Anna Karnivora: A Vampire Novel by Bill Czolgosz

Anna Karnivora: A Vampire Novel by Bill Czolgosz
great deal for only $4.99 / 345 pages.

If Larry The Cable Guy (of "git 'er done" fame) ever wrote a full-length novel, this is probably what it would look like. It's red-neck sort of funny. Yet for fans of the vampire genre, it's terribly frustrating to wait all the way until the very end of the book before you finally get to even see one fang. Then, the vampire's raw meat-eating habits and severe mood swings prove more indicative of a werewolf than a vampire - so the reader feels let down even further.

Let me explain it this way: If you've ever been locked inside a dirty bathroom at a distant gas station, when you're supposed to be meeting a hot date, and you must wait for someone to help get the door unstuck, you might try to concede to the situation and maybe you'd read some of the entertaining graffiti that's scribbled all over the walls. Yet in the back of your mind, the longer you wait, the more you keep thinking about that heart-throb you're supposed to be with. Pretty soon, you want "out of Dodge" so badly, you nearly panic, but in this case, Dodge is called Tromso, because that's where main character Bill lives.


With "Anna Karnivora: A Vampire Novel," there are graffiti-worthy visuals of Bill reading on the toilet and his friend whacking off to girlie magazines and a myriad of depressed people living in an even more depressed town getting drunk most of the time. That is, when they're not dealing drugs. Halfway through the book there's still not even a widows peak lurking from the shadows and after reading the book title again, you beg the question: "where in Tromso are the friggin' vampires?"


Finally, when people start dying it's from suicide, homicide, and a crushing ride down a conveyor belt into heavy machinery. No deaths seem to have anything to do with vampires, but the door still hasn't budged, so you keep reading to kill time until they do.


The reason I'm giving this book three very positive stars is because Bill Czolgosz truly is a very gifted author. His style is quite unlike most novel writers I've seen. This work could be most entertaining for someone whose expecting a light-hearted book of some generic theme. If it had not been for the many teasers in the first few chapters that insisted the book would be about vampires, and if the book had not been named "Vampires," then maybe I would not have accumulated such false expectations.


Reviewed by Tami Jackson
Author of Ravena & The Resurrected

Character Blog: Vamchoir

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Publisher: SunTigerMOJO.com 

Vampire Lestat To Rise From His Ashes

It's TRUE! Vampires DO rise from the ashes again and again. (Anne Rice will breath life back into Vampire Lestat! http://tinyurl.com/493s479

Character Blog: Vamchoir

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Publisher: SunTigerMOJO.com 

Channeling The Vampire eBook by Gary Morton

(four out of five stars)


Review ofChanneling The VampireeBook by Gary Morton (Canadian writer) This eBook is grossly under-priced at $2.99


I really wanted to give this book five stars, just because of how fresh and imaginative it is. (See "Criticisms" to see why I removed a star). "Channeling The Vampire" is a fabulously exciting, putting a very new twist on the old fashioned violent vampire genre. Sure people can be bitten by the most hideous sort of rotting vampire known to the imaginations of humanity, but they can also be more gently wooed by a metaphysical vampire that wants to possess them - and once that spirit-vampire enters a human's body, that person can be made to commit heinous violent acts driven by a scorching blood lust that burns the throat.


Each chapter in the beginning of "Channeling The Vampire" presents a new main character in a fascinating new setting. Yet the further one reads, the more each story begins to weave into the other and, in the end, not every channeler, new age guru, Satanist, deviant business man, teenaged gang member, sorcerer, cop or psychic actually survives.

CRITICISMS:

#1 - Personal bias. While historical books have demonized bats, those vulnerable mammals prove vital to the survival of agriculture (our own food sources) and to our escape from blood-born diseases. That's thanks to the flying bat's habit of eating numerous invasive and flesh-biting insects. Even fruit bats are good for the earth with the way they help in reforestation. My plea is for readers to use common sense while reading Morton's violent portrayal of the needless slaughter of innocent bats. In truth, very few species of bats will ever harm any mammal - and if harm ever comes it's most often due to some sort of bacterial or viral disease that was passed from one mammal to another.

#2 - Morton overuses the word "said." Even when a character asks a question, he or she "said" the question (they didn't ask it). This style of writing becomes a bit tedious when reading extensive dialog.

#3 - Morton depicts Wiccans with a confusing mix of bias against them as well as a certain tolerance for their religion. Perhaps Canadian Wiccans are different from Americans - but I did not relate to how the author depicted that group; not at all.

WHY I'M GIVING THIS BOOK FOUR VERY POSITIVE STARS

#1 - I've never read a vampire book quite like this one. I related to most all of the characters and felt highly entertained, especially in the first 18 chapters. While my interest waned a tiny bit for a couple of chapters after that, perhaps due to so much blood and violence, my fascination picked up again long before the ending.

#2 - The author seems to have extensive experience with the new age movement. He clearly knows his stones and crystals. While this book was not dogmatic or overly religious, it presented a very fun look into such phenomena.

#3 - This book is action packed. It also presents a lot of reading variety. In some places I felt like I had stepped back into a dusty old western novel and then in the next chapter I might find myself in modern suburbia with street gangs.

#4 - Great read. I look forward to reading Morton's next installment.

Review by: Tami Jackson
(author of Ravena & The Resurrected)

Character Blog: Vamchoir

Tweet: @Vamchoir

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Publisher: SunTigerMOJO.com 

Library Disaster Recovery Resources

ASLA has a page with a bunch of useful links - ways to contribute, affected schools, dealing with sodden books.  http://www.asla.org.au/schoollibraries/disaster-recovery.htm

A number of creative people are setting up auctions of handmade items with the proceeds going to the flood relief fund.  Find out more here (and read the comments for more, as well as the blog entry): http://bit.ly/eXQz1P

Cheers (and best wishes to all those affected by flood and fire this January)

Ruth

Stephenie Meyer - Author of Twilight Series

Because Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series is still all the vampire rage these days and many book reviews have already been written in this regard ... I merely provide my very quick opinion on all four books, below.

 (five out of five stars

BOOK 1: Twilight: Loved it. Could NOT put it down. The only part of this book that disagreed with me is the excepts that made Edward look like a crazed stalker (i.e., sneaking into Bella's room, uninvited, before she even admitted she liked him, and him staring at her while she slept. He also shows ups more than an hour away from their home to "rescue" her, later. If he's not stalking her, then ... ?) I still loved the way this book flowed and promote it as a very worthwhile read.

(five out of five stars)
BOOK 2: New Moon: Loved it. Could NOT put it down. At this point in the Twilight series I became a Jacob fan. I love the werewolves, all their sharing with tribal experiences, and I especially appreciated watching Jacob Black become comfortable as a grown man.

(five out of five stars)
BOOK 3: Eclipse: Loved the part about vampires who cannot control their lust for human blood. Great read. Wonderful action and adventure.

(one out of five stars)
BOOK 4: Breaking Dawn: Felt terribly offended by this book. I drew the comic, below, as a result. (Romantic infatuation with an infant is pedophilia - I don't care if Stephenie Meyer wants to label it werewolf "imprinting," it's still perversion of the worst kind when Jacob is constantly volunteering to babysit and changes his love-interest's diapers .) [click image to enlarge it]

I also felt horrified by the way Bella's pregnancy was explained, in book 4, as though mating with a vampire could turn a human into something like a chicken and Bella carries an egg with a titanium hard shell in her uterus - so as the baby grows she's ripped apart from the inside-out. What the heck? 

Character Blog: Vamchoir

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Publisher: SunTigerMOJO.com 

Vampire Squad

Review of Vampire Squad  (Available on Smashwords)
Tiny e-booklet, by Alison Burnston ... cost: $1.29

WHAT WORKS:

Cute book cover. The male character has a decent sense of humor.  


FOR OTHER READERS -- HERE'S WHAT DOESN'T WORK IN THIS eBOOKLET


#1. The story does not adequately fit the book's title: "Vampire Squad." (There's not really a squad of vampires in it, least not vampires that work together as a posse.)


#2. The Category for this publication is labeled incorrectly. Depicted as "Fiction » Literature » Horror (YA and A only)" it's nothing of the sort. There's nothing horrifying, frightening or metaphysically alluring about this tiny eBooklet. This 11-page article needs to be labeled "eroticism." It's a tale about a petite cheerleader having a casual sexual encounter with a rather large male athlete. 


#3. The reader is not at all emotionally invested in either character when the two begin groping each other. The female repeatedly reminds her partner to be much gentler because he's repeatedly squeezing too tightly. Then, lo and behold, she's the one whose supposed to be the vampire. (A very frail vampire.) 


#4. WHAT'S TERRIBLY OFFENSIVE: 
Short as this eBooklet is, it promotes homophobia. The main character has a serious problem with THE IDEA of homosexuality. The main character's casual "lay" describes a lesbian (whom seems completely unrelated to the story but his lover scorns her for being a homosexual) with: "She can't help it. She digs chicks, that's all." To that the main character replies: "I know, but I bit a girl once and it was disgusting. Made me throw up." 


#5. OTHER FACTS
Only 11 pages long (page number 12 posts a short paragraph about the author)

Character Blog: Vamchoir

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Vampire Nights And Other Stories by J. R. Rain

(ten out of five stars)
Review Of "Vampire Nights and Other Stories" (VNOS) by J. R. Rain, which is available on Smashwords.

When it comes to writers, J.R. Rain is the crème de la crème and VNOS is the book that proves it. The very first short story inside this novella offers a perfectly written and enrapturing twist to a troubled vampire's tale. Yet each subsequent story, with a completely new elocutionist and brand new setting, proves just as bewitching. That's even when the speaker might have changed gender (to the reader's surprise).

The result is a book that flows like fragrant and fresh individual breezes, animating the trees, and changing in intensity with the subsequent seasons. Just as no summertime lasts forever, so this novella comes to an end after 60 pages of delicious bliss, which is when the premium swirled ice-cream falls from the proverbial sugar cone.

As a vampire and horror fan, I was amazed by the experience each new story presented. While I drank in all of this novella, I still feel thirsty for more! (My plight now is to go back in time, to revisit the work, or hope for another warm day when I may read more of J.R. Rain's books.) This is definitely perfectly polished and entirely worth the time to read.

~ Tami Jackson
Author: Ravena & The ResurrectedPublisher: SunTiger MOJO

Character Blog: Vamchoir

Tweet: @Vamchoir

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Publisher: SunTigerMOJO.com