Customer Reviews

The Undead Kama Sutra (Felix Gomez, Book 3)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Undead Kama Sutra" is Acevedo's third installment in the Felix Gomez series and while I have some minor quibbles, the overall effort shows growth and maturity in the writing and in the character development. Acevedo's Felix Gomez is an Iraq War vet turned vampire who has become a hard boiled private investigator in a classic noir sense. He lazily relies on his supernatural powers (hypnosis, stealth, etc.) to solve everyday cases and make a living while trying to balance his past as a human with his needs as a vampire.

Acevedo has created a plausible world of modern vampires that rivals that of Charlie Huston (see "Half The Blood In Brooklyn"). Both series portray the vampire world as coexisting in our modern world but in highly secretive fashion, with Gomez governed by and assisting, at times, the Araneum, a governing council for vampire behavior. While the texture and mood of their modern day vampire worlds are clearly different in the renderings of Huston and Acevedo, the vampire/human relationships and interactions and the philosophy, "laws", and governing structure underpinning their worlds are fun to unravel.

In this third installment, Felix is searching for the complete "The Undead Kama Sutra", a manual of sexual positions that promises great psychic benefits for vampires. This search ultimately teams him with Carmen Arellano, a sex driven vampire already deep into research on the manual. Their search is interrupted by the death of an alien who issues a cryptic warning to Felix to "find Goodman and save the Earth women".

This dying request launches an extended investigation that ultimately involves vampires, other extra-terrestrials, governmental and military conspiracies, a cosmetic industry conspiracy with aliens, a pretty darn good mystery, and some heavy discussion of sexual encounters that remain more talked about than fulfilled. Wow! If all that does not scare you off, then jump into the strange world of Mario Acevedo...it is a fun world to visit.

I enjoy reading the details of the rules and procedures for vampires living among the humans in Felix's life. For example, his joy at eating hot Mexican food laced with whole blood, or the various outcomes of his "fanging" a human along with how he controls the enzymes that have various functions in the process. Acevedo creates interesting fully fleshed characters and his plots are often unique to this genre. He still has problems with pacing at times, but that is becoming a minor quibble as his works matures. I recommend this series to fans of vampire literature or of supernatural noir.

For a novel called "The Undead Kama Sutra," you'd expect this to be a fun read in that guilty-pleasure sort of way.

Unfortunately, that's just not the case with the latest installment in the Felix Gomez series. Gomez is a former soldier who was turned to a vampire in Iraq. He comes home and becomes a sort of supernatural private investigator who had previous encounters with aliens in area 51. His latest escapades find him searching for the mythical undead kama sutra that is supposed to have powers for the undead set based on the release of sexual energy. Before he knows it, he's caught up in following the mysterious death of someone at the apparent hand of aliens and looking into matters for the council that rules vampires in Max Acevado's universe.

On paper, all that sounds like the makings of fun read that would be almost perfect for the upcoming beach season. It should be a book that you'd recommend to people because the title is so good and the book is a trashy, guilty pleasure kind of fun.

But beyond the fun title, there's not a lot of fun to be had here. The story plods along and it's hard to really care much about the plight of Gomez. Plus there's only so many descriptions of vampire Carmen's chest that one can read before you start rolling your eyes and go, "Come on, already."

In a lot of ways, this reads like a bad knock-off of Jim Butcher's far superior Harry Dresden series. And with the success of Dresden, there is room on the shelves for the same type of fun, fantasy reads. Unfortunately, this one isn't one of them.

In a Sarasota, Florida motel room that caters to hookers and pot buyers, Gilbert Oldon the alien lies dying. He called vampiric private investigator Felix Gomez to come to his death bed immediately. Gomez wonders how his former client who hired him to handle THE NYMPHOS OF ROCKY FLATS outbreak in Colorado knew he was on the Florida Interstate on a more personal case, finding THE UNDEAD KAMA SUTRA tome that allegedly provides instruction on increasing psychic power through sex; still this is the alien so he rushes to the motel. There the dying Oldon directs Gomez to "find Goodman" in order to save the women.

Felix is confused by Oldon's last words so he remains on his case, which leads him to the Florida Keys where he meets researcher Carmen Arellano. When three women vanish without a trace and an alien blaster kills a guest at a nearby vampire resort, Gomez and Arellano team up to learn what is going on starting with seeking out Goodman; who is a former US Army colonel. Still not concerned even when he considers how knowledgeable his original source was, Felix finding the missing females has turned personal when aliens abduct Carmen.

The third Gomez paranormal Noir (see X-RATED BLOODSUCKERS) is as zany as ever as the private investigator struggles with the Goodman affair as that intrudes on his collection of THE UNDEAD KAMA SUTRA pages. The story line is fast-paced and filled with action from Sarasota to the Keys. However, an improbable late twist will disappoint fans as that takes a major bite out of what had been a strong thriller.

Harriet Klausner

This is the Second Book in the Felix Gomez series.It is a fun ride with old friends and new characters to add to Acevedo's mythos.
Felix is thrust between Vampires,aliens and the government once again with both disastrous and hilarious consequences.Devotees of urban
fantasy fiction should check out the series you wont be disappointed.

I bought the by "The Undead Kama Sutra" by Mario Acevedo, my first encounter with the series, purely out of prurient interest piqued mostly by the title, the titles of previous entries in the series and the cover illustration. I was not really expecting much. I was surprised to find that it was not nearly as cheesy or even softly pornographic as the cover illustration or dust jacket would have one believe. Protagonist Felix Gomez is a vampire detective and the story is a tightly plotted neo-noir/SF detective story with the minor addition of vampires, aliens, evil corporations plotting for world domination and just a tiny bit of sexual overtone. All the erotic action takes place off-screen and there is little or nothing in the way of sex graphically (or pornographically) described. You could lend this to your Aunt Edna with no fear. As a modern noir, it works perfectly.

The writing was much better than I expected, with all the characters' dialogue and several plot elements very firmly tongue-in-cheek. It is a very easy and fun read that could easily be polished off on a single cross country plant ride. Whereas The Undead Kama Sutra" will never be confused with great literature, I plan to search out some of Acevedo's other titles (e.g., "X-Rated Bloodsuckers" and "The Nymphos of Rocky Flats") but may try to hide the titles from others in the checkout line at the bookstore).

Jim Tepper

Acevedo has an interesting "take" on modern day vampirism. This story is no exception. I found that this story had enough references to previous happenings that it would not be fully required to read the other stories first.

Might as well read them though as they are also highly entertaining.

Take a modern day private investigator story, an older noir style private eye, combine it with vampires, sex, and a good dose of humor... then you'll have the Acevedo vampire novels.

Book club selection which, all in all, I did like. The title was a bit misleading though, I expect some fashion of erotica in the book, and there wasn't any. The story read well, had it's "moments", good dialog, good story, but the ending seemed to be nothing but an intentional cliff hangar, which ticked me off. I'm more prone to buy your next book for the quality of the first, not because you tried to pique my curiosity as to what happened next.

I'm a Felix Gomez Fan. In Kama Sutra, what I noticed most is that Felix is becoming a much more complex character, his problems are more complicated and the story doesn't wrap itself up in a neat little bow. As other reviews have said, there is a totally unexpected twist - I think Acevedo is pretty brave to push the envelope as he has. I mean, really, how often does an author take a risk like this?

Like it or not, it is original, and its going to make you feel something one way or the other. (ohhh, the crush of expectations dashed! We all wanna believe that surely SOMEONE is going to rescue us.... ) I also noticed some very touching passages ever so slyly woven in. These passages have to be driven by something real in Acevedo's life or they simply wouldn't read so authenticly. It certainly makes me more curious about both the author and his characters. If he ever comes to a book store near me for a signing or something, I'd go just to see who he is.

There were other parts that made me laugh out loud - particularly the part about the spider and the garbage (gotta read it to find out).... I enjoyed Kama Sutra thoroughly and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a good airplane, airport (canceled flights these days) or beach read. Party on!

This book was a bit of a disappointment. When I think of the word "undead" with "kama sutra" i think if crazy vampire sex, NOT at all what this book was about. This book was about a detective who is on a mission to save earth women. He had to hunt aliens with the help of his vampire freinds. He got involved in politics, the govern't, and golf. The most memorable part of the book is about the bum who helped him get washed up. there was NO Crazy vampire sex. The only thing that redeems this book is the author's sense of humor and perfect timing of the funny lines. The book, however, did not live up to it's name.

I've read the previous installments of Felix Gomez's adventures, drawn in by the first few chapters read in a bookstore. They were light, fun and very entertaining in a messy, post-modern, new age noir sort of way so I was expecting the Undead Kama Sutra to follow suit.

The book was certainly entertaining and had the trademark style I was used to from the last novels. But there are two major areas that distracted me from the story.

1. How Carmen was handled. I understood that Carmen was a knockout who has lots of sex from the initial description. There's no need to keep reiterating this again and again. Her advances are also very clumsy and over the top porn-ish. In real life, when women try to come on the same way she does, they usually can't do it with a straight face. Also did we really need to be informed of every single time she had sex and in what positions and museum or with which chalice or couple?

2. Choppiness in descriptions. Many of the descriptions of what Felix did when trying to get away from cops, dump Odin's body or break into a secure compound are very brief and somewhat disjointed. It seems like this choppiness was intentional to recreate the pace of a film script, but in a book this simply doesn't work for me. It looks like an unedited, basic rough draft of a scene.