Bite (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author), Charlaine Harris (Author), (Author), (Author), Vickie Taylor (Author) "IT was five days before Christmas, a quarter 'til midnight..." (more)
Key Phrases: synthetic blood, Blood Lust, Plain Sight, Sue Ellen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Those looking to take a brief taster's tour through five sexually charged paranormal worlds may enjoy the stories and novellas served up in this anthology, but readers with an appetite for something a little more meaty likely won't be sated. Although Hamilton's name dominates the cover, her contribution is a meager 30 pages, which amounts to little more than a teaser for her next Anita Blake novel. Harris's offering is similarly slim and static, though it shows off the cleverness of Sookie Stackhouse, the psychic heroine of her Southern Vampire series (Dead to the World, etc.). By far, the collection's best offerings are Knight's "Galahad" and Taylor's "Blood Lust." In the former, a fledgling Majae (i.e., witch) teams up with the famed knight Sir Galahad, who's really a benevolent vampire, to destroy a nest of deadly cultist vampires. And in the latter, Taylor imagines a much more traditional world, wherein vampires can't touch anything sacrosanct and are organized hierarchically, a system the protagonists, a junior vampiress and a microbiologist-turned-vampire, are about to dismantle. The action moves swiftly in both stories, as does the romance, but like the other entries in this anthology, they lack depth and development. Nevertheless, this is a suitable introduction to the various worlds these authors have popularized. (Jan.)
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Product Description

A never-before-published Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter story from New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton. A brand-new story from New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris, featuring the much-loved Sookie Stackhouse.

A hot new novella from USA Today bestselling author MaryJanice Davidson, set in the world of Undead and Unwed's Betsy Taylor, the newly, and reluctantly,crowned Vampire Queen.

Introduced in the collection Hot Blooded, and on the heels of the wildly successful Master of the Night, Angela Knight has created a fascinating universe of Arthurian Lore and erotic vampirsim. And a sexy original story from Vickie Taylor, a new addition to Berkley Sensation.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 297 pages
• Publisher: Jove Books (December 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 051513970X
• ISBN-13: 978-0515139709
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,776 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

134 of 139 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five views of of the vampire life, December 29, 2004

By	The Cooking and Reading Fiend "wild-cooking-w... (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews

The five short stories/novellas in this book are all well done. Each represents a different set of expectations concerning vampire lore, and all are entertaining. The only author I was unfamiliar with was Vickie Taylor, whose story "Blood Lust" is a romance set to vampire music. This is a boy loses wrong girl to bad guy, finds right girl, gets right girl, i.e. romance. The only thing I found disconcerting was when the characters uttered typical oaths like "good god" they clearly got a negative physical reaction which implied that they were dammed creatures. The story moved quickly and was funny.

Angela Knight, who writes erotic romances for Red Sage Publishing, has written a cute story set in Arthurian times, with interesting relationships between witches and vampires. Another romance, "Galahad" has a right male vampire and right female witch team, at odds with each other, defeat the bad vampires and unite in spite of mischevious witches and dragons. Cute, fast reading, and lots of graphic sex.

MaryJanice Davidson"s "Biting in Plain Sight" stars a vampire vetrinarian who lives in a small town with a don't ask, don't tell policy. After the death of her long-time human companion, she falls into a relationship with Liam, another mortal who has loved her from a distance for a number of years. She seeks out assistance in stoppping a rogue vampire and Liam goes along with her. We also get another opportunity to see the Vampire Majesties, Betsy Taylor and Eric Sinclair, who first came to our attention in Davidson's 2002 novel Undead and Unwed. This novella is a worth addition to Davidson's vampire writings.

Charlaine Harris gives us another visit with Sookie Stackhouse in "One Word Answer." First brought to us in "Dead Until Dark" and staring in the Southern Vampire Mysteries series, Sookie has the mystery of a dead vampire cousin's death to explain. With snappy dialogue and a few puns, the story moves quickly, and ends well. A well written story.

Finally, Laurell K. Hamilton's "The Girl Who Was Infatuated with Death" is from an earlier period in the Anita Blake series. This strong story, which helps bridge the period between Blue Moon and Obsidian Butterfly, helps us understand the fascination that Anita has for Jean Claude, her vampire lover. The story is about a girl with a fatal illness who wants to become a vampire rather than suffer amputation, and the mother who doesn't want this to happen. Mother hires Anita to find the daughter and stop the process. What the story helps us see is the growing moral ambivalence that Anita has over having a vampire lover, and serves as a good lead to Obsidian Butterfly. A marvelous story, well developed, too short.

Over all, this is an excellent collection of stories, worth every spare reading moment.

47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome anthology!, December 28, 2004

By	CoffeeGurl (MA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

I was excited about reading this anthology. After all, it features stories by Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris and MaryJanice Davidson. Those are three of my very favorite sci-fi/fantasy authors. I look forward to reading the next installment of their respective vampire books and I figured Bite would be a nice appetizer before the main course. Even though I was disappointed with the fact that Hamilton and Harris's offerings are short stories instead of novellas, I enjoyed this book to the max. Hamilton's "The Girl Who Was Infatuated with Death" is an Anita Blake story that takes place some time around Blue Moon and Obsidian Butterfly. In other words, it takes place right before the series goes haywire. Anita wants to stop a teenage girl with bone cancer from turning into a vampire. But when Anita asks Jean-Claude to help find the vampire who will do the transition, old feelings and intense sexual tension ensue between them. In Charlaine Harris's "One Word Answer," Sookie Stackhouse discovers that a wayward cousin of hers had turned into a vampire and was recently murdered. In an attempt to offer her condolences, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana bestows a rather interesting favor upon Sookie. Davidson's "Biting in Plain Sight" is a fun novella about a vampire veterinarian who discovers she has a long-time admirer. When she finds out that a rogue vampire is responsible for the deaths of various teenage girls, she asks the Vampire Queen (Undead's Betsy Taylor) for help. Angela Knight's "Galahad" is about a young witch who travels to the world of King Arthur -- only that the people there are vampires. And Vickie Taylor's "Blood Lust" is about a fight over a stolen formula for synthetic blood for vampires.

I loved the stories of Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris the most. With Hamilton, it was like going back to the time when the Anita Blake novels were still riveting. This story took place before the ardeur and metaphysical contacts began to monopolize the plot and before Micah and other expendable characters came along. The story, albeit short, was a real treat. And Harris's Sookie Stackhouse story is my favorite one in the book. It tells the reader in various levels that Bill is now just a trusted and reliable friend of Sookie's. There is still some tension there though. After all, he still cares for Sookie and tries to protect her at all cost. MaryJanice Davidson's novella is told in third person and it centers on two new characters, but it was fun to read about Betsy Taylor and friends from other characters' points of view. I am not a big follower of Angela Knight, and Vickie Taylor is unknown to me, but their stories were entertaining. The last three stories center more on romance than anything else. As a whole, Bite is an excellent anthology. Read this if you're a fan of any of the big authors in this offering.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars GREAT READ, BUT!!!, January 2, 2005

By	Traci King (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews

For the most part I really enjoyed this book. But I have to warn those not familiar with these authors that if you have not read the previous related novels - Hamilton's Anita Blake series, Harris's Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels, Knight's - Knights of the Roundtable series - you are not going to truly understand what is going on. Since I have read them all it is difficult for me to know whether they could possbily stand on their own, but I think not. Hamilton's story was much too short to even be included as part of the anthology and it added nothing to the series. I feel Harris's story was similar in that it didn't add much to Sookie Stackhouse's adventures. On the other hand Knight's Galahad was a new adventure in her Round Table series that I liked very much and the Taylor story was new to me and worked quite well. I don't think it was part of a series, but if it was it certainly stood on its own. I recommend this anthology especially to those readers who know the authors' series. Even those stories that don't add much contain the characters we know and love, so are therefore still fun reads.