The First Vampire by Alicia Ryan

I am a big fan of alternate history books and urban fantasy. Alicia Ryan has done a more than adequate job of blending the two into a fun book. The First Vampire is a story based on the Biblical Samson and his seductress/destroyer Delilah. Ryan weaves urban fantasy into the culmination of a millennia long search by Samson to have his final revenge.

The First Vampire takes elements of alternate history to explain how vampirism came to be through a fluke event. There are twists and turns to the story and a fair amount of sexually explicit tension and activity. This book has some hard edges and treads on some very interesting themes of Christianity without attempting to make any judgment. Ryan keeps a light shining amidst the dark.

On the whole I found Ryan’s writing style to be entertaining and the storyline to ... Read More

Black-Winged Tuesday by Alicia Ryan

I read Alicia Ryan's previous novel The First Vampire, about Samson and Delilah, and was impressed. Ryan is a competent story teller and an above-average world builder. In Black-Winged Tuesday (2012), I was not sure what to expect because it’s quite a departure from The First Vampire.

Herman Morrie is an unlucky guy, and Tuesdays in particular are often filled with disaster. When Herman dies from a jet engine dropping from the sky onto his home, it just had to happen on a Tuesday. Herman's transition from mortal to immortal is interesting, as Ryan chooses familiar situations like an airport counter and waiting in line to get into an event to show us the difficulties Herman now confronts in the afterlife. It’s amusing to imagine such a common and familiar a transition as opposed to the glory of the... Read More