book 9: blood price

Here's the thing about books that become shows that I like: I usually like the show more than the book. It's not really about the translation from one to the other, or the fact that I'm more and more visual as I grow up, but about the fact that it seems these books don't have a very high standard of excellence to live up to. Blood Price is a perfectly passable book, and it's a pretty good mystery, but it's a little frustrating and I just want to edit bits of it and ask Tanya Huff to flesh out parts and trim back other parts and get it in line with the way I know it could have been-- like Norman, the main villain for most of the book, who's flat, two-dimensional, one-note, and all the other ways of saying that he doesn't have any depth or interest. Corrine, too, is kind of dull and unfocused, and I don't really see why Vicky and Mike care about eachother other than the fact that they used to be a couple-- but her and Henry pretty much shine, and that's where the heart of the book is, and where the saving grace of the plot is. This is supposed to be girl-meets-vampire, moderated by the fact that girl is damn stubborn and kind of broken and emotionally unavailable, and that's the way I like her, because Henry's pretty damn seductive, even with the fact that he mostly exists in flashbacks as far as this book is concerned, but this book fights too much to be a proper romance.

It established the characters and it sets the scene and defines the world it happens in, the relationships between the people, and the creeping weirdness that's moving into the ordinary world and why Vicky would care enough to investigate it, and that's really all it needs to do... but i wish it would have had a better villain who does a better job and gets offed in a better way, and I wish Henry had been a bit more active and useful than he actually would up being.

I'm looking forward to the second book, and since I found out that it's there in our bookstore, it'll be pretty easy to get ahold of.