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Review: Night Rising by Chris Marie Green

Title: Night Rising
Author: Chris Marie Green
Series: Vampire Babylon # 1
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy
Format: Paperback
Source: PaperbackSwap
Pub. Year: 2007
Purchase: Amz/ B&N

Blurb from Amazon:

In this first book of an all-new trilogy, life proves stranger than the movies when a Hollywood underground coven of vampires comes to light-and gets targeted by the tough-as-nails daughter of a sexy screen siren.

Stuntwoman Dawn Madison hasn’t been on the best of terms with her father since her movie star mother died. Still, he is her dad, and when he vanishes while investigating the bizarre sighting-caught on film-of a supposedly long-dead child star, she comes home to Tinseltown to join the search for him. Working with his odd colleagues, she discovers an erotic and bloody underground society made up of creatures she thought existed only on the screen.

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Random: The book is a rough diamond.

The series has potential but it falls a little flat. It has a loose plot and less than appealing characters. Add in villains that may not be true villains, it is not what I had expected.

Let’s talk character. Dawn is the main protagonist who really likes sex. The first half of the book is about Dawn wanting to have sex with anyone and not being able to satisfy her craving. I have never read a character like her but Dawn’s constant need for sex made her a hard character to like. In the second half of the book, the action picks up so the novel is not emphasizing her sex drive (but it is still there). Kiko is a little person who has psychic visions. He is a struggling actor and has a lot of faith in his boss, The Voice. Breisi is a Hispanic woman who is a technology and combat expert. She is reserved but she is an interesting character. The Voice/Jonah is their boss and a hypnotizer. He never physically appears in the book. (I’m guessing vampire or ghost). He has many secrets and not very forthcoming with them. Frank (Dawn’s father) is an absentee character but he helps drive the story forward. It’s a nice touch of Green making him an absentee character to reflect his absentee father status.

The plot could have been tighter or at least solve the original mystery that brought Dawn to Los Angeles. It starts with Dawn looking for her father but she never finds him so that is highly disappointing. Instead, she half-solves the case he working on when he disappeared. The novel also adds Eva as a residual character. Eva is Dawn’s dead mother and Eva as a memory continues to haunt Dawn. The dead of her mother stole Dawn’s father away from her and Dawn is continually compare to and usually fails to live to the world’s expectation as the daughter of one of the most beautiful and talented actress. That’s probably the best part of the novel. So much of what is going on can be trace to Eva. There is certain starlet that reminds of me of Eva and I hope she has a recurring role in the second book.

The villains, if you can call them that, are vampires. I don’t really consider them villains because they are not turning or killing people against their will. It is the human who consents to what the vampires are requesting. There is a hierarchy and while it is a cold hierarchy, there is some warmth and caregiving with the vampires. The vampires don’t seem like villains. At least not yet. There is still hope for them.

I know it sounds like I didn’t really like the book but it was an okay book. It is not at the top of the urban fantasy series but it is not the worst urban fantasy book that I have read. It is just okay.