Blood Price

by Tanya Huff

Reviewed by Ruby

Victory Nelson is on the hunt for a vampire. With six dead bodies in Toronto, all of which had their throats ripped out and most of them being drained of blood, the entire city is thinking 'vampire'. Except for the police, which is why Coreen, the first victim's girlfriend, goes to Victoria Nelson.  Vicki used to be a police officer before a degenerative eye condition forced her to quit, so she became a Private Investigator.

During the investigation she comes face to face with Henry Fitzroy, an actual vampire and bastard son of King Henry VIII. He doesn't like the idea of another vampire in his territory and killing people. So he sets out to kill it. Only the thing doing the killing isn't a vampire, its a demon. This demon is being called by Norman, a geek from U of T whose main goal is to become popular.

The drawback is that the demon is only a minor demon who's working for an even more powerful demon, and it is spelling out that demon's name (or symbol) so it can be summoned into this world. Got that?

And it's up to a half-blind ex-cop and a vampire/ romance writer to stop it.

Man, I loved this book, except for the flashbacks, but there wasn't a great amount of them, so that's good. I really liked the plot even if the villain was an idiot. Unlike those terrible movies and/or books where the bad guy is supposed to be all big and bad but comes off as pathetic, Norman was supposed to be pathetic. I mean he's calling a demon so he can become popular! Not even for world domination! Popularity! Talk about pathetic.  Usually when antagonists bite off more than they can chew and get killed by their own... whatever it is they're doing, it's stupid but in this case it was really funny.

I also loved the characters. Victory was really cool, and so were Tony, Henry and...well may be not Celluci, but I know he gets more likable as the series continues, so it's all good.

If it wasn't for the pointless flashbacks it would've been an awesome book.

Grade: B