Waiting on Wednesday: 'Alien VS Alien'

 "Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event, hosted by Jill @Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming release that we're eagerly anticipating.

 

 TITLE: 'Alien VS Alien' Katherine "Kitty" Katt #6

AUTHOR: Gini Koch

RELEASE DATE: December 4th 2012

BLURB:

Jeff and Kitty Katt-Martini and the rest of the American Centaurion Diplomatic Corps are still recovering from their introduction to Washington D.C. politics, parties, and conspiracies. So when compromising pictures arrive, no one’s too surprised. They’re also the least of anyone’s worries.

Evil androids running amok, birds of all kinds and from all places creating havoc, a Senator trapped in an ever-tightening web of intrigue, and escalating international tensions all seem tough but manageable. But the disappearance of Jeff Martini and Charles Reynolds during the International One World Festival signals more than the usual nastiness — and it looks like even ACE can’t help them.

Then new trouble arrives in old packages and even with the best hackers in the world, beings from near and far, the full might of Earth’s military, and the Wonder Twins on their side, Centaurion Division’s outmanned and outgunned.

Now Kitty’s racing against the clock to find not only Jeff and Chuckie, but to keep the peace between Middle Eastern countries, all while searching for the bases of super-soldier operations — to stop them or die trying.

WHY I'M EXCITED: Um, because it's Gini Koch?! Need I say more? It became quite clear in 'Alien Diplomacy' that baby on-board has taken this series on a whole new and thoroughly thrilling trajectory. And the always gorgeous Dan Dos Santos cover-art is another hit - how cute does baby Jamie look?!

'Once Burned' Night Prince #1 by Jeaniene Frost

 From the BLURB:

She's a mortal with dark powers...

After a tragic accident scarred her body and destroyed her dreams, Leila never imagined that the worst was still to come: terrifying powers that let her channel electricity and learn a person's darkest secrets through a single touch. Leila is doomed to a life of solitude...until creatures of the night kidnap her, forcing her to reach out with a telepathic distress call to the world's most infamous vampire...

He's the Prince of Night...

Vlad Tepesh inspired the greatest vampire legend of all—but whatever you do, don't call him Dracula. Vlad's ability to control fire makes him one of the most feared vampires in existence, but his enemies have found a new weapon against him—a beautiful mortal with powers to match his own. When Vlad and Leila meet, however, passion ignites between them, threatening to consume them both. It will take everything that they are to stop an enemy intent on bringing them down in flames.

Leila is a freak of nature; she knows that, and she embraces it so much that she has gone on tour with the circus. An accident with a downed power line when she was a girl killed Leila's mother, but left her alive. A nasty scar running from temple to right hand is the only physical evidence of Leila's near-death experience … but it's what people can't outwardly see that makes Leila so very unique. Whenever she touches an object with her right hand, she gets flashes of that objects' imprint in the past and future. And Leila is like a living live-wire, constantly charging and emitting bolts of electricity. 

Leila knows that in the world of supernaturals she is unique. And she knows that her ability to see the future by touching objects makes her one tasty morsel for unscrupulous monsters, so says her four-foot tall circus friend, Marty, a vampire.  But what Leila never anticipated was being kidnapped by a band of fanged fellows who insist she track down a certain someone using her abilities.

By touching a series of objects, Leila is able to track their owner; where he has been and where he's going … The man being hunted by her kidnappers is in fact one frightening and fiery vampire, who's as handsome as he is ferocious. But what Leila didn't anticipate was that when she's in this handsome vampire's mind, he can sense her, even talk to her. Yet another thing to add to the freak file.

Luckily for Leila, Vlad Tepes is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe the kidnap story. He's even willing to swoop in and save her - at a price. Until Vlad can figure out who is hunting him down, the curiously charged Leila will be staying with him, under guard, in his Romanian castle.  

'Once Burned' is the first book in new 'Night Huntress' spin-off series, 'Night Prince' by Jeaniene Frost.

It has been hard reviewing the last few ‘Night Huntress’ books. Hard, because I still count them among my favourite urban fantasies, and still some of the best in the genre – but I can’t deny that from about book five to now, the series hasn’t been at its very best. And I feel like I've been saying the same thing in all my reviews of recent books; “the romantic tension is gone, and the series is lacking because of it.” I still recommend the books to timid first-time paranormal readers, but lately I've been putting a caveat on my recommendation, along the lines of “look out for ‘This Side of the Grave’. . . ”. So I was actually really excited for a spin-off of Frost's staling series … especially when our spin-off hero is none other than Vlad Tepes.

Vlad has been a fan-favourite since he made his first appearance in 'One Foot in the Grave'. It's not just that he's the vampire that all other vampire mythologies are based on (with a bit of help from Bram Stoker). No, it's that from the moment he stepped into the series, Jeaniene Frost managed to make Vlad decidedly her own. His one-upmanship with Bones elicited many chuckles, while his instant friendship and kinship with Cat showed his softer side. And when he revealed the demons of his past to comfort Cat in her time of grieving, during 'At Grave's End', I think fans were instantly hooked on him. He's not like Bones's sire, Mencheres, who is steadily mysterious and guarded. Nor is Vlad like the larrikin Ian, spouting out double entendres to rile those around him. A few of Frost's other secondary characters (even six books into the series) seem to still be caricatures whose little page-time hasn't fleshed them out nearly enough. But Vlad is unique - perhaps the most complex of all Frost's secondary characters. I think his three-dimensionality is what warranted him at least two books in the 'Night Prince' series (as opposed to the one-off novels that Mencheres and Spade got with the 'Night Huntress World' books). And now having read 'Once Burned', I can understand more than ever why Vlad is the one 'Night Huntress' character to carry an entirely new series...

'Once Burned' is not told from Vlad's perspective (mores the pity) even though it is his spin-off. Our narrator is Leila, a scarred and electrified young woman who has the power to see past and future events with the touch of her right hand. She and Vlad cross paths when she is kidnapped with the intention of helping a band of vampires find Vlad, so they can kill him. Instead of doing this, Leila contacts Vlad who swoops in and saves her - but intends to keep her close so he can use her unique abilities to find out who wants his head on a pike. From there the plot becomes deliciously tangled - as Leila succumbs to Vlad's fiery charms, and the heady knowledge that he is the one person in the world she can't injure with her volts of electricity - because Vlad controls fire, and simply absorbs Leila's jolts and bolts.

I loved Leila and Vlad as a couple, especially because Frost has fun with introducing Leila to a vampire named Vlad.

I snorted, giving him a deliberate once-over. With his long dark hair, striking features, frightening charisma, and seductively muscled body, he looked like he could pass for the infamous Prince of Darkness, but how naive did he think I was?
“You’ve got the obligatory dangerous-yet-sexy thing going on, but I’ll believe you’re the real Dracula when you believe I’m the real Frankenstein.”

But the real reason I liked Vlad and Leila, was that they actually had a lot in common. A running 'theme' of 'Once Burned' is in the line “everyone holds their sins close to their skin” -  referencing the fact that Leila can know people's deep, dark secrets by mere touch of hand, and also the veiled understanding that Vlad has a lot to hide. It's a very interesting pairing, especially when Leila has to refrain from knowing more about Vlad than he's willing to impart... but especially because Vlad and Leila both have guilty consciences from events of their past. The death of Leila's mother, and the death of Vlad's wife.

Vlad and Leila also uphold fan's recent belief that a little sexual tension is a good thing. I won't give anything away, but Frost certainly hasn't made Leila and Vlad's pairing an easy one... not like the pretty instantaneous coupling of Cat and Bones (which has arguably back-fired in recent installments).

Frost has used the real Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) as a groundwork for her 'Night Prince' Vlad. Sometimes her reliance on Tepes's history works - like when she takes his infamous 'Impaler' nickname and makes it a gruesome punishment. But she also had a tendency to info-dump everything she knew about Vlad into whole scenes ... which included detailed descriptions of his exile, war with the Ottomans etc, and these had a tendency to read like a Wikipedia entry.

Something else I really liked about 'Once Burned' was the new crop of secondary characters introduced - like Leila's four-foot vampire friend, Marty, and Vlad's right-hand-man. Not to mention the human blood-donors and vampire warriors who populate Vlad's Romanian castle. I even liked the villain; a chillingly-named Szilagyi who was pitch-perfect in his deviltry.

I will say that I wish the 'Night Prince' books were told from Vlad's point-of-view. I know a few other reviewers mentioned this, but I think it bares repeating. I know Frost likes to write from the female POV (Cat in 'Night Huntress', Denise and Kira in 'Night Huntress World'), but I really think that Vlad was already a solid enough character to bear the brunt of narrative. Now, this sounds like a big complaint, but it's not - because I did like Leila and enjoyed reading about Vlad and the vampiric world from her perspective. I'm just saying, when Vlad is the star of the series, he probably could have been the literal, narrating star of the series. Know what I mean?

All in all, I would say that 'Once Burned' is an impressive come-back for Jeaniene Frost. If you're like me, and have been grappling with the last few so-so 'Night Huntress' books, then 'Once Burned' and the new 'Night Prince' spin-off series will be your antidote. Frost is back to writing about delicious romantic tension, complex villains and epic battles. I can’t wait for the second Vlad book, coming March 2013, and I'm even newly excited for the next 'Night Huntress' instalment... heck, reading about Vlad even has me crossing my fingers that Ian (that secondary-character larrikin) hurries up and gets his own spin-off book too!

4/5

'Driving Mr. Dead' by Molly Harper

From the BLURB:

HELL ON WHEELS

After failing as a magician's assistant, a photographer, and most recently, a bride, Miranda Puckett takes a position as a driver for Beeline, Half-Moon Hollow's premiere vampire concierge service.

Miranda's assignment? Driving Collin Sutherland, the world's most fastidious vampire from Washington to Kentucky, so he can deliver a mysterious black case to Council official Ophelia Lambert.

Collin, a paranoid, aristocratic vampire with a debilitating fear of flying, refuses to let the case out of his sight. Miranda needs this time on the road to decide whether to permanently cut her ties with the fiance that had an "emotional affair" with a childhood pal, but Collin’s neatnik tendencies are driving her around the bend. The man acts as if leaving a fast food wrapped on the passenger seat is reason for a full-on CDC de-contamination scrub-down of the car. All she can do is promise to stop intentionally doing the things that make his stiff upper lip twitch with irritation.

As more and more mishaps occur on the road trip from hell, Miranda and Collin work together to meet his delivery deadline. Hotel rooms are destroyed. Beloved cars are defiled. And somewhere along the line, client-driver hostilities become snarky flirtation.

Will Collin and Miranda make it to the Hollow in one piece? And if they do, will Miranda leave old, safe relationships behind for something new and well, just plain weird?

Serial rolling-stone, Miranda Puckett, is on the first day of her new job for Beeline – driving vampires cross-country as their personal chauffer. And her first client has perfect timing – providing Miranda with some much needed Washington-to-Kentucky driving/thinking time to sort out her ever-destructive life and butt-dialling ex-fiancé.

It’s just a shame that Miranda’s maiden voyage is with Collin Sutherland. A pretentious, reclusive, up-tight vamp with sixteen-pages of instructions for his chauffer and a silver suitcase that he refuses to talk about.

This is going to be one long road-trip to Half-Moon Hollow . . . and along the way there will be car-boobs, muggings, MC Hammer and Hawaiian shirts. Oh, joy.

‘Driving Mr. Dead’ is the 160-page novella set in Molly Harper’s ‘Jane Jameson’ universe.

What is the appropriate reaction when one of your favourite, funny authors writes a special little novella treat set in her established-series universe? Why, fan-girl squealing – of course! And let me assure you, Molly Harper’s ‘Driving Mr. Dead’ is entirely deserving of your peals of squeals!

Harper introduces us to Miranda Puckett – employee to daytime vampire concierge, Iris Scanlon, who readers met in ‘Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbours’, and who has her own spin-off book coming out this month called ‘The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires’. Miranda is a wayward soul with itchy feet and an ever-changing résumé. She has been a cruise ship dogsbody and magician’s assistant but her favourite job of all was as professional photographer. In recent years she has tried squeezing herself into a life that pleases her parents – as paralegal and fiancée to the white-picket-fence good boy, Jason. But that’s all gone up in smoke after Jason’s discovered text message, professing his love for his best friend (and Miranda’s maid-of-honour), Lisa. Miranda has taken the chauffeuring job at Beeline, partly to reconnect with her crazy-wild-card roots, but also to take a week or two of space and decide if she can accept Jason’s apology and re-proposal.

Miranda’s first client is Colin Sutherland, a vampire with a silver suitcase, anal-retentive sixteen-pages of chauffeuring instructions and “more issues than National Geographic”. Miranda and Colin get off to a bad, finger-breaking start, and things just get worse from there . . .  but as the miles tick by and the ludicrous bad-luck keeps knocking them around, Miranda starts to shed Colin’s many pretentious layers and get to his deeply hidden sexy centre.

I loved this novella! And I mostly loved it because it’s so Molly Harper. Honestly, I can’t think of any writer I'd trust more with tackling a hilarious, cross-country vampiric road-trip. She just had to write this because there’s nobody else more qualified. Period.

And she does such a darn good job! As if anyone needed proof that Harper has an untapped resource in exploring the ‘Jane Jameson’ universe, beyond her hilarious vampire-librarian heroine, ‘Driving Mr. Dead’ will assuage you of any lingering doubts and get you suitably excited for ‘The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires’. Of course, a few ‘Jane’ favourites make appearances – but I won’t spoil who because their random pop-up is just too delicious!

Miranda and Colin absolutely steal the show in this buddy-road-trip-plot-gone-awry. They are exact opposites; she the wild child free-spirit, accident-prone cool chick. While he’s a stuffy recluse, with some serious old-world appeal;

Last but not least, there was the fact that he was gorgeous in a tortured Byronic, Edward Rochester-meets-Lucius-Malfoy sort of way. He made me want to climb him like a proper British tree, for no other reason than that wrinkling his clothes would annoy him severely and, I hoped, provoke him into spanking me. He made me dizzy. He made my ears ring.
Wait, no. That was my phone.

I love anything and everything that Molly Harper writes. This novella is just the cherry on top of an already brilliant, established paranormal comedy series that keeps readers in blushes and chuckles. Brilliant!

5/5

'Criminal' Will Trent/Atlanta #4 by Karin Slaughter

 Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

1974: In the blistering heat of an Atlanta summer, a killer prowls the street, searching for the weak, the vulnerable and the lost.

40 years later, a young woman is found brutally murdered in a sordid high-rise apartment. The specifics of her death are detailed and macabre, but for Special Agent Will Trent they are startlingly familiar, and can only mean one thing.

Desperate to deny this might be happening to him, he is forced to return to the home he grew up in, to the grimy crime-ridden streets, to a childhood he has spent the best part of his adult life trying to avoid.

As the body count rises, and the tension on the inner-city streets starts to simmer, Will becomes convinced that the clue to the killings now, and in 1974, may lie in his own past; a past that he hates yet feels responsible for.

And that the killer is much, much closer to him than anyone thought possible.

** Contains SPOILERS of previous books in the ‘Grant County’ and ‘Will Trent/Atlanta’ series **

Atlanta, 1974. Lucy Bennett is a good girl gone bad, turning tricks on the street with the other no-hope whores. Then a man comes along. He knows her name. He wants to save her.

Present day. Will Trent and Sara Linton are a tentative three weeks into their new relationship. There’s the small problem of Will’s ex-cop wife, Angie, leaving vaguely threatening post-it notes on Sara’s car. And the fact that Will has built a tall fortress around his heart and refuses to discuss his terrible childhood spent in foster homes, on the street or in the bad part of town, in a place called Techwood. But Sara has felt an undeniable pull towards Will ever since she first met him, something she finds somewhat miraculous since the tragic death of her husband.

Atlanta 1975. Officers Amanda Wagner and Evelyn Mitchell are sent to investigate a rape in Techwood; a notorious apartment complex full of prostitutes, pimps and people with too little money to get the hell out. When the women arrive they find a flying-high prostitute and a whole lot of trouble, but no rape victim.

Present day. Will Trent is working a dud soliciting case at the airport, punishment for something meaningless from his superior in the Georgia Bureau, Amanda Wagner. And then a new case makes headlines in the city – a young woman is missing. She looks eerily familiar to Will . . . and when all clues lead to Techwood, he knows why.

‘Criminal’ is the fourth book in Karin Slaughter’s immensely popular ‘Will Trent/Atlanta’ crime series.

It’s that time of year again – when I pick up the latest Karin Slaughter and wander the streets of Atlanta with some of my all-time favourite characters. Oh, how I have missed the likes of Will Trent, Faith Mitchell and Amanda Wagner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. And, of course, everybody’s favourite Sara Linton whose trek from the original ‘Grant County’ series was officially solidified in her romance with Will in third book, ‘Fallen’.

Something I really enjoyed in the last ‘Will Trent/Atlanta’ installment was Slaughter’s small glimpses into what the 1970’s police force was like for female officers. In ‘Fallen’, we learned more about Amanda Wagner and Evelyn Mitchell, through their reminiscing about the early days in the force when there was no such thing as ‘sexual harassment’ and the black officers didn’t even have a precinct building. I was really fascinated by the tidbits Amanda shared, so was delighted to learn that in ‘Criminal’, Slaughter would be taking us back to the 1970’s, as a present-day investigation has echoes of the past . . .

Amanda Wagner is in her early 20’s when we meet her in 1975. She is the daughter of Duke Wagner, a veteran of the Atlanta police force who has recently been fired, along with many other white senior officers, when a new (black) chief is appointed and does a shake-up of the totem pole. Though she is police royalty around these parts, Amanda knows her place in the hierarchy – and that is bottom of the rung. The colored and white officers may be at constant logger-heads, with barely-restrained tension wafting through the office . . . but the men are all united in one thing; their disdain of skirts in uniform. Sure, female officers are given equal pay and they wear the same uniform (exact same – down to their men’s shoes) but catcalls are their morning greeting at roll-call, Amanda is expected to write reports for her lazy superior and avoiding a game of grab-ass with whoever her partner is for the day is just part of the job. Evelyn Mitchell is a different story. She’s happily married to an understanding man, and she has a baby boy at home. But after a year or so on maternity leave she’s back, and none of the other female officers can understand why, exactly. Sometimes Evelyn doesn’t really know why either; like all the other women, she hates the way she’s treated by the men, though she can’t even dream of a day when things will be different or better. And then something unusual happens. Evelyn and Amanda are assigned together, on a job that takes them to Techwood and down a rabbit hole of intrigue. . .

The 1970’s Atlanta police force was a God-awful place, as Slaughter brilliantly details. It was a hot-bed for sexism and racism, a veritable jungle where white men ruled and everyone else was just fodder. Slaughter dipped into this in ‘Fallen’, when she explained that it wasn’t until 1962 that black officers were even allowed to arrest white suspects. But with ‘Criminal’ being partly set in 1975, Slaughter is able to go into the nitty-gritty truths of what it was like back then. And it was not pretty, at all. For one thing, it wasn’t too long ago that the Klan was running the Atlanta police force – it was compulsory for officers to join the Klan upon entering the force, and paying their dues to them same as they did the Fraternal Order of Police. Even after black officers joined the force many of the higher-up officers (Amanda’s father included) kept their affiliation with the Klan; she puts it down to their German roots, but it’s also simply the fact that it’s what they know, their tradition. Slaughter writes the warfare between colored and white officers as always at boiling-point, with the potential to tip over at any second;

The radio clicked. Amanda heard the in-and-out of a man’s voice. There were pockets all over the city where the radios had little or no reception, but that wasn’t the problem. A black officer was calling for backup, which meant the white officers were blocking the transmission by clicking the buttons on their mics. In the next hour, a white officer would call for help and the blacks would do the same.
And then someone with the Atlanta Journal or Constitution would write an article wondering why there had been a recent spike in crime.

But the barely-restrained hatred between white and colored officers is nothing compared to what the women put up with. Quite a few times Amanda or Evelyn touch on the feminist and Women’s movement going on around them (Gloria Steinem is a prominent figure by this point, with Germaine Greer slowly gaining recognition). But none of that affects the Atlanta police department. Sexual harassment is rife, and none of the women are seen as being proper officers. I expected all of that, to be honest. But what I found really chilling was the way the women just take it, as par for the course. I loved Slaughter’s characterization of a young Amanda Wagner – having only known her as the present-day head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, it was a total head-spin to read her as this meek 20-something officer. Amanda joined the force, mostly, because her daddy was a cop and she wanted to be one too. When we meet her she pushes down her irritations and hurt at the way the male officers treat her – and she doesn’t even stand up for her fellow female officers when the sexual harassment comes frighteningly close to sexual assault. But throughout the course of ‘Criminal’, and during a life-changing investigation, Slaughter slowly puts the pieces of Amanda’s puzzle together . . . we read how she and Evelyn rise above their stations, and we catch glimpses of the tough old girls they will one day become. It is glorious;

Evelyn said, “I wasn’t sure I could go back after Zeke.” She took a deep breath. “But then I thought about how good it feels when I roll up on a call and a woman sees that I’m in charge, and she sees that her boyfriend or husband or whoever’s been whaling on her has to answer my questions. It makes me feel like I’m doing something. I guess it’s how the coloreds feel when a black cop shows up. They feel like they’re talking to someone who understands them.”
Amanda had never thought about it that way, but she supposed it made sense.

‘Criminal’ flips between 1975, during Amanda and Evelyn’s investigation into a slew of prostitution deaths, to present-day Will Trent and Sara Linton navigating their new relationship when a missing-person case side-lines them, and opens old wounds.

I really liked the switching between 1975 and present-day, and I feel like Slaughter really concentrated on character-building during her present-day chapters. ‘Criminal’ is, without a doubt, Will’s book. I refuse to give anything away, but this is the novel in which readers and Sara learn all about Will’s terrible past and why he is the way he is. . . and I loved that. I always say that what keeps me coming back to Slaugher’s series’ is the messy but fascinating lives of her protagonists –and I feel like I got those delicious complications in spades for Sara and Will in ‘Criminal’. I thought that at the end of ‘Fallen’, with the reappearance of Will’s crazy wife Angie, that ‘Criminal’ would have a larger focus on her as a complication for Will and Sara’s new relationship. But I can now see that there was a lot more that Sara had to know about Will’s childhood before Slaughter could start dealing with his current romantic predicaments . . . but I will say that I have high-hopes that the next ‘Will Trent/Atlanta’ book will have a big focus on those very predicaments.

‘Criminal’ was an incredible installment in Slaughter’s addictive series. In this fourth book that switches between past and present Atlanta, we read about the case which shaped Amanda Wagner and Evelyn Mitchell into the powerful women they would one day become. And we discover how Will’s past has been plaguing and holding power over him since childhood, likewise determining the man he has become.

5/5

 

Five copies of 'Team Human' to give away!

I would like to give a big THANK YOU to Allen & Unwin who have kindly supplied five copies of new novel 'Team Human' to give away! All you have to do is answer the question below (the same one I put to authors Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan!) : "Where do you stand on vampirism? If you could, would you choose to be turned?"

This contest is restricted to Australian residents only!

Good luck! 

How to enter:

+ Become a follower of my blog (if you aren't already)

+ Leave a comment on this blog post, answering the question: "Where do you stand on vampirism? If you could, would you choose to be turned?"

+ Include a way to contact you (e-mail addy is fine)

+ One post per entrant

+ This is a give away for AUSTRALIAN residents only!

+ Contest closes July 31st
I will announce the lucky winners on August 2nd

Interview with Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier, authors of 'Team Human'

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Just when I was sure that I'd read everything the vampire genre has to offer, and couldn't possibly be moved by another fanged hero, a novel comes along that reinvigorates me to the pale undead. At the moment, that novel is 'Team Human' by writing-duo Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier. I loved this book; with its smart, sarcastic heroine who is entirely unmoved by the glitz and glamor of the immortal. Not to mention the clever vampire mechanics and underpinnings that will have even the most dedicated fang-fan questioning the appeal of living forever...

So I was really excited to interview the two authors of this wonderful, accomplished 'team effort'. It is my great pleasure to bring you Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier!

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Q: In your Acknowledgements you say that "Team Human sprang out of our shared love of vampire stories. . .” and in your dedication you list a few of those authors who founded and popularized the vampire genre. Can you both walk down memory lane and recall the very first time you fell for vamps? What was your first vampiric book/TV/movie experience?

SRB: I can, very clearly. I was eleven, I think, and my mother left 'Interview with the Vampire' on the piano and said 'Don't read that book, I think it might be a little much for you.' I'd never been warned off a book before in my life--it was irresistible! I had to have the amazing forbidden book! I ran to get it as soon as my mother was out the door, and that was it, I was in love. That poor, tortured vampire protagonist! My little heart bled for Louis! Then I read the sequel about his blond rock star vampire frenemy, and dumped my first fictional vampire boyfriend for a second fictional vampire boyfriend. Oh well, one more thing for Louis to angst about.

Mind you, it wasn't too long after that I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and later Spike, and that sealed the deal. Vampires were clearly for me however you sliced them. Or staked them.

JL: I'm not sure what the first vampire book I ever read was, probably Dracula, but I have a distinct memory of seeing Love at First Bite, a vampire parody movie when I was very little. I remember it being the funniest, wittiest movie ever made. I suspect that is not, in fact, the case. Perhaps my early imprinting on that movie is part of what led to Team Human.

Q:  And how exactly did ‘Team Human’ become a ‘team effort’? Who had the idea to write a book together and who asked who to help in the writing? You also say in your ‘acknowledgments’ that you “kept this book a secret” – why the secrecy and was it hard to keep it under wraps?

SRB: I don't think anyone went down on one knee and said 'Will you be my co-writer?' We came up with the idea ('you know when your best friend forever has a boyfriend and you hate him' 'What if that guy was a vampire!' together), and while we were saying 'Someone should write that book!' we both thought 'Maybe... WE should write that book? Together?'

Justine asked me to keep it a secret, I think because it was an experiment and neither of us were quite sure it'd work and didn't want people to know until we were sure it was a thing! But it was incredibly hard for me to keep it under wraps, and I kept slipping up.

SARAH: And then the project Justine and I are working on...
FRIEND: What? What project---
SARAH: SHHHHH! You heard nothing! I said nothing! I was NEVER EVEN HERE! *rappels out of window*

Obviously I need more training to fulfil my other life's ambition, and be a spy.

JL: What Sarah said. She is exactly right about why I wanted it to be a secret. I had heard lots of stories of collaborations not working out. Some people's writing styles simply don't mesh together. So I didn't want lots of people to know about our collaboration if no book resulted.

Plus it was really fun to send a complete book to my agent that she had no idea about. She screamed she was so happy when I told her about it.

Sarah did remarkably well keeping it secret given that she is not, um, naturally gifted at secret keeping.

Q: And now to the actual nuts and bolts of duo-writing. I understand that Justine was based in Australia and Sarah in Ireland (?) during the writing process – so how did time zones factor into co-writing ‘Team Human’? And is writing a book together a case of someone writing chapter one, and then handballing chapter two off to the other person?

SRB: Well, there we were helped by my vampiric schedule! Justine would want to talk at 2 AM my time and I'd be like 'SURE sounds good!' And to think my mama said no good would come of me staying up late o'nights.

I'd write two chapters and then send them off to Justine, and then she'd write two chapters and send back to me--but I write overboard, and Justine writes with Elegant Leanness, so I'd always be adding stuff to hers, and she'd always be paring mine down and sometimes splitting the chapters up into three or four, so our mutual mark was left all over everything and it's sometimes quite hard to tell who wrote what!

JL: It happened exactly as Sarah says. Many times one of us would write a scene that was three quarters of the way to being really good and then the other one would somehow know exactly what the scene needed to get all the way there. Sending something you've written off and then having it return to you much, much better is magical.

Q: Are you guys ‘plotters’ or ‘pantsers’, respectively? That is, do you meticulously plot your novel before writing, or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ and let the story evolve naturally? And did you have to change your plotting/pantsing ways to suit each other?

SRB: I'm a plotter, and Justine's a pantser. We talk together about our different approaches here - I made Justine plot Team Human though, because I felt we'd go veering wildly off in different directions all the time if we didn't plot it out!

As it was, we only went veering wildly off into different directions half the time. ;)

JL: Ha! For me that was the most traumatic part of the process: figuring out what we were going to write BEFORE we wrote it. So. Weird. But I dealt with the trauma by telling myself that Team Human was not a Justine book it was a Justine-and-Sarah book which allowed me to forget about my usual method and go along with this insane planning out every single sentence before you write it malarkey.

Q: Something I loved about the vampire mythology and genealogy in ‘Team Human’ was simply that your vamps don’t laugh – they have somewhat muted emotions. That was so interesting to me, and the first time that vampirism has been quite off-putting (funnily enough, blood-drinking is okay but no sense of humour? NO WAY!). Not to mention that a turning gone wrong could lead to zombie-fication! How did you pick through vampire lore for the ‘Team Human’ universe – and how important was it to you that vampires in the book not be presented as the unearthly, superior heart-throbs of so many other paranormal YA novels?

SRB: Thank you! *beams* We both felt that there had to be real downsides to being a vampire, stuff that balanced out living forever and that would have a profound effect on someone, altering them in a way that was immense and wasn't 'really great permanent makeover'. There are vampire myths stating that vampires can't cry (in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles they cry blood!... never go to see a sad movie with an Anne Rice vampire!) and we felt that it would be natural if they could not laugh either.

Especially as, let's face it, remember Angel of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame... vampires are a broody bunch. This explains that. ;)

I do think vampires can be heart-throbs (Francis is pretty cute. Hey, Camille's pretty cute too. ;)) Anyone can be a heart-throb: but we wanted the vampires of the book to feel real, for choosing vampirism to be a really difficult decision with much to be said on both sides--to create a space for debate, and have a voice for those both pro-and-anti-vampirism. We wanted to use vampire lore and put it into the modern world, speculating about windows that'd protect vampires from the sun, about vampire laws, about tourists keen to see vampires and vampires visiting blood banks, and make it all seem complicated, and real.

Insofar as you can, with vampires. ;)

JL: What she said. Also I love zombies. I really wanted them in Team Human. Braaaaaiiiinnnnssss . . .

Q: Right off the bat, what struck me about ‘Team Human’ was simply that you had an Asian heroine (sorry, American-born Chinese – ‘ABC’) in Mel Duan. It struck me because I recently read a fabulous post about young adult cover-art by Michelle Andelman, which calculated that in 2011 only 1.4% of YA covers featured an Asian model – so it was wonderful to see your beautiful cover! I was just wondering what the impetus was behind making Mel Chinese, and if you had to fight to have her properly represented in your cover art?

SRB: Mel being Chinese-American was just something that felt natural: we were writing about urban America, even if it was a made-up city with vampires in it, so we wanted New Whitby to be as diverse as urban America actually is, so Mel's group of friends is diverse, and we didn't want the Asian girl to be a sidekick... we wanted her to be the star of the show.

Plus that meant we got to see the reactions of Francis, a guy from eighteenth century England, to modern urban America---to show vampires being people from the past with their own prejudices, as well as people having (comparatively very reasonable, as they drink blood!) prejudices against vampires.

I've read the same article, and isn't it awesome! We didn't have to fight at all, for which we are extremely thankful. One of the very first things our editor at Harper Collins US said to us, when she suggested a cover with three models on it, was that of course Mel would be Asian. We didn't even have to ask, and we actually had a photo-shoot for the cover, which is a pretty fancy thing to have! I detail the whole experience here. Allen & Unwin use the same models in a slightly different cover, so we always have the same fantastic Asian Mel.

We love our covers, and we love our fantastic publishers for making it so we didn't have to fight!

Q: A lot of people on the blogosphere have been crossing their fingers that ‘Team Human’ will have a sequel. Is anything planned? And if not a ‘Team Human’ sequel – do you think you’ll ever join forces again to write another novel?

SRB: I am afraid we have to keep hush hush on this one. Like ninjas. Ninjas who are also spies. Spinjas. (I know I said I wouldn't be a good spy, but think of how cool a spinja would be. I'd have to try.)

Q: Finally – where do you both stand on vampirism? If you could, would you choose to be turned?

SRB: It would really depend on the vampire mythology--whether I'd have to kill people, whether I would burst into flames or shine like a crazy vampire diamond in the sun. It's certainly something I'd consider: I'd love to see the world changing and history unfolding, plus apparently I can't read all the books in the world in a normal human lifetime... That's a real concern.

JL: Under no circumstances would I become a vampire (and I say that as someone who loves blood sausage). I am against immortality. I look at the world we live in and the way (on the whole) older people are much more conservative than younger people and are often against change. If people were to live forever our world would stagnate. New people means new ideas. I don't think anyone should live forever.

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all images are from weheartit.com 

'Team Human' by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Mel and Cathy and Anna have passed vampires on the street, and sat near them in cinemas, but they don't know any. Vampires stick to their own kind, and Mel and her friends hang out with other humans - until a vampire boy in a bizarre sun-proof suit shows up at school and captures Cathy's heart.

Mel is horrified. Can she convince Cathy that life with a vampire is no life at all? Should she? And then all her assumptions about vampires are turned on their head when she meets Kit, a boy who makes her laugh - a boy with a very unusual family history.

Will Mel's staunch anti-vampire stance jeopardise her closest friendships? And where does Kit fit in? In the end, who will choose...Team Human?

Mel Duan and her family support the Vampire Protection Acts, and would never condone the murder of vampires. But that does not mean that Mel supports the idea of her best friend Cathy dating, let alone falling in love, with one of the fanged-freaks!

Living in Maine’s New Whitby, a.k.a. ‘vampire city’, Mel has a better idea than most about how vampires live and behave – never mind that the city is mostly segregated. New Whitby keeps to an unspoken ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality – all government buildings have sun-proof windows and there are strict laws about who can and can’t be bitten – but the city works best because the vampires keep to their side of the town, and vice versa.

So when Mel and Cathy start a new day of school and see a hazmat-suited vampire waddling through their school gates, Mel is wary but Cathy is excited. His name is Francis Duvarney, he has an English accent and a most annoying interest in the human beings who populate Craunston High – and most of the human students (Cathy included) are falling all over themselves at a chance to get to know their first, real-life vampire classmate.

Cathy has an excuse for all of Francis’s social vampire-foibles – like his bordering-on-racist queries about Mel being an ABC (American-born Chinese) and the girl’s best friend Ty (who is African American) – Cathy sweeps it all under the rug, protesting that Francis is assimilating from a very different time period. But the one thing Cathy can’t really fault is their friend, Anna Saunders’s, reaction to Francis joining their friendship group (against Mel’s wishes). Anna’s father is a therapist, helping treat human and vampire patients . . .  that is, until he ran away with one of his female vampire patients last summer. Anna is still reeling from the loss (and her lack of contact with him since) but her mother, Principal Saunders, is struggling even more.

But the final nail in the coffin (pun! – you’re welcome) comes when Francis asks Cathy to be his immortal wife – and offers to turn her. Mel cannot stand the idea of her best friend becoming a sober-faced, blood-drinking fanged freak and does some investigating, discovering some damning information about Francis’s enrolment at their school – and his romance with Cathy. But when Mel confronts him at his shade’s home (a collection of vampires living together is called a shade) she is dismayed to find a teenage boy living there – a boy named Kit who has been raised by the shade of vampires and even calls one of them ‘Mum’.

As Cathy’s turning day creeps ever closer, and Mel gets to know Kit’s very different outlook on vampires she starts to wonder if it’s all so simple as coming down to Team Vampire VS Team Human?

‘Team Human’ is the YA paranormal novel from writing-duo Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan. Larbalestier being the Australian author of books like ‘Liar’ and ‘How to Ditch Your Fairy’, and Rees Brennan of ‘The Demon's Lexicon Trilogy’ fame.

I had a sneaking suspicion that I would enjoy ‘Team Human’ the moment I perused the Dedications page. Here, Larbalestier and Rees Brennan proclaim that: “Without Team Vampire, the writers whose vampires have inspired and delighted us, ‘Team Human’, would never have been. . . ” and then they proceed to list many of my favourite authors, from Rachel Caine to Charlaine Harris, Richelle Mead and Stephen King (to name a very few). Girls after my own literary-vampiric heart!

Right from page one (after the aforementioned fab Dedication) what instantly drew me into ‘Team Human’ was Mel Duan’s voice. She’s witty and sarcastic, and within the first chapter she has snarked that Francis has the grace of a penguin and accused him of being a cross between Darth Vadar and an astronaut in his sun-proof suit. Oh yeah; a snippy, snarky, sarcastic heroine completely suckered me in – and had me chortling throughout the book. Never mind that I also appreciated the fact that Mel is Chinese (ABC – American-born Chinese) and the beautiful ‘Team Human’ cover breaks the usual hum-drum paranormal YA conventions by featuring an Asian model (really, you have no idea how rare it is to get minority representation on YA covers until you’ve read Michelle Andelman’s graph study on the matter – FYI, Asian characters on front covers was around 1.4% in 2011!)

It’s pretty obvious Larbalestier and Rees Brennan have some serious love for fanged characters – so it came as no surprise that their ‘Team Human’ vampire ‘lore’ was pretty impressive and intricate, and thoroughly interesting. In this world becoming vampire isn’t all about being beautiful for eternity and becoming an all-powerful ass-kicker. In this world, becoming vampire means dulling your emotions, and that’s not even the worst of it. Zombies are in fact vampire turnings gone badly – the product of a poorly done transition (often against someone’s will) leaves them a slobbering, brain-dead flesh-eater and requires immediate termination by the authorities. And as Mel puts it, that’s no real incentive to be turned;

Vampires are trouble. Think about it: these days, all vampire transitions are voluntary. What kind of person would take the risk of becoming a vampire? There’d have to be something wrong with you. Because the process can either kill you outright or turn you into a drooling, mindless monster (which would lead to you being put down almost instantly), or, if you’re super-lucky, you become a vampire.
Let’s examine what a prize that is one more time: no more direct sunlight ever again, no more laughter. You get eternity, but you don’t have the sense of humor to enjoy it! Also, vampires don’t eat food. You never get to eat chocolate. Ever.
I'd rather die.

I also loved that Mel mentions the many PSA (public service announcement) campaigns trying to warn people of the dangers of transition. Like the ‘Say “Not Tonight” to a Bite campaign’. And Mel’s family (while pro-vampire) have some interesting discussions around the dinner table about Cathy wishing to be turned at the age of 17. As Mel’s father says: “why should you be able to drink blood before you can drink alcohol?” in defence of a 21 turning age.

There’s no doubt about it, the vampires and human/vamp societal explorations in ‘Team Human’ are among the best, most interesting I have read.

But the real turning point of the story comes when Mel meets Kit – Francis’s ‘ward’, a human child who has been raised by a shade and calls one of the vampires, ‘Mum’. Kit is Mel’s opposite – where she is decidedly Team Human, he is Team Vampire. And for all that Mel doesn’t really understand vamps (and harbours a few prejudices against them) so too is Kit misinformed about a lot of human conventions. These two were so great together – and pairing them up led to some really interesting explorations into the world-building.

I do sort of wish that Cathy and Francis had been as interesting as Mel and Kit in representing Team Vampire. Admittedly, Cathy and Francis being a little bit dull was indicative of vampire personality and why they were so romantically suited. Still, I would have liked more Cathy/Francis time if only to elevate them out of their two-dimensional characterizations. Though, I will admit, Francis still provided plenty of hoity-toity laughs.

All in all ‘Team Human’ was a fantastic ode-to-vampires paranormal YA book. I do sort of have my fingers crossed that Larbalestier and Rees Brennan team up for another book (either a sequel or something new and different!) because their winning combination in ‘Team Human’ was completely delightful and vampireriffic!

4.5/5