Hmmm….everything about this book makes me want to like it. The premise, the satire, the author, and a lot of reviews I skimmed on Goodreads. But I just can’t bring myself to the level of enthusiasm of these other reviewers.
Dark Moonlighting is the first of a four novel series. It’s about Nick, a 600 year old vampire doctor-lawyer-police officer (needing only 2 hours of sleep a night, Nick has plenty of time to work) . No, Nick isn’t sexy, he doesn’t glow in the sunlight, and he doesn’t live on synthetic blood. He has a virus that drives him to kill about one person a week, drinking their blood and then urinating profusely after each kill. If you calculate the “Urinator’s” body count, this comes to around 30,000 souls. But don’t fret, Nick doesn’t kill innocent people. A vampiric Dexter of sorts, he rids society of its scum, which, in this day and age, includes dreaded spammers and door to door evangelists.
Some of the reviews I’ve read have hailed the book for its departure from the popular vampire genre. Reviewers are thrilled with a vampire who doesn’t take himself too seriously. While these things may be true, it doesn’t automatically mean the book is good. Are we so disullusioned with Twilight and True Blood that we’ll bed the first ugly vampire to wink at us?
The problem I have is with the writing. Yes, Dark Moonlighting is tongue in cheek and bleeding with satire and pop culture references, but despite this, the jokes flatlined for me. I kept getting the feeling I was reading something a junior high schooler wrote. There was no subletly to the humor, instead, the jokes were obvious and overexplained. Who knows, maybe that’s part of what makes it funny and I’m just not getting it, but I couldn’t get over the amateur feel the writing had. Haworth has a lot of good ideas, he just didn’t execute them to my liking.
I can’t completely write the book off, as it had its moments, was a quick, easy read, and is free on the Kindle. But I won’t be rushing to pay for the next installment of this tetralogy any time soon.
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