Title: Stone Cold: A Vampire Novel
Author: Mike Denault
Format: Kindle
While vampire romances are all the rage these days, the majority are written from some swooning “bite me now and let me live forever with you” girl’s point of view, and few seem to be written by a guy and from a guy vampire’s point of view. Don’t get me wrong, I read and enjoy plenty of the “woe is me, I can’t live another day until you make me yours for eternity” books, but sometimes I need a change of pace. Mike Denault’s Stone Cold provides that change. Not only is it written from a male vampire’s point of view, the romance is with a girl who’s already a vampire, so there’s none of that “should he destroy her life by changing her so they can live forever, or take the moral high ground and leave her now while she’s still pretty?” debate going on.
Damien Magneson is the youngest vampire in a family of do-good, government agent vampires that work to eliminate dangerous supernatural threats. Already the story is a little different from your average vampire book, right? All vampires are given a chance to prove that they can behave and work for the government (I would personally consider that latter part more of a punishment than a reward), which most choose to do, but some families are just not as innocent as Damien’s. There are evil vampires out there who must be stopped. But there are also non-evil vampires out there who happen to get slapped with the label because of their ancestry, and technically the government wants them stopped too. Damien runs into such a family when he meets Aderra Fayre, and he beings to question everything he knows.
Aside from their work with the government, the vampires in Stone Cold are quite different in many other ways from the common vampire. They can teleport, and even take objects as large as cars with them, but they’re only supposed to use it during an emergency. They eat, sleep, and apparently even procreate pretty much like normal people as well. As far as originality goes, Stone Cold is definitely different from other vampire novels. The plot is also quite interesting, and all the basic elements are there for a great book. In my opinion, though, the execution needs just a little work. Some of the dialogue sounded a bit forced, and the flow of the story is a little off at times. A little tweaking would definitely strengthen the story, but it is still a fun read as is.
