Darklands: A Vampire's Tale by Donna Burgess (Book Review)

Title: Darklands: A Vampire's Tale (Darklands Vampires)
Author: Donna Burgess
Publisher: Naked Snake Press

Halloween night, twenty years ago, college student Susan Archer watched as her beloved twin brother was brutally murdered at the hands of a stranger she invited into their home. Still haunted by the guilt of that night, Susan is now a tough but bitter cop in a nowhere town, trying as best she can to lead a normal life. When she is nearly killed during a wild shoot-out, she realizes she is not as strong as she first thought.

Fearing a breakdown, she flees the confines of her safe boyfriend and familiar surroundings to find salvation in the arms of “Deathwalker” Devin McCree—the very man who killed her brother.

But things aren’t always what they seem and she quickly realizes Devin was not the monster she originally thought, but a kind of guardian angel instead.

On the run from a crazed Nazi vampire-hunter named Kasper, she and Devin must find a way to endure the dreary urban landscape of a dying metropolis and escape Kasper’s wrath.

Darklands: A Vampire’s Tale is a sexy and violent tale of survival, bloodlust and two people grasping to the edge of immortality while trying to hang on the last shreds of their humanity.

My Thoughts:  This was the opposite side of the coin from The Truth About Vampires that I reviewed yesterday.  It was the dark, seamier side of being a vampire - complete with lots of gore, violence, and sex.  The majority of the story takes place in a little seaside town called Dunwich.  This is where Susan and her brother Peter were living when he was killed.  She had since moved away, but when Devin reentered her life they wound up back in Dunwich.  It was not the Dunwich she remembered though, and I loved the was Ms. Burgess made you feel like you were in a deserted town that was filled with transients, lost souls, druggies. . .very dystopian.  Like many seaside towns it is complete with an amusement park, long since deserted, which contains creepy aspects all by itself.

She fills you in with just enough of the past through flashbacks to leave you wanting to know more about the main characters and how they became the people or things that they are in the present.  As this is just the first book in the series though, she doesn't give you everything.  There is still a lot of history between Kasper and Devin that is unknown.

I liked Susan's character and how she changed through out the course of the book.  In the beginning she was just a young college kid looking for a good time - which inevitably led to her brother's death.  Now, years later, if you didn't look too close, you would think that she had a pretty good life and relationship with her live-in, Michael.  Underneath though, she still seemed to be drifting, never really getting passed Peter's death.

When Devin resurfaces after all this time, it doesn't appear that she willingly goes with him, but that he forces her hand.  I think she was just looking for an excuse to leave her mundane life and try to figure out where she fit. I see her becoming stronger throughout the book and beginning to embrace her new lifestyle - to go from just surviving to actually fighting to survive.
 

 

 

~I received a complimentary pdf copy of this book from Bewitching Blog Tours in exchange for my review.~

 

Darklands: A Vampire's Tale (Darklands Vampires)
Publisher/Publication Date: Naked Snake Press - Second Edition - Dec 18, 2010
ASIN: B004GNFTQC
544 KB (368 pages)