A Different Breed

Title: A Different Breed
Author: Angel Martinez
Publisher: Amber Allure
Buy Link: A Different Breed Genre: M/M Paranormal, Vampire, Dark Fantasy
Length: Novel (53K words)
Rating:  3.5 stars out of 5

A Guest Review by Cole

Review Summary: A typical Vampire/Hunter love story that by the ending became more creative, yet still left something to be desired.

BLURB

Josh hunts vampires with relentless, cold precision until the night he confronts a gorgeous hunk of vamp in the woods outside Ithaca. Richard destroys all of Josh’s prejudices about vampires in the first few moments of conversation, and the sexual sparks between them ignite almost as quickly. Richard offers the stability Josh never had, while Josh offers the healing Richard needs so desperately.

But it’s nearly impossible just to walk away from a life of violence. An attack one evening leaves a friend in the hospital, Richard with a bullet through his chest, muttering about strange creatures, and Josh fighting to piece together what really happened. Are Richard’s nightmare attackers real, or is Josh’s favorite vamp losing his mind? Is there a reasonable explanation or has the hunter now become prey?

REVIEW

Josh has been moving from town to town, motel to motel, in search of the next vampire to dust. After escaping abusive parents and numerous foster homes with his twin sister Jen, his whole life was ripped from him when a smooth talking vampire lured his sister away with promises of invulnerability and everlasting life — only to use her as a snack bar and then forget her. Since then, his life has been lived for Jen and for the Guild — the heirarchy of vampire hunters who found Josh after his sister’s death, took him in, and trained him to be a killing machine. Every death blow he places is for Jen, and to bury the guilt he feels for failing to protect her.

For days Josh’s inner voice (a sort of vampire sixth sense) calls him to upstate New York. The closer he gets the more excited he becomes, this one is old and powerful, he can feel it. While searching through the stacks at a bookstore in Ithaca, he he surprised when his inner alarm goes off. The vampire is in the same store as him, and most surprisingly of all, he is buying a book by Lynn Flewelling. Wait. Vampires read gay romance? They read, at all?! Intrigued by this vampire who acts so totally different from any he has before encountered, he follows the vampire and sets up a trap. Needless to say, no matter how many times Josh assures himself that the whole humanity act is just a glamour to trap unsuspecting townsfolk, there is something about this one. When they meet and look into each others eyes, Josh’s resolve falters, his blow is misplaced, and instead of being finished off, he is instead taken to the vampire’s home and to be patched up.

Now, I will admit to you that at this point, I though “Aww crap. I’ve read this story a hundred times before.” You know the one — mortal enemies come together in blissful passion despite all odds, laying the scene for an epic battle which tries to drag our two star-crossed lovers apart. Ultimately, the story did not fall prey to this pre-formatted plot trap and partway through really started to get creative with a whole new set of dangers launched at Josh and Richard that they never expected. No, plotwise, this book was excellent. The execution, however, was not.

What bothered me the most was that no matter how much potential there was for Josh and Richard (and I would have really loved them), the author made the fatal mistake of telling one thing and showing another. The biggest instance was the lack of trust that they obviously feel toward each other (of course they wouldn’t trust each other!) before immediately holding each other crying when Richard tells Josh of his human lover who was tortured by hunters. They might have had a thought here and there after that about whether they should trust each other, but that was that. You’d think if your twin was killed by a vampire, or if your lover was tortured by a sadistic hunter, it would take a long time for the other to prove their trust to you. There are also a lot of instances where the character goes completely out of their personality. Josh, who is actually very smart, will often start speaking totally differently one minute from the next. Lastly, was the pacing of the story. I felt like I could never get a handle on the flow from one scene to another. It seemed like all the major plot points had been written separately and then pasted together, with a little bit of transitional prose in between.

I probably would have rated this lower if it were not for the plot, which ended up being really very good, and the characters of Josh and Richard (Richard more than Josh), who were good but could have been wonderful had the author let them steer the story a bit more. Maybe if she had, we could understand why Josh sometimes says strange things and just how deep Richard’s pain goes and how healing Josh is for him. A very honorable mention to Richard’s three lady feeders, whom Josh lovingly dubs Richard’s Angels. They were loyal and snarky and often had me grinning to myself 🙂 I also loved hearing the stories of the several men that Richard had loved over his thousand years. The sex was just kindof, meh. The characters had a connection, the author just didn’t capitalize on it. If you are a fan of the author, or if you can overlook inconsistencies for the sake of good plot, go ahead and give this one a try. Otherwise, you might want to pass.