Hard Day's Knight

by John G. Hartness

[celinenyx]

Has anyone noticed that vampires are always sexy? In contemporary fiction you can tell someone is a vampire when: he sparkles/has enough sex drive to feel the need to hit on anything or anyone that crosses his path/is so damn gorgeous you can't resist him. Now, lets throw that image overboard. You're about to meet the dorkiest vampires in fiction.

When Mr. Hartness was talking about his book on a forum on Goodreads, I knew I had to read this book. The concept of two fanged creatures that have super strength and yet not the perfect physique and countenance we are used to seemed perfect to get a break from all those vampire books out there. He has also been so very kind to tell a bit more about his extraordinary characters in a post below, check that out too!

Jimmy and Greg have been best friends since well, about forever. So logically, when they both are turned into creatures of the night, they rent a basement and live together as private detectives. When a lot of mysterious disappearances start to happen they end up in a mess they had never expected. I won't spoil the plot too much, but it involves zombies in trunks, unreliable witches, fighting some demons from hell and a conversation with God.

I really liked the bantering between our two "heroes". They both seem so.. human. At the end of a long night of doing detective work, they like to kick off their shoes, get a bag of blood and game a bit. They're not super brave and do get scared at times. There even was a tiny bit of romance in the book, which I though was extremely cute and I liked how that turned out.

There's a lot going on in Hard Day's Knight, making this book nicely paced. Action scenes are alternated with talking and other bits and pieces that tell us more about the background of the boys. The sometimes a bit heavy side of the book is brightened by the completely inappropriate commentary of Jimmy. Some of his sarcastic remarks really made my day.

The only critique I would like to point out is that this book is too short. I wanted to know more, hear more background, be more sucked into this story. I really liked these guys, but I wish I could connect to them more. It could be a case of minor FBISD (First-Book-In-Series-Disease), and this problem will disappear in the next book of the Black Knight Chronicles, Back in Black. I would definitely read another book by this author.