The Blood Books: Vol. 1 by Tanya Huff

Date Published: 2006, DAW Books.
ISBN: 075 - 640 - 387 - 1
# of Pages: 554

I didn't think I liked mysteries or crime/detective novels, but this may have converted me (though, then again, maybe it's the supernatural fantasy stuff I like so much). This book is actually two books -- the first in a series by Huff that follows a policewoman-turned-private-detective due to a degenerative eye condition who finds herself involved in supernatural cases after unwittingly teaming up with 400+ year-old vampire Henry Fitzroy, a historical romance novelist and the bastard son of Henry VIII. The first book follows the investigation of the conjuring of a demon. The second follows some trouble with a local (friendly) werewolf pack that is being systematically hunted down.

The writing is fast-paced and engaging and the characters are all very likeable (even the un-like-able ones) which is a sign of decent quality writing to me. After reading this I acquired (hrrm-umph) the Canadian TV series that was based on these books and found a lot of very interesting differences and similarities. I enjoyed that Henry was a romance novelist while reading this book. I thought that it added some dimension and seemed to be a pretty understandable profession for an immortal vampire to take up when he finds that he isn't really able to do things like "be outside during the day" or "associate with other people", and really it was just very cute. In the TV series they change this profession to graphic novelist which just made me kind of nauseous. I got the impression that romance novelist just wasn't masculine enough. They also very explicitly played down on Henry's very transparent bisexuality in the novels which I ALSO thought was very interesting and enjoyed very much.

I liked that the focus shifts to multiple supernatural creatures and that there seems to be a lot of different directions these stories can take. I think that this is fairly standard procedure for novels (supernatural crime solving novels seem to be a genre in and of themselves these days...) like this but I imagine for its time (1991) it was quite progressive. It has the usual trappings of poor plot development and predictable sequences of events that I would expect, but for what it is I think it is pretty decent.