 Death Blows (Bloodhound Files Book 02) by D. D. Barant |
Description: FBI profiler Jace Valchek was pulled into this parallel realm to hunt for Aristotle Stoker, a human serial killer who preys on vampires and werewolves. Now she works for the National Security Agency of the Unnatural States of America – and her boss is a vampire. At a bizarre crime scene, Jace finds a bloodsucker murdered by magic, fried to the bone and dressed in the costume of the comic book hero the Flash – a character who isn’t supposed to exist here. Comic books have been outlawed for their powers, including crossover spells like the one that transported Jace to this world. Soon, she’s following a trail of dead bodies into the sinister underworld of black-market comics – where a deranged madman gives new meaning to the term ‘super-villain’ . Buy From:
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Review:
This is the second book in the Bloodhound series following the life of Jace Valchek who is an FBI profiler specializing in dealing with mentally deranged criminals. In the first book we find out that she has been pulled to an alternate universe where humans are an endangered species and the world is ruled by Vampires and Werewolves. In this book she is still the only one in the world who has the skills to deal with insanity which is effecting the Vampires and Werewolves as a result of the events in the first book. Then she finds a dead body that is dressed in the superhero Flash’s costume from her home universe which doesn’t have a counterpart in the new one. Soon more bodies turn up that have been posed as other superheroes. Plus since comic books are banned in this universe she doesn’t have a lot of help in figuring out why the bodies are posed in a certain way. I am not going to go into a lot of details about the plot as it might spoil the book for those who haven’t read it. That being said I liked the book and it was a nice read with a lot of comic history thrown in. You don’t need to be a comics fan to enjoy the book but if you are then the book gets to be a bit more fun. Some parts were confusing at the time especially the one where they are talking about revisionist history but they make sense later on in the book. So if you don’t understand something just keep going eventually it all gets explained. It helps if you know about the way franchise reboots work in the comic industry. The characters were mostly well developed. What I didn’t like was the way a character got a complete personality overhaul and not in a good way. I guess it gives the author more leeway and opportunity to develop the emotional depth in other characters (Jace) in future books while adding a small amount of drama in the story but its still something I didn’t like that much. All in all I do recommend the book to others but caution them to read the first book before this one otherwise a lot of it won’t make any sense.