Liv's Reviews > Bloodshot

This was my first Cherie Priest book. It started off a bit shaky, because for the first two chapters, I found myself wondering what the heck the main character, Raylene, was meant to be doing. In fact, nothing that she “said” (since she narrated and explained her own story in present tense) caught my attention for long. The prose was supposed to be humorous but instead I found Raylene extremely annoying with her self-humour.

I almost decided to put the book down after two chapters.

Then suddenly, the plot picked up quickly thereafter and the entire book became so much more involved. I became much more engaged with the story and I actually finished the book relative quickly after the torturous slow start.

Raylene was the main character and a lone vampire who didn’t belong to any House. She worked alone as a “treasure hunter”. I honestly couldn’t remember what she called herself, but I thought the more suitable description of her occupation would be “thief-for-hire”. Anyway, she took immense precautions with having multiple safe-places, accounts, identifies handy in case she got in trouble and had to flee at moments notice. Given this, you’d think she was an organized and well-planned undead, right?

That’s where you’d be wrong.

She never planned. In reality, she often flew by the seat of her pants. Even after she teamed up with Adrian (or Sister Rose), who was a majorly kickass ex-SEAL drag queen, to investigate the abduction and experimentation of kidnapped vampires (one of whom was Adrian’s sister), she’d lead the game not really knowing how she was going to achieve the goal. She portrayed an air of confidence, but really, she was a fake.

Oh gawd, she was annoying!!! Her continuous monologue about self was totally uninteresting and often repetitive. I believe I only enjoyed her scenes where she started taking actions and had to give-it-all-or-die-trying.

On the whole though, the story moved along very nicely and I really liked reading about Adrian. Even parts about Ian Stott, the blind vampire who hired Raylene to investigate the details of his abduction and subsequent experimentation, were engaging.

So yes, I’d read the next instalment sometime in the future, but I’d like to see some improvement and character development on Raylene, as I believed her to be the weakest link to the story.

I give this book 3.5 stars.