Mir's Reviews > Bloodshot

Cherie Priest has created a very human vampire. Raylene may be stronger and faster than a normal human, but she isn't smarter or sexier. Becoming undead cures your health problems -- including, in this case, allergies -- but it doesn't change your personality or give you super powers. Raylene lies to herself as much as the average gal and her judgement and foresight aren't always great. In fact, she does some fairly dumb things, especially for someone who is supposed to make a living as a thief and detective. But this is part of what makes her a believable and likeable character. Vampirism is an aversion to sun and need for blood, not the be all and end all of her existence. She has interests, fairly normal ones: art, money, clothes, attractive men. This is less a typical vampire urban fantasy and more like one of those action novels (I don't know what the genre is called) where ex-special forces or secret agent types investigate conspiracies or international crimes. In this case, a secret government medical research program carries out torturous experiments on vampires, one of whom escapes and recruits Raylene to recover his records in hopes of undoing the damage that has been done to him. But of course the Men in Black are not letting a break-in go unpunished and soon the danger spreads...