First of all, Laws of the Blood is a pretty dark environment. These are not *nice* vampires. However, they are an interesting concept. They apparently don't need to drink blood daily, and appear to survive nicely on steaks and lemonade. However, they feed off the emotions of their human lovers and victims and regularly need to set up a hunt where a human victim is hunted down, killed and eaten, and where the vampires gorge on the emotions of said victim as s/he is hunted down and destroyed. This vampire world is ruled by the Laws of the Blood, some archaic decrees handed down by very old vampires, wherein any human is either food or a slave, and maintaining their existence secret paramount.The enforcers of these laws are the Nighthawks, who are even more monstrous than vampires. They hunt misbehaving vampires, and eating the heart of their victim is their reward. Gory stuff, but Sizemore manages to paint this delicately in her HEROES book...
While this may not qualify as SFR, I think it's a good read, especially as it introduces an interesting future possibility: a romance between two Nighthawks.
The plot takes place in Las Vegas, where there is a vampire revolt against the Nighthawks brewing, while a greedy human magician takes a hold of dark magic artifacts (handed down from the ancient city of vampires...) and creates havoc. The death and destruction are barely noticed by mortals, incidently, as everything is a good show in Las Vegas.
The venue makes for some dark humor. This book was fun to read. The kick-ass heroines are the current boring standard of quasi-invincible righteousness with a mouth. The heroes are interesting. The stunning egoism of everyone in this little world is coherent.
I do recommend this book, and suspect the next one will be more of a SFR in flavor.--Leila (4 Dec 03)
I hadn't realized that one of the couples in HEROES was the hero and heroine from PARTNERS. I liked seeing Char and Jebel again and am anxious to see what happens next with them. Their story will definitley have to continue beyond HEROES.
Vampire Enforcer Char still hasn't made her human lover, Jebel, her "companion" by taking his blood. She has an almost irresistible drive to do it, but one of the main things holding her back is the fact that once she starts taking blood, Jebel will become a vampire. Supposedly, made vampires and their sires (dams?) can't be together in this version of vampirism.
I'm also enjoying the other couple, the one with one with the MUCH older vampire. Basically, I thought HEROES was promising, but that Laurell K. Hamilton's books are better.--Linda (11 Feb 04)
