Danse Macabre by Thomm Quackenbush

Danse Macabre is the second book in the Night’s Dream Series.

The four main characters are back – Roselyn, Shane, Eliot and Dryden.

Dryden likes to role-play as a vampire. He has a whole clan that is in on it with him. They believe they are vampires, but they also believe that real, bloodsucking vampires are a myth.

That is, until Dryden is converted into one. He isn’t like the rest though. He doesn’t feel the need to kill people in order to get blood. He would rather drink from an animal than from a human, but that is not how it works in the world of the undead.

When he escapes captivity from his makers, they set out to hunt him down and will collect everyone he loves in the process.

Shane gets mistaken for Roselyn and is captured. Roselyn, Dryden, Eliot and Noah must all work together to try to save her before the vampires end up killing her.

As Dryden feels himself becoming more bloodthirsty and violent, he must find a way to halt his urges before anyone close to him is hurt.

I feel like there was better character development in this one compared to book one. They all had their own arcs and personalities. Whereas, in the first book, everyone meshed together for me; it was hard to get connected to them.

Seth was an extremely likable unlikable character. The reader isn’t supposed to like him at first, and he is written well to make you appreciate him.

The plot and flow of the story made a lot more sense to me in this one than the first one did. I was able to follow along pretty well. It also helped that I knew who the characters were from the first novel.

Even for a book about vampires, I was a little surprised by the amount of blood that was in it. I am not used to the genre though, so I don’t know whether it is more or less than the norm.

3/5 stars

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Radiant Shadows: Beginnings by Sarah Baethge

Radiant Shadows is broken down into three parts. They all follow the same story, the only difference is that they are told by different points of view.

Part one is told by Stephen who appears to be the main character. He meets with his vampire-hunter friend Caroline as she sets out to hunt a dangerous vampire, Randy.

They end up meeting up with a witch who decides it would be a good idea to make Stephen into an anti-vampire. Doing so cripples Caroline in her hunt of Randy as it puts her in a state between becoming a vampire and dying. Stephen and Caroline’s minds are linked in this adventure and he is not in his physical body, but in Caroline’s mind.

On her way to hunt Randy, Caroline runs into her boyfriend Marshall and he insists on sticking with her.

This eventually ends in him being transformed into a vampire and Caroline ending up dead at the hands of Marshall.

Part two is written in letter form by Marshall. He is writing to Phyllis. She is a friend of Stephen’s. Marshall is writing to her to explain what happened as she ends up in the house with them, but she cannot see him because she is a human and he will lust for her blood.

Part three is written in the point of view of Phyllis. She decided to take killing Randy into her own hands.

She runs into a bit of trouble with the vampires, but they let it go after hearing about the pain Randy had caused.

It ends with Phyllis coming up with a way to help Stephen take care of Marshall, and that is where it ends.

While the writing was okay, there were some grammar and spelling mistakes. There were times in the book where Stephen turned into Steven, then it corrected itself again.

The beginning of the book puts you right into the action with no real introduction. It makes you try to catch up in your head while you are reading. It is pretty confusing at first. It begins to shape up as the story goes along, but the beginning really throws it off a bit.

I don’t feel that I learned very much about the characters. Maybe that is because this seems to be a series, but in that case, I feel a book one should lay down some background on the characters so that they are more familiar and understood moving forward.

2.5/5 stars

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Red Love by Rayme Michaels

Have you ever been so sick of humankind? Have you ever wanted to rule the world?

That is what Paul and Damineh want. They want to take over the world and make everyone just like them. Vampires!

Paul and Damineh have been lovers for hundreds of years, but now Paul decides he is sick of humans and wishes to take over the world.

Little do they know, there is someone higher up than they are that has more control. They must try to take that away from him in order to complete their mission.

The vampires lovers must gain their own army in order to take over. After they initiate a mass converting session, they have their army in place and must set their plan in motion.

With a certain element of fate on their side, their chance of success is higher.

This was an interesting novella. I feel as though it could have been a little shorter, as there were parts that I felt were not necessary to the story. It was a little slow at times, but picked up when the action began.

The characters didn’t feel like they evolved over the course of the story. There wasn’t much of an arc for any one character.

2/5 stars

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Dead Ends by Bart Hopkins

Bart Hopkins is the author and Co-Author of two novels. With Dead Ends he puts his writing to the test and forms a short story collection.

Dead Ends is made up of three short stories with dark tones. Things may not always be as they seem. And the endings are there to shock you.

Dead Ends.

Recalculating:

Recalculating is a story where you sort of know the ending from the start, but you are still completely surprised to see how it plays out. You may never see it coming.

When a couple comes upon a GPS system at a garage sale, they decide to take a much needed vacation.

This may be the worst mistake of their lives.

Listening to directions on a GPS may not be all it is cracked up to be.

Sweet Lenora:

The beginning of this story had sort of a Carrie feel to it to me. With a crazy mother and a daughter.

Then it turned out to be very far from that once you get to the end. Though, maybe they need to find Jesus.

This one is unlike Recalculating, because you can’t really guess what is going on.

It keeps you hanging on until the end because it keeps you guessing where the story is headed.

Here’s a piece of advice: you may want to have some garlic around you while reading this.

Character development was surprisingly well done in such a short amount of pages.

Donations:

Donations is easily the creepiest and most horror filled of the three. It is also longer than the other two, so the character and story development really adds to it.

When the one you love is dying, how far will you go to save them?

This short story combines two different story lines, and they come together in a surprising way. It will keep you guessing up until the last page.

It is a very dark story with a mix of romance and craziness.

You may sleep with the lights on after this one.

Overall rating: 5/5 Stars. If you like horror, drama, and short stories, pick this up now. 

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