Just Finished Reading: Paint It Black by Nancy A Collins (FP: 1995)

Sonja Blue is pissed, really pissed with Lord Morgan – the vampire who turned her into an Undead monster. Years previously she had managed to get close enough to him to use a silver blade and scar him in a way that will stay for him for a very long time indeed. But scaring the man who killed her is only the start. She intends to kill him once she finds him. But Lord Morgan hasn’t stayed alive for hundreds of years by being stupid or easy to track. So when Sonja receives a series of newspaper cutting hinting at vampire activity in New York she naturally suspects a trap. Nevertheless she can’t help but follow the trail to a city she knows well in the hope that the trap can be sprung on the very creature who she suspects placed it there. Meanwhile hundreds of miles south, hidden away from prying eyes Sonja’s ex-lover and psychic friend watches in fascination as his adopted daughter grows at amazing speed. In three short years of accelerated growth she could already pass for a girl of ten or older. What will happen, he wonders, when she reaches puberty? With Sonja in New York on her well published hunt for Morgan the talk of the cities vampire community she becomes the focus of the endless political struggle between ancient dynasties. But Sonja is like a guided missile locked onto a single target, one much stronger, more ruthless and more cunning than even she realises.  

This is another one of those books that have been sitting on my shelves for far too long. Part of it is probably that it’s part three in a series that is now largely out of print. Part of it is my habit of taking years, and sometimes decades to ‘get around’ to books that have migrated to the bottom of the particular pile they inhabited as newer books arrived. Anyway, to the book itself…. It’s certainly a novel of many elements. Dropping into the third book left me floundering a bit to begin with but there were enough references to previous goings on (life before she became a vampire and such) that filled in the background adequately. Sonja herself is a great character and I think I’ll expend some effort getting more of the novels she appeared in. The world she lives in is interesting if a little far-fetched – though often pretty standard these days – in that supernatural creatures inhabit the same world but are hidden by their ability to practically stealth themselves except to psychics and crazy people. Indeed (which I found interesting) these creatures had been manipulating the human genome to prevent more people seeing them for what they are. Such ideas certainly pushed this above the often run-off-the-mill urban fantasy novels I’m used too. Typically though there is the usual level of semi-graphic violence – these are vampires after all – torture and kinky sex that you find in most books of this genre these days. Again these often boring episodes are taken above the norm by inventiveness and attention to detail. Some of the book is definitely creepy and those with a delicate constitution might find some sections difficult. This is most definitely not a teen novel so be warned! Definitely a solid contribution to the vampire genre and so recommended to any blood sucking fans out there. If you want to read the whole series it looks like the easiest way to get them is through download onto your Kindle rather than trying to pick them up in hardcopy. Enjoy.