A very polite rebuttal (well, not really a rebuttal) to Jan Karrel…

I’ve been listening to Podiobooks.com for several years now and have watched the library and quality grow at a steady pace over the years.

I initially downloaded this book over a year ago and just put it in my queue of books to listen to eventually. It sat there until I noticed Evo’s announcement of a possible movie deal. What!? Movie deal? That got my attention. Only a book with potential gets that kind of enquiry.

I slipped it onto my MP3 player and have spent the last few days listening. As with all audio books, I give myself a few chapters to adapt to the author’s voice. Most new story tellers take a few hours to become comfortable with reading a text and Kimberly was no exception. Even when they know the characters as Kimberly does, it takes a few hours to finally settle each character’s voice and speaking style into their brains.

At around chapter 14, Kimberly hit her stride. Each character began to take their own timbre and beat. Without the written context of “…, he said,” listeners were able to follow without confusion or waiting that extra moment to identify the speaker/character.

Like Jan Karrel above, I am not a big follower of the vampire genre and I must concede some of his observations. However, faults aside, I am most pleasantly surprised and pleased with the author’s effort and final production.

On another note, in today’s politcally correct environment, this book would probably be a hard sell to a publisher. If there was a reply, at a minimum, the response would be along the lines of, “could you make her 18?” Today’s acceptance of what is socially acceptable sexual behavior for print is at odds with the rest of human history and current realities. Kimberly took a big leap by incorporating historical fact and current fact into fiction that would otherwise be unacceptable today if written differently.

To wrap it up, I liked it. Minor plot issues aside, I feel she did a wonderful job! I am really looking forward to the possible movie and audio/written sequels.

Thanks Kimberly!

The combination of past and present worked fairly well. It gave you information about the present just when you needed it. Just the way these things are supposed to work. The only thing about the flashbacks I have to say though is just how annoying the Sebastian accent was… I nearly wanted to claw my eyes out but I managed not to 8^)

Another thing that felt weird to me was all the dark pasts of characters. Not to mention that when they talked about their dark pasts (Lucy in particular) the people listening took it a bit too calmly. I don’t know what the receivers believed but I think there was way too little freaking out in the book.

On the whole though I’m not a big fan of angst-filled dark vampire stories. Which was why I listened to this because I always want to challenge my likes and dislikes. This felt like something very typical to me though and it fulfilled most of my expectations of what an angst-filled vampire novel is supposed to be like. To end this semi-review I’ll probably say that this novel won’t make any new believers but people who are already into it I have no doubt will enjoy it.

Plus . . . Kimberly Steele is working on her next audiobook novel, the Dream of Flight, which she plans to release here at Podiobooks.com.

Paul Fischer’s efforts are what made this possible. At one of the most trying times of my life when I simply had no access to my recording equipment, he swooped down and rescued the FF audio novel from obscurity. Using his own time and resources, he made this brilliant little podcast. I owe him a great deal.

One of the nicest things for me are the weekly arrivals of emails that I’ve gotten since I wrote FF. Please feel free to write me anytime personally at queenie +at sign+ queeniemusic.com if you liked this book.

It’s great to have readers telling me that it is a great story, not just a great horror story. I hope that I can continue to produce works that make readers feel the same way.

Sincerely,

Queenie