2024 urban fantasy novells, part of a series. Dr Greta
Helsing is relaxing with her husband (Varney the Vampire) when a
newly-turned and abandoned vampire comes to their attention…
This is possibly designed as a route into the series for the new
reader, since it came out five years after the previous book.
Certainly there's a lot of re-explanation of who everybody is, how the
various sorts of monster work, and so on. But the most important
element of this is how the vampires have grown out of their early
monstrous days to feel responsible: all right, I am intrinsically a
parasite, but at least I will try to do more good than harm.
And, as a secondary consideration, there's the difficulty of someone
who's reached that decision then stepping back when a problem is
clearly someone else's to deal with.
"But as impressive as you are as a vampyre, Varney, your nose is not
exactly a marvel of olfactory precision. I can practically smell
what this wretched creature looked like, based just on the traces
he left on the child's clothing. I certainly know he was wearing
much too much Acqua di Gio, which is to say any Acqua di Gio.
Follow me."
Perhaps there's too much emphasis on that, at the cost of other
things: I mean, an eleven year old (white) girl has gone missing while
on a school trip, even if she is an unwanted foster child I feel
there would be a certain amount of official interest in the matter,
and seeing how our heroes dealt with that could have been interesting.
The reasoning behind the turning and abandonment is unsatisfactory.
Narratively I think that stuff is meant to be setup, to put our heroes
into the position of having to look after a vampire child whom nobody
else wants, but while I can appreciate Shaw's emphasis I didn't think
it entirely worked.
This is fantasy, not horror, for all it has vampires and werewolves
and things. And it remains good fun.