Night's Cold Kiss by Tracey O'Hara

I have a love-hate relationship with vampires. There have been vampire novels that I've absolutely adored. There have been others that have flown from my hand into the wall with frightening velocity. Mostly, I just wish there weren't so darn many vampire novels. My favorite urban fantasies, lately, have been the ones where there aren't any vampires, or the ones where vampires play a very minor role. When an urban fantasy does feature vampires, my favorite aspects of the book tend to be the places where the author departs from the standard vampire "canon."

Which means that there were several things to cheer for in Night's Cold Kiss.

At first glance, Night's Cold Kiss is quite similar to other vampire-themed novels on the market. The heroine is a butt-kicking vampire hunter, driven to that calling by a traumatic event in he... Read More

Death’s Sweet Embrace by Tracey O'Hara

Death’s Sweet Embrace is the second novel in Tracey O’Hara’s Dark Brethren series and the follow-up to 2009’s Night’s Cold Kiss. Here, O’Hara focuses more on the shapeshifters of her world than on the vampires, and introduces readers to the Dark Brethren themselves, a creepy faux-angelic race that once enslaved all parahumans and wants to regain its supremacy.

The central plot deals with a serial killer who preys on shapeshifters and whose grisly crimes may be connected to the Dark Brethren. Kitt Jordan, a werecat doctor who had a small role in Night’s Cold Kiss, becomes involved with the hunt for the killer while trying to wrestle with romantic and family issues. Years ago, she had a relationship with a wolf shifter, R... Read More