Underworld: Blood Enemy

Underworld: Blood Enemy by Greg Cox

I promise this is the last Underworld book. Really. This is not a novelization and it was not available for my Kindle so I had to wait for a used book dealer to pull it from their shelf and ship it to me after I purchased it on Amazon. That's why I read all the others a while ago and just read this one.

After writing the novelization for the first movie, Underworld, Cox apparently decided to write his own prequel. This means that what Cox envisioned doesn't necessarily jive with what was later revealed in Rise of the Lycans. It was interesting to see what possibilities he came up with and then know what the original writers, the screen writers, had come up with as well.

Blood Enemy gives a little more back story of a couple of characters in Underworld that weren't ever developed all that much. It was nice to have that and interesting to see a slightly different alternative to the Lucian and Sonja love story.

If you are into the movies and the books, this book is worth reading as well.

Outlander

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Unbeknownst to me, this is book one in what is now a seven book series. I really liked this book and I am definitely going to try to read more and see how the series goes.

This is a historical novel that involves time travel. It starts in 1945 and travels to 1743. Set in Scotland, the time travel takes us back to the time of Bonnie Prince Charles and his supporters, the Jacobites, working toward the ill-fated Rising.

The heroine, Claire BeauChamp Randall is married in 1945 and then, shortly after traveling back to 1743, finds herself married again as Mistress James Fraser. Not sure if she's a bigamist since her first husband hasn't been born yet, Claire struggles to survive in this new and wild world in which she's landed.

This is a romance with some great history rolled into the mix. I love the Scottish dialect used in the book. I find the history very interesting. This is a time that I know little of and so I find myself very interested in not just the politics of the era but also the manner in which people lived and how they ate. Claire was an army nurse during World War II so she ends up as a physician / healer in 1743. This gives us a good idea of how healing went about during that era.

I highly recommend this book. Time will tell with regards to the books to follow.

The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod

The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod by Heather Brewer

The Chronicles included six books. They follow Vladimir Tod from eighth grade until twelfth grade plus a side book giving us the back story of another character, Joss MacMillan.

Vladimir Tod is half vampire. His father was a vampire and his mother was human. They both died in a strange and isolated house fire that consumed them and the bed they were sleeping in and nothing else. Vladimir now lives with his "aunt" who was really his mother's best friend. Only his aunt and his best friend, Henry MacMillan, know that he is a vampire. Other than being a vampire, he's pretty much your average kid. The story is basically what his life is like. Each book covers one year.

Joss MacMillan is a vampire hunter. In the course of a job in which he is sent to hunt a vampire in the small town where his aunt, uncle and cousins live, he makes friends with a shy boy his same age named Vladimir. The extra book in the series gives us the back story of how Joss became a vampire hunter and why.

This was a fun series for tweens and teens. It is a good portrayal of what life is like for teen boys trying to figure out teen girls as well as dealing with bullies and all the other social groups that affect their lives. It was fun and entertaining and had a good amount of vampire lore.