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Okay. This book was recommended to me by about three different people on the vampire recs post, and when I looked up the blurb it sounded fascinating. So. Ah. I scrounged up an online version of it, and devoured it over the past couple of days -_-;
Those Who Hunt The Night by Barbara Hambly.
Short review: I liked it. A lot.
Slightly longer review: Okay. The part about the blurb that interested me was mostly the main character, James Asher's, backstory description. Ex-spy turned college don, hired (forcibly) to help a vampire figure out who's been killing other vampires in London. Which rather neatly dovetails two of my fictional loves, spies and vampires, and puts them in a detective-style case plot, so that's three. Then add that it's set in 1907 London, turn of the century, and seriously, we're jammy over here. The blurb on its own gave me the warm tinglies.
And then I read it. And it delivers. There are some odd moments here or there, the ending feels oddly rushed and slightly disconnected from the rest of the book, but oh, I really didn't care.
Because James Asher actually is a spy. He has all the things I love about fictional spies: an almost involuntary awareness of the world around him, a baseline paranoia, a world-weariness and a knowledge of his own sins, a certain sangfroid in the face of danger and increasingly impossible situations, a stubborn refusal to back down in the face of things stronger than he is. He's basically a male, British Natasha Romanoff, and I love him. In the middle of a plot redolent with vampires and mad scientists, he is always a spy first and foremost, and a husband, and I love that so much, you have no idea.
And his wife. His relationship with his wife. How she's a scientist and she helps him and she's held hostage against his obedience and he tells her that. He tells her everything, lets her make her own choices, lets her walk into danger because he knows for a fact he can't stop her and also that making sure she's walking in eyes open is the best way to help keep her alive. Lydia is awesome and analytical and manages to track down basically the entire London cadre of vampires all by her lonesome before she's kidnapped, and even then she still manages to almost stab a (helpful) vampire with a silver hairpin during the rescue, and does actually stab the not-so-helpful supervampire that subsequently comes after them. She fights right alongside her husband and a vampire in the final fight. With a hairpin.
So. You know. The Ashers, James and Lydia both, are awesomesauce.
And the vampires. Because it's a vampire book, I specifically asked for a vampire book, the vampires were most of the point.
These vampires are ... predators.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
owleyes_arisen was talking about that in the comments on the vampire post. They just ... don't consider themselves human any longer, and don't really give a shit about how many people they eat, at least not in terms of guilt or 'sin' (with one rather important exception). They do care about not drawing attention to themselves, they care very much about not being hunted down and destroyed, but things like 'you've murdered literally thousands of people in backstory and roughly sixteen or so in the timeframe of the story' really don't seem to bother them. It's ... rather refreshing. They're alien, they're predators, they're not just angsty humans with some superpowers. They're different.
But we do also get glimpses of their ... 'humanity' is perhaps the wrong word, but glimpses of the people they used to be, the way it shapes them in their new forms. Specifically Ysidro, the main vampire character, and I love how he's explored through-out the book. It's done so delicately. Increasing sympathy and understanding for him, both on Asher's part and the audience's across the book, but always with the knowledge underneath that Ysidro is still fundamentally alien and, ah, dangerous. The touches of who he used to be, the grandee who survived for so long, and the flashes of honour and ... hmm, duty? ... he still holds are so fascinating, especially in comparison to other vampires around him. I really loved his reasons for not making fledgelings: because he dislikes the pure, intense domination a master has over his fledgeling - it seems more an instinctive aversion than anything, a responsibility he doesn't want to bear because he knows he would take it very seriously. His honour is so fascinating when laid against his casual and remorseless murder to feed, his pragmatic caution in the face of threats to his kind, his careful emotionlessness. The same with his odd touches of humour, of gratitude, of disdain. He's still a person, just no longer a human, and I truly found every glimpse of him to be fascinating.
It's a character book, really. The plot is a bit jumpy, as I said. I found the swing between 'ancient supervampire as killer' and 'modern superscience mutant vampire as killer' to be a bit of a swerve. It works out in the end, in hindsight, but after all the build-up of Calvaire fleeing Paris because of some supervamp hunting him I found the switch to 'actually just a braggart who ran into the wrong scientist' slightly confusing. But it was all good in the end, because by then I was there pretty much just to see Asher and Ysidro be badass and cautiously trusting and oddly graceful towards each other some more. And then bam, badass Lydia and the three of them taking on mutant-supervamp-on-PCP like bosses, so, you know ... All is forgiven and then some, yes? *grins faintly* (Also, giddy vampire on a motorbike riding to certain death, I like it).
It was different, is what I'm saying. It was ... slow, cautious casework, investigation, slow-burning threat to life and limb, scientific and philosophical explorations of what vampirism actually means, a gradual dual-build of trust and fear across species boundaries, spy-work, comradeship, a nice soupçon of mad science, a very refreshingly balanced marriage, and a lot of fascinating character work.
So. Ah. Again, short review: I liked it. A lot. *grins faintly*
Short review: I liked it. A lot.
Slightly longer review: Okay. The part about the blurb that interested me was mostly the main character, James Asher's, backstory description. Ex-spy turned college don, hired (forcibly) to help a vampire figure out who's been killing other vampires in London. Which rather neatly dovetails two of my fictional loves, spies and vampires, and puts them in a detective-style case plot, so that's three. Then add that it's set in 1907 London, turn of the century, and seriously, we're jammy over here. The blurb on its own gave me the warm tinglies.
And then I read it. And it delivers. There are some odd moments here or there, the ending feels oddly rushed and slightly disconnected from the rest of the book, but oh, I really didn't care.
Because James Asher actually is a spy. He has all the things I love about fictional spies: an almost involuntary awareness of the world around him, a baseline paranoia, a world-weariness and a knowledge of his own sins, a certain sangfroid in the face of danger and increasingly impossible situations, a stubborn refusal to back down in the face of things stronger than he is. He's basically a male, British Natasha Romanoff, and I love him. In the middle of a plot redolent with vampires and mad scientists, he is always a spy first and foremost, and a husband, and I love that so much, you have no idea.
And his wife. His relationship with his wife. How she's a scientist and she helps him and she's held hostage against his obedience and he tells her that. He tells her everything, lets her make her own choices, lets her walk into danger because he knows for a fact he can't stop her and also that making sure she's walking in eyes open is the best way to help keep her alive. Lydia is awesome and analytical and manages to track down basically the entire London cadre of vampires all by her lonesome before she's kidnapped, and even then she still manages to almost stab a (helpful) vampire with a silver hairpin during the rescue, and does actually stab the not-so-helpful supervampire that subsequently comes after them. She fights right alongside her husband and a vampire in the final fight. With a hairpin.
So. You know. The Ashers, James and Lydia both, are awesomesauce.
And the vampires. Because it's a vampire book, I specifically asked for a vampire book, the vampires were most of the point.
These vampires are ... predators.
owleyes_arisen was talking about that in the comments on the vampire post. They just ... don't consider themselves human any longer, and don't really give a shit about how many people they eat, at least not in terms of guilt or 'sin' (with one rather important exception). They do care about not drawing attention to themselves, they care very much about not being hunted down and destroyed, but things like 'you've murdered literally thousands of people in backstory and roughly sixteen or so in the timeframe of the story' really don't seem to bother them. It's ... rather refreshing. They're alien, they're predators, they're not just angsty humans with some superpowers. They're different.But we do also get glimpses of their ... 'humanity' is perhaps the wrong word, but glimpses of the people they used to be, the way it shapes them in their new forms. Specifically Ysidro, the main vampire character, and I love how he's explored through-out the book. It's done so delicately. Increasing sympathy and understanding for him, both on Asher's part and the audience's across the book, but always with the knowledge underneath that Ysidro is still fundamentally alien and, ah, dangerous. The touches of who he used to be, the grandee who survived for so long, and the flashes of honour and ... hmm, duty? ... he still holds are so fascinating, especially in comparison to other vampires around him. I really loved his reasons for not making fledgelings: because he dislikes the pure, intense domination a master has over his fledgeling - it seems more an instinctive aversion than anything, a responsibility he doesn't want to bear because he knows he would take it very seriously. His honour is so fascinating when laid against his casual and remorseless murder to feed, his pragmatic caution in the face of threats to his kind, his careful emotionlessness. The same with his odd touches of humour, of gratitude, of disdain. He's still a person, just no longer a human, and I truly found every glimpse of him to be fascinating.
It's a character book, really. The plot is a bit jumpy, as I said. I found the swing between 'ancient supervampire as killer' and 'modern superscience mutant vampire as killer' to be a bit of a swerve. It works out in the end, in hindsight, but after all the build-up of Calvaire fleeing Paris because of some supervamp hunting him I found the switch to 'actually just a braggart who ran into the wrong scientist' slightly confusing. But it was all good in the end, because by then I was there pretty much just to see Asher and Ysidro be badass and cautiously trusting and oddly graceful towards each other some more. And then bam, badass Lydia and the three of them taking on mutant-supervamp-on-PCP like bosses, so, you know ... All is forgiven and then some, yes? *grins faintly* (Also, giddy vampire on a motorbike riding to certain death, I like it).
It was different, is what I'm saying. It was ... slow, cautious casework, investigation, slow-burning threat to life and limb, scientific and philosophical explorations of what vampirism actually means, a gradual dual-build of trust and fear across species boundaries, spy-work, comradeship, a nice soupçon of mad science, a very refreshingly balanced marriage, and a lot of fascinating character work.
So. Ah. Again, short review: I liked it. A lot. *grins faintly*
