Eighth Grade Bites (Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, #1)

by Heather Brewer

[inlibrisveritas]

I admit that I never had any true intention to actually start this series. The cover art is nice but I guess something about the "eight-grade" start out didn't appeal to me. Anyway I'm sort of glad I did get this though. It's not an amazing book by any means but it is short, fun, and pretty humorous at times. I can't say I could take this seriously like some of the other young vampire fiction though, which I suppose is a good thing if that's what the author was going for. There are references through out the book to vampire lore and media, as well as a few others, which at times caused me to chuckle, for example Bathory is the last name of an infamous "real" vampire (Countess Elizabeth Bathory, she murdered young girls and bathed in their blood). Even the main character's name is a reference to Vlad Tepes, the real Dracula. It's obvious that the author knows her vampire lore which is a good thing since it seems like so few authors do now a days. However there are a few things that I didn't like. At times the book goes comma crazy, which to those who hardly pay attention to punctuation are probably like 'so what?', but to those who read with those as guidelines to how people talk it becomes kind of distracting. Also this books is incredibly short for the storyline it produced, so at times it felt extremely rushed. It's a real risk trying to get the reading involved with the characters and plot in only 180 pages. I feel like there could have been more to this, maybe in the details or something but the end is rushed (or at least it felt that way to me) and it didn't affect me in the way if would have if I had gotten to 'know' Vlad, Nelly, or Otis a bit more. Overall it's a decent and quick read. I don't think I'd pay money for this series though, and I'd really only recommend it to those who, like me, read pretty much all vampire fiction or a younger crowd.