Queen Victoria hunts demons wearing lacy undies

Recently, I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I liked it. 

I had avoided 19th century stories based in the United Kingdoms since taking British literature in High School. 

I just didn't think the themes and such applied to anything that I have experienced as a Black woman. The Regency and Victorian eras seemed very foreign to me.

All that changed when I read Soulless by Gail Carriger.   It is set in the Victorian era.  I finally saw the connection to the themes and customs of that era to those of this one amid a vampire/werewolf romance story.  As a former anthropology major (for a year), I could appreciate the social nuances of class, sex, ethnicity, etiquette, propriety, fashion and courting of that era and relate it to my 21st century experiences.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies aided me in understanding the Regency era in the same manner.  

Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter  taught me the politics involved in being the reigning monarch in England while a demon horde ravages the lands and vies for the throne.  There was  some interesting xenophobia and bawdy jokes about Germans.  There is historical reference to the reform movement and real events in the life of Queen Victoria.  Cool.

As I read the novel, I found that it paced like a SyFy movie just developed a little more.

The book jacket  promises a story about a newly crowned queen who receives an arsenal of demon hunting weapons in addition to her crown and scepter.  Not exactly true. It is a conspiracy thriller.  There you go. 

The book actually follows the Queen as circumstances lead her to become a demon hunting monarch and mother of two.  A sequel to this books would undoubtedly chronicle her blood and gory exploits during her reign but this novel did not.  This is not to write that there were monitored descriptions of death, flesh eating, bloody katanas, and other atrocities.  The author has a fine style to describe gruesome scenes with vivid imagery, ingenious quips, and evil villains all with a dash of romance. 

For example: 

'Sir, it's the zombies, sir,' Perkins managed, breathing heavily.

There was a crack of lightning from outside, a rumble of thunder.

'Yes?' said Quimby, still irritated. 'What about the zombies?'

'Sir, they're eating the prostitutes.' 

That paragraph introduces a hilarious scene of flesh eating debauchery. 

The characters to note are Phillip, Victoria, Maggie, Melbourne, and Quimby.  Quimby provides the comedy in the story.  Maggie moves the action along.  The evolving relationships between Melbourn and Victoria and Phillip and Victoria provide both conflict and intrigue.  The evolution of Victoria's character from third in line to the throne to a demon hunter is really slow.  

The first half of the book bored me except for the chapters dedicated to the antics of Quimby and his faithful zombie servant Perkins.   Even so, the book could have added another 100 pages or so to the second half and I would have been perfectly pleased.  The second half contained quite a bit of blood and gore.  Perfect scene staging for a Saturday night movie. 

You should read this book if you like action, plot twists, zombies, coach chases, hand to paw combat,   monster rats, demonology, visits to the lunatic asylum, and discussing the role of state sanctioned torture for political prisoners.  

C+ with  potential in a sequel

Another reviewer recognized some similarities between the characters and action of the book to the Aliens movies.

Dancing with Werewolves by Carole Nelson Douglas

"It was the revelation of the millennium: witches, werewolves, vampires, and other supernaturals are real. Fast-forward thirteen years: TV reporter Delilah Street used to cover the small-town bogeyman beat back in Kansas, but now, in high-octane Las Vegas--which is run by a werewolf mob--she finds herself holding back the very gates of Hell. At least she has a hot new guy and one big bad wolfhound to help her out..."


First things first I have to warn you, there is absolutely no dancing with werewolves in this book. There is a brief scene in which our heroine dances with a (maybe?) vampire but that's it. I guess you really shouldn't judge a book by its cover, er title...

In this book, we are introduced to Delilah Street, so named for the street she was supposedly found on. Yep, we got us an orphan heroine so we know already that the mystery of her origins is going to come into play at some point (yawn). We get periodic flashbacks that offer glimpses into her childhood, she was raised in group homes with mean vampire/would be rapist boys and strange dreamlike impressions of painful penetration by some kind of metallic thing. This gives some meat to her early description (by a would be suitor-vampire) as 'frigid'.
Normally the back story wouldn't be that important this early but as the cataclysmic event that drives Delilah from Kansas to Las Vegas happens early on, it's useful to know. So, let's move onto the story itself shall we?

After a hard day of reporting on bloated, internally dissolved cows, Delilah heads home to watch a CSI-like program based out of Las Vegas. At the end of the show there is a cameo of a corpse who is a dead-ringer (pun intended) for Delilah. Worrisome isn't it? Could this be a long lost twin? Who is that woman with the maggot in her nose? Unfortunately Delilah has a date coming over so she can't investigate...yet.
Delilah's date is with a vampire coworker, he's the news anchor, and it doesn't go well. It goes so horribly wrong that he manages to steal her spot at the station and turn the weather girl (weather witch) against her. Delilah finds herself demoted at work and goes home to find her cabin/cottage reduced to splinters from a freak tornado that only touched down at that particular spot. What can she do but pack up to go to Las Vegas to track down the corpse extra from the television program? (As opposed to, I don't know, fighting for her job and maybe finding a new place to live in town??)

So Delilah heads off to Vegas where she promptly meets Ric, a dowser for the dead, who promptly gets his arms around her to show her how to dowse for water, which promptly leads to a psychic awakening in Delilah as they discover a murdered couple, dating back 40 years or so. Oh yea, it's all erotically charged and they sort of dry hump right then and there. 'Cause nothing is hotter than bludgeoned corpse visions right?
Ric also has a tip for her to get in to Hector's (producer of that CSI show with the dopplganger corpse) fortress-like home. She gets in, he thinks she's the corpse, who actually was a corpse and he then offers her a place to live on the grounds. Huh?
After a whirlwind exploration of Vegas and acquiring a giant wolfhound, Delilah is set upon by not one, but two gangs of would-be collectors. Apparently her resemblance to the corpse is enough to make people want to kidnap her to rent her out and/or kill her again on film. M'Kay...
So naturally Delilah moves in with Hector. Meanwhile she is starting her own PI business, gotta figure out who those corpses were right?

Quick sum up: we have a woman who has her latent psychic powers awakened by a man. She requires the protection of a man, to save her from other men who want to collect her. Oh, and she has a huge dog.

So Delilah heads off to track down the origins of these corpses, mixing in with all sorts of supernaturals in the process. We have the albino vampire (maybe?) who seems to be helpful. At any rate he tricked her into accepting a talisman that seems to track and protect her. We have the werewolf casino owner/mafia boss who kidnaps her to force her into a magic show. We have the magician and his creepy fae assistants. The magician helps her develop her special mirror walking ability while the fae assistants try to kill her, then help her escape instead. Meanwhile, she discovers that the female half of the corpse couple that she found with Ric was the daughter of the man who kidnapped her. Whew!

Sum up squared: Gets kidnapped. Discovers another latent ability with the help of yet another man. Runs back to Hector's safe house.

The bulk of the book focuses on the developing relationship she has with Ric. They even get to the point of sex. She can't lay back because of the trauma of her nightmares so to make it easier on her, she loses her virginity doggie-style. WTF?? Ouch! Good thing they are in love...already...

Towards the end Delilah goes back to the casino to get proof (via a photo) that the female corpse really is dudes daughter. By then she is speculating that the man was a vampire since in those days the vampire/werewolf war was in full swing (If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned that before it's because is so shrouded in mystery that there isn't anything to say about it). Guess what happens next! Go on, I'll wait...that's right, she gets captured again. This time it isn't going to be all fun and games like being forced into a stage magician show though, nope, this time they are going to take her out into the hills for hunting.
So she's out in the boonies in a houseful of werewolves and after some debate as to whether or not they ought to sell her or pimp her, she is set 'free' to run so they can hunt her down and kill her. Finally we get to see Delilah taking action! Oh wait, it's our albino vampires' (maybe?) talisman that gets her off the porch and a bit of a head start. So she's running, and running, and running (seriously, head start or no, who stays ahead of a wolf??) when, miraculously, she runs into Ric! Ric whips out his gun and starts shooting her pursuers, telling her to keep going...such a hero and all right? (gag) Finally she is cornered and (gasp!) she discovers another latent talent, all by herself even! She surrounds herself with ghost wolves which keeps her attackers at bay (heh, get it?) until the zombies show up to tear the werewolves limb from limb.
Wait a second here, where the 'eff did the zombies come from? Oh, look, there's Ric...not only can he find the dead apparently he can raise them as well! Yea for super powers!

Sum up cubed: Gets caught again, by the same bad guys as before. Discovers yet another hidden talent (all by herself even!). Gets rescued by a man.

After all that Delilah heads back to Hector's. And then...the story just ends!



So ultimately we have a heroine who is a weak, sexually repressed, co-dependent mess. She managed to alienate her audience (me) with all of her internal whining and the obliviousness of her actions. Toward the end of the book I was starting to hope that she would just die and get it over with...after all, how many times can one woman really expect to be rescued?? The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to find out what the deal was with the dead couple. Imagine my irritation when the story ends with nothing more than the identity of the woman. Seriously?? All that build up and it's just left as a cliffhanger?

I could deal with the identity of the CSI corpse left undiscovered, I didn't need to have the origins of Delilah's super-duper powers spelled out but I think I deserved a bit of closure in the 'mystery' that drove the storyline! Suffice to say, I will not be reading the next installment.

Verdict: Story FAIL.