Book Reviews and More: Amber Fang: The Hunted - Arthur Slade

Friday, 21 October 2016

Amber Fang: The Hunted - Arthur Slade - Librarian. Assassin. Vampire.

Amber Fang: The Hunted
Librarian. Assassin. Vampire. Book 1
Arthur Slade
Dava Enterprises
ISBN 9780988013933
ASIN B01LX3BQN7

I must be open an honest with you. I am a huge Arthur Slade fan, I just check and I have read almost all of his books and since 2002 have read or reread his books 30 times. That being said this book is something completely new for him. In many ways it reads like a cross between the TV series Dexter with Angel except the lead is a woman, and an aspiring librarian at that. Or a mash up of Tom Clancy, Anne Rice but with more than a little humour smattered in.

This book has a little something for every reader. You have a secret government organization, a beautiful young vampire with a conscience (she only haunts murders and only if they have no remorse), you have academia, high prices shoes, and travelling the globe.

Amber Fang just needs her next meal, as a vampire she needs to feed every 28 days or possible go crazy with a blood lust. And since her mother disappeared she had been moving around, taking courses, working towards becoming a librarian, and using those research skills to find her next meal. But it had to be someone who met her strict criteria, they had to be a murderer and they had to be unrepentant. But things go sideways when on a hunt she is ambushed, drugged and almost captured. So leaving Seattle and the northwest she heads to Montreal starts back at school. There she gets an offer to be all she can be, we at least to have her meals presented on a platter. And soon she is off on adventures to exotic places like Dubai and Iceland. Hop a flight, have a meal return home to studies for a month. But even for a vampire the unlife does not often go as planned.

Amber's mother had always told her to never fall in love with her food, and yet she seems to be falling for her handler. She also realizes that being a hired hitman might not be all it was cracked up to be. And big brother is never really on your side even when he wants or needs something from you. She soon finds out the head of her organization might make Amanda Waller seam pretty tame. What has she gotten herself into? And what should she do now?

This book was a fascinating read, the vampire with a conscience and deep love of books and knowledge. It is just a story about a girl trying to finish school and find her next meal. It is a very fun read.

Books by Arthur Slade:
The Dragonfly's Journey (1996)
John Diefenbaker: an Appointment with Destiny (2000)
Dust (2001)
Tribes (2002)
Monsterology (2005)
Villainology (2005)
Megiddo's Shadow (2006)
Jolted (2008)
Shades: 17 Startling Stories (2011)
Flickers (2016)
Crimson (2018)
Death by Airship (2019)
Mr. Universe (2021)

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