Customer Reviews

Night Rising (Vampire Babylon, Book 1)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Dawn left Hollywood behind years ago. She didn't like what the business did to people--particularly since her big name star mother's untimely death just after she was born.

She's reluctantly returned to help find her PI father, Frank, who's gone missing. Her father's associates at the Limpet Agency are an interesting lot--the Boss is a disembodied Voice (ala Charlie's Angels), the other two PIs are a dwarf named Kiko with aspirations at being a star and a Hispanic beauty named Briesi, who is also an uber-geek.

The case that caused Dawn's father to disappear was the reappearance of a long dead child star in the reels of a current movie. Just a trip to the star's parents' home and Dawn discovers that vampires are one Hollywood perpetrated myth that's quite real. Dawn also runs into Matt Lonigan, another PI who is working on Frank's case for reasons he will not divulge -- and whose disclosed past sounds an awful lot like Bruce Wayne's.

Meanwhile, a rash of current stars are starting to die mysteriously. The Vampire Underground is investigating Limpet. Dawn is feeling attraction both to her boss and Matt Lonigan.

"Night Rising" had a lot of promise for a first novel. Ms. Green introduced some interesting and quirky elements, but the blend of fantasy-mystery-thriller didn't quite come off.

For starters, there wasn't enough procedural knowledge doing both the PI and crime scene work to actually qualify it as a mystery.

Additionally, I didn't feel that Ms. Green's world was as fully realized as it could be.

While Green's characters were interesting, they were more 'paper tigers' than real people. She needed to work on depth and motivation of the characters instead of just giving them toss-off lines, etc.

Pacing was also slow--for a book with thriller elements, this was a slow read. Action scenes needed to be shortened. Better hooks needed to be planted to keep the reader moving forward.

I did not feel that the world was as complete as it could be. The hierarchy of vampires was interesting as well as the interaction of their human servants. I'd like to see a little more developed world in a published book. I have hopes that Green will do more work on this aspect in future works.

Finally, Ms. Green did not fully sum up any of the plotlines. While I am very willing to buy serial fiction, I prefer at least one major line of the story being resolved with a few teasers added to bring me back to the author's world. The summation felt like just an invite to buy the next book.

It took me a week to plow through this book a few pages at a time in hopes that I hadn't spent my $14 in vain. Near the end, the book got more interesting. Ms. Green's explanation for the disappearances is a fascinating one. I do think Ms. Green has potential. I definitely will be looking at the next book in this series to see if I would like to buy it.

Green's Night Rising has a few things to recommend. For one, Green does a good job of creating atmosphere, especially that of the creepy variety. We feel, through the main character, Ms. Madison, that something isn't quite right from the very beginning as she goes to meet her missing father's co-workers in at a private detective agency. The paintings seem to smolder with hidden passion, and when she turns away the figures in them seem to subtly change and even follow her with their gaze. The author also tells the story from not just the heroine's perspective, but also from a vampire's, which provides an interesting contrast.

But overall the book definitely loses steam after the first sixty pages. The dialogue is often tedious. The author cannot resist an explanatory sentence or two between every spoken sentence, which interrupts the flow of the dialogue into a disjointed morass. As a result the dialogue seems to take forever, and the characters' actions are only hastily described.

The main character herself is not very likable. A character who feels the need for a good sex romp to "blow off steam" even as she is supposedly frightened and actively searching for her missing father doesn't come across as believable, not to mention sympathetic. The problem here isn't even the sexual undertones -- it's the clunky, obviously forced way the author inserts them into the book. In the first few chapters the main character is fondled by a being with paranormal, disembodied powers for no apparent reason other than that he simply can. There's nothing wrong with sexuality in a story...but when both good guys and bad guys have raging libidos with little rhyme or reason, the story and characters come across as a little two-dimensional. A potentially interesting paranormal mystery loses its way.

Vampire Bablyon is the start of a new vampire hunting series featuring a female stunt expert, Dawn Madison. The story is fast paced and filled with enough gory fight scenes to please the hard core urban fantasy reader but with a surprisingly emotional layer that may appeal to the female reader. It fails to deliver a complete world building construct and this coupled with the tendency to leave more plot threads open than resolved left this reader dissatisfied.

Dawn is between stunt jobs when she finds out her father, Frank, is missing. She heads to LA and the PI firm of Limpet & Associates to find him. Assisted by a psycho midget,Kiko Daniels, and a gorgeous Hispanic tech guru, Briesi, Dawn begins to the hunt for Frank. Dawn learns that there is a complete otherworld filled with psychics, vampires and the VOICE, who runs the show at the PI firm. Dawn must help to find her father; solve the mystery of a re-appearing child star that disappeared 12 years ago but has suddenly reappeared; resolve personal issues with her dead mother; fight vampires; discover who is behind the hiring of a second PI guy; figure out who the VOICE is; and save the world. Sound like a lot for one book? It is.

There were two major problems that hindered me from really falling into the story. The world building, while interesting, is frustratingly incomplete. Also incomplete were the conclusion of the many plot threads introduce. In fact, only one was brought to a close. This is likely intentional in order to make a reader invest in the entire trilogy.

What kept me reading was that Dawn was an interesting character. She is an acute observer and her descriptions of her world were detailed and rich. She is conflicted with feelings of anger and remorse over a poor relationship with her father; and her identity and self-esteem issues that arise from being the daughter of a dead Hollywood icon. In the end, I was intrigued about the next book because Dawn is an appealing narrator. I do want to find her peace and am willing to read at least one more book to find out more about her journey. C+

Plot Summary: Stuntwoman Dawn Madison, the child of a dead Hollywood starlet, has returned to Tinseltown to find her missing father, Frank. He disappeared while working a P.I. case involving a missing child, and his strange group of associates want Dawn's help in finding Frank. On their first night out following leads, they are attacked by three decidedly non-human looking vampires, and it turns out that Dawn's faux stuntwoman fighting skills can be used for real too. Now that she's confronted with this dangerous paranormal world, Dawn can either tuck tail and run, or try to find her estranged father.

I'm feeling somewhat `meh' about this book, and I think it's because I'm having a hard time getting past the heroine's in-your-face slut factor. I hate to call any woman a slut, much less the heroine of a novel, but there's no other word for it. Dawn craves anonymous sexual hook ups like an addict jonesing for a fix, and she's unrepentant in her quest for a wham, bam, thank you Sam time. I don't condemn her for it, but I'm not draw to it either. I want to see relationships develop on some kind of deeper level than the frat-boy mentality that Dawn displays.

Dawn is an insecure bundle of nerves trying to act like she's seen and done it all. I find her cynical, world-weary view a bit strange on a 24-year-old woman, and I'm not buying it. She acts tough, but she's just a young thing who lies to herself constantly, and I was hoping to see more personal growth during this introduction. Considering how many books there are in this series, there's still plenty of time to watch her mature.

The writing was fine but the plot had a few bumps. I thought that too much remained in the dark until the very end, and the two key mysteries were not solved. In fact, nothing was resolved, so that didn't thrill me either. I prefer series to gracefully provide some kind of closure from book to book, even if a bigger story is being told over a series. To get any kind of answers the reader HAS to read the second book, and I'm not so keen on that strong arm tactic. If I spot book two at the library I'll give it a try, but at this point I'm not willing to pay to keep reading this one.

I came into this book with great expectations. The average rating was decent, and the premise sounded fascinating. Unfortunately, not only did this book not live up to my expectations, it was so bad I wasn't more than 30 pages into the book when I became so disgusted I couldn't read another sentence.

First off, the writing, the worst part of the book. Most of the characters sound like stereotypical valley girls, constantly say words like "Like," and "Um," and "Wow." I could have lived with that. Unfortunately, the author seemed to have trouble conveying what she was imagining onto the page, leaving me utterly confused as to what was going on. For example, Dawn walks into a house, then into a random room, starts feeling horny, and then is conflicted over whether to be upset or enjoy the feelings. Huh? And then she blindly accepts that another character is psychic, without any real proof or a struggle to accept the paranormal. Dawn is supposed to be a tough stunt woman, but to me she sounds like an weak minded valley girl accepting that the world is flat just because someone else said so.

Pacing was another big problem in this book. Within 30 pages Dawn goes to find her father, gets "interrogated" by a paranormal guy who makes her feel horny, then goes on a completely random mission to discover why a dead guy is in a movie. To repeat- huh? If Dawn was trying to find her father, it would make more sense that she would be focusing on that. Instead she accepts a job offer and is whisked off on a ridiculous mission with no training or information as to what to expect. A great author would make this scenario believable; most decent authors would take at least 60 to 100 pages fleshing out the situation, building on a foundation to make the paranormal seem realistic, the characters relatable, the story engaging. Green did none of that, leaving me confused, annoyed, and ultimately so disgusted I refused to finish the book.

The "erotic" aspect to the book was completely ridiculous. To me it seemed like the author of "Moon Rising" tried to introduce the erotic to make the book seem more interesting, but it was so poorly written what should have been erotic came off to me as creepy and disgusting.

The problem with this book isn't the story itself- other authors have pulled off similar material. The problem for me is that the characters have no depth, the writing is confusing and rushed, and the characters sounded so juvenile I couldn't possibly imagine them being heroes. This book was overall a complete disappointment. I know some will question my review, since I didn't finish the book. But I have read enough great literature, good literature, and downright bad literature to tell them apart. So if you're looking for an erotic paranormal series, look elsewhere (like Laurell K. Hamilton). This book was a giant waste of my money.

Errr, BTW, the above rating is about half a star too high. It was as low as I was allowed to go.

Flat characters, unimaginative plot, banal use of language, let me count the ways. I slogged through about 1/3 of it, by sheer force of hoping to get my dime back. No go, sadly. I finally gave up throwing good minutes after bad.

I have read this genre forever. I recently (oh, five books ago) gave up on the Anita Blake & Merry Gentry books. This makes those look like "War & Peace" crossed with Stephen King.

You know it's bad when you realize that you do not care if any or ALL of the characters die in the next chapter, the next page or the next paragraph. Let alone how the story ends.

I bought this book with high hopes. I love the vampire genre and I couldn't wait to get ahold of this book, since it sounded really good. The beginning of the book was interesting, well the first two chapters. Then it started to go down-hill. The book didn't keep me interested at all. I felt like the dialoge was plain and boring. I was really disappointed by Night Rising, it didn't live up to my expectations. I think if you're looking for a good vampire novel to read, you can find better.

It's really difficult to sum up what was bad about this book, but here it goes!

First, the writing was terrible. I don't know how it got past an editor. When the main character heard a rustle (from someone she couldn't see), it was described as someone "settling in but still poised to react at a moments notice". How on earth can someone get that from a rustle? Many other things were ridiculously over-described from a sound or a look in someones eye. I guess the author wanted to convey something and so spelled it out in this ludicrous way.

Second, the characters were awful. Dawn, the main character, is a nymphomaniac. I am not exaggerating to prove a point, she really does exhibit classical signs of nymphomania. This isn't really addressed except to say she "likes sex". Liking sex is fine, Dawn is a nympho. She needs psychological counselling. I assume she is not SUPPOSED to be a nymphomaniac, but she was just poorly written. She's also supposed to be this super tough girl, but she is on the brink of tears for about a quarter of the book. And beyond which, she's a terrible fighter. I lost count of how many times she did things "too slow". I wouldn't mind her being a terrible fighter if she wasn't described as if she is supposed to be tough. Buffy, she is not.

The secondary characters were all flat and uninteresting. Kiko was kind of cute but completely unrealistic in any way, and Breisi was utterly boring. She had no personality at all. Everyone else was just a two dimensional placeholder.

Third, the progression of plot was dubious at best. The reason behind the vampire activity was pretty stupid - there was a hamhanded explanation near the end to explain the vampire/movie star relationship that was pretty unsatisfying. The ending of the book was really stupid, especially Dawn's actions. (To be fair, she has been established as an idiot, but it was weird that everyone was okay with her idiocy).

I have a love/hate relationship with this genre of books. When they're good, they're so great, like with Ilona Andrews and her Kate Daniels novels. But most of them are not good. This book was a level of bad that was actually kind of insulting. Like women are so starved for this sort of novel that they'll read anything with no regard for quality.

While I respect the fact that writing a novel is quite difficult, and applaud Ms Green for her ability to write not one but many (at least four?) books, part of the difficulty is in the editing. This book really needed about five more rewrites, and it's really depressing that the publisher would rather score some quick cash on the sudden surge of the Urban Fantasy genre, rather than help Ms Green make this book into something good.

The other one and two star reviews hit the nail on the head. There are so many things wrong with this book that I had to give it a one star rating even though I finished it and enjoyed a bit of the beginning. First, the heroine. As others have said she is not very likable, she's a bit slutty, and she is very hard to relate to. She is forced to investigate the disappearance of her father after being summoned by a investigative agency. I say forced because I don't believe that she actually wants to find her father. They weren't close, she rarely demands answers from the PIs that are strangers to her, and lets the investigation go off on long tangents without wondering about her father at all. The flashbacks to memories with her father didn't feel heartfelt, and I didn't believe she cared for a second. At least she isn't super tough and strong like other heroines, but unlike many other UF leads she is very hard to relate to and is plain unlikable.

My second issue was the vampires and the "voice." The characters take their directions from a boss they have never met, who is probably a vampire. They trust the "voice" though they have no reason to. He is not really forthcoming with information, yet all of the characters, our heroine included, believe everything he says. The chapters from the viewpoint of the underground vampire society are boring and don't add much to the plot. The baddies are stereotypical and flat and remind me of the lessers from the Black Dagger Brotherhood books.

I arrived at a point fairly early in the book where the dialogue bothered me, the characters irritated me, and the plot failed to keep my attention. I continued because I wanted to know what happened to the heroine's father, and I wanted to know more about the mysterious voice. Now I feel like I wasted a few hours of my time. I wouldn't recommend this book to urban fantasy fans. The story is not cohesive, the characters are irritating and flat, the mystery is not exciting, and some events are just plain weird.

I started the book and then put it down for a week before picking it back up. I guess that sums it up. The main character Dawn is somewhat hard to relate to or like. Like another reviewer stated, sexy is fine but wanting to hook up with a random stranger when you're searching for your missing father is kind of sick. A strange read and the sexual encounters with the voice were creepy. May try book two to see if it's an improvement.