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The Becoming | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Jeanne C. Stein | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
Anna Strong is smart, savvy, quick and beautiful. Not a bad shot, either. She has o be if she's going to make it as a bounty hunter in San Diego. But she finds even her tough-girl persona and a partner that was a tight end in the NFL isn't enough when her quarry turns out to be a vampire. The confrontation, to put it mildly, didn't go so well. On the good side, she lived. On the bad, she has some strange cravings and urges, plus a homicidal bloodsucker still on the loose. And as if that's not bad enough - and it is - there are vampire hunters out there as well, and they've put her solidly in their sights.
I usually try to stay away from books centered on vampires. Especially vampires in the modern world trying to hide their existence from the rest of humanity. There are exceptions, of course, such as the Hendees' and Simmons' books. But, in general, the genre has been played out.
The Becoming is a perfect example of that. It simply has nothing new to offer. One Foot in the Grave and its sequels had some interesting pseudoscientific explanations and an interesting social arrangement for its vampires going for it, not to mention some quirky humor. And the Noble Dead series isn't set in the modern day or even the real world, which gives the authors tremendous flexibility in altering the abilities accoded the undead, and the plot has an ongoing arc. In contrast, the vampires here are almost exactly like the ones you see in the movie - they're strong, fast, allergic to garlic, and so forth. The only changes Stein made - making vampires telepathic among their own kind and not vulnerable to sunlight - only make them more powerful, to the point where their affliction can truly be called a gift, and not just by the twisted and psychopathic.
Nor are there any unexpected twists, either to vampires or the plot as a whole. There were some attempts, but they were telegraphed that they lack any punch. Figuring out what was going on wasn't difficult at all, and the only excuse Anna could possibly have for not figuring it out sooner is that she was too close to the problem to see it objectively.
This book is filled with characters with absolutely no depth to them whatsoever. Everyone is a stereotype. Anna's partner, David, is big and tough but an overprotective softie. Anna's vampire mentor is rich and well-connected thanks to his immens age. The vampire hunters are monster-hating nasties too immersed in their hatred to listen to reason. And so on. There is little emotion and, for a vampire novel, amazingly little angst. This is because becoming a bloodsucker isn't exactly a curse.
Stein can't figure out whether she's writing a romance or an action novel. Anna's background makes her tailor made to be a Buffy-style heroine, except wearing the fangs instead of hunting them. And she does do some of that. But taking blood is a very sexually charged act in this setting, and over the course of less than three hundred pages, she falls into bed with her mentor something like three or four times. This is no bodice-ripper - thankfully Stein had enough good taste and common sense to not actually show readers her exploits - but it still was extremely distracting. Ironically, the author, herself, almost got it spot on when she said, "This isn't a romance novel, it's a bad fantasy novel complete with a rakish vampire and his eager protégé." The only change I'd make to that statement is to say it's a bad fantasy novel trying to be a romance novel.
To top it all off, just to add insult to injury, Stein's vampire insist on using their mind-to-mind capabilities whenever possible. This includes conducting ordinary conversations. But that unfortunately forces pages at a time to be written almost entirely in italics! It's kind of like talking in all caps on the internet - tiring on the eyes and an annoyance to read. If the characters had used it only when they needed to talk vampire stuff with normal humans around, or if they needed to, say, collaborate on an excape plan under their captors' noses, then using it in a conversation is fine. And maybe for a few circumstances otherwise, to show that vampires that have more than a few days to their fangs enjoy and prefer to use their inhuman abilities as much as possible. But to do it all the time is just plain obnoxious.
When I bought this novel, I knew I was taking a bit of a gamble. Unfortunately, I lost.
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