Tanya Huff Blood Price

[andydecker]

Tanya Huff - Blood Price (DAW Books 1991)

Canadian Tanya Huff is publishing fiction since the end of the 80s and is still active; her output is much more Fantasy than Horror though.

Her Blood series – 5 novels from 1991 to 1997 – was rather successful. It spawned a mediocre tv-series called Blood Ties at a time when tv producers were not so desperate to adapt every scrap of series fiction or comics into mostly forgettable tv-fodder. Also there are a few short stories and a sequel series.

The plot is rather straightforward vampire fiction and wants to be at once romantic, a bit of a parody and hard-boiled. Which at times even succeeds. Henry Fitzroy is a nearly 500 years old vampire, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, now living in Toronto and making a living as a writer of Romance Novels.
Vicki Nelsen is an ex homicide cop who is losing her eye-sight thanks to illness and now working as a P.I. She broke up with her friend and former partner Mike Cellucci, who of course still sees her.
Now a savage killer is in the city, and Vicki meets Fitzroy and starts a thorny relationship with him, while hunting for a summoned demon.

One can see the appeal of the formula, a love triangle and vampires. While this may be off-putting enough for some friends of horror fiction, the novels are entertaining. A quick read, helped by Huff's easy and smooth writing style. This was conceived before – and surely paved the ways – the countless vampire romances and urban fantasy series with their countless magical neighbourhoods, which peaked with True Blood.

Basically the novels visit one monster after the other, but don't shirk action or violence, while of course not being splattery. The love plots have their share of melodrama, but are not so dull or show-stopping as others. As far as those series go, the heroine is likable and not being such a cardboard character as todays token and mostly implausible heroines.

[dem bones]

Found this one in local charity shop during summer when they were doing any any two books for £1 sale; picked it up mainly for werewolf scrapbook thread. Maybe I'll get around to it ... one day.

Tanya Huff - Blood Trail (Daw, Feb 1992)

John Jude Palencar

Blurb:
For centuries, they had peacefully coexisted with ordinary humans in Canada. But now death had invaded the peaceful retreat of their London, Ontario farm. For someone had learned their most closely guarded secret. Someone knew they werewolves and whoever it was was determined to destroy them.

The only one they could turn to for help was Henry Fitzroy, a Toronto-based vampire and writer of bodice rippers. But, forced to hide from the light of day, Henry couldn’t hunt down the killer alone, so he called upon Vicki Nelson, ex-policewoman and now a private investigator. Vicki and Henry had successfully worked together before, and once she met the wers, he knew she'd have to take the case.

Yet as silver bullets continued to take their ghastly toll, Henry and Vicki began to fear that even their combined talents might not prove enough to trace the blood trail of destruction to its source before it was too late ....