to upset. The biggest part of this argument occurs between Chris, who is a compulsive vampire do-gooder and a regular vampire, who, incidentally, runs a camp for monsters that are spiritually deprived. So the discussion perplexes more than it resolves.

The action part of the story is about the machinations of Elisabeth Countess Bathory, who is running the vampires of New York and is trying to take over the universe in her spare time. Chris, who is descended from the Bathory blood (among other things), is one of the loose ends she wants to tie up. The countess has taken over a research foundation that is working to create a set of viruses that will some problem populations from the world (most of the humans) and she has managed to get in league with some fringe military groups in the process.

Chris has serious woman troubles. A ghostly ex-wife and a werewolf girlfriend aren't enough. Now a beautiful vamp he inadvertently sired, and an equally attractive research scientist enters his life when he goes searching for a cure for the vampire-werewolf flu. Be prepared for a strange combination of moralizing, blood drinking, and civil war reenactment. I'll leave it to you to decide if the mix is a little too thick to wade through.

While the first volume was successful, Dead On My Feet is a little too much. The vampire virus 'science' is strained, and the question of the existence of a deity is really extraneous to the story as well as a little silly in a world with ghosts and zombies. While the genetic explanation for vampires isn't new, I have to give Simmons credit for almost making a credible story out of it, something no one has ever really accomplished before. And he does come up with a lot of truly awful puns and in jokes to distract you from the metaphysics. By all means give the book a try.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vampires, Zombies, and Demons - Oh My, July 28, 2003

By 

Rhonda Eudaly (Fort Worth, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead on My Feet (Hardcover)

Wm. Mark Simmons has done it again. He's managed to weave all the major literary monsters into one compelling story complete with bad puns and a history lesson.

Csejthe has to battle not only the great demons of history but also his own genetic past as he tries to figure out his genetic past and his future. Being neither dead nor undead, he has his own issues to work out - including the ghost of his dead wife and a werewolf girlfriend - while saving the world.

The story is complex and engaging. Simmons has created characters you genuinely care about and want to know what he's going to do with Csejthe next. Csejthe has all the good elements of the reluctant hero and as such is a joy to see put in precarious and unique situations just to see how he'll get out of them.

Cudos to Simmons and his warped sense of humor.