Since vampires are, as far as we know, fiction no one can say what vampires are really like. That has left authors a lot of leeway to create monsters and sexy immortals, all with the label vampire.

Today marks the six months anniversary of the Smart Girls love SFR & PNR blog so I thought I’d go back to the basics and recommend a few of my long time favorite books. I’m going with two different versions of the ever-popular vampire. These are both books plucked out of series and I do recommend the series, but these are my favorites.

DARK DESIRE was the second book in Christine Feehan’s Dark Series. In this romance driven series the Carpathians are a nearly immortal race that relies on drinking blood to survive. For Carpathians it is forbidden to kill when they drink, instead they rely on their ability to alter the memory of the donors to keep their secret. Those who do kill are the real vampires. Most of the heroes are Carpathian vampire hunters.

In Dark Desire Jacques was a Carpathian vampire hunter who was mistaken for vampire by human vampire hunters. They mucked up the job of killing him and instead buried him alive for years. Shea is his destined lifemate and when he sends out a mental call for help, she is drawn to him. I loved this story because Jacques was such a wounded soul that my heart went out to him.

The first chapter is available online at Christine Feehan’s website.

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Primary format: Print

Publication date: January 3, 2006

BLOODY BONES was (I think) the fifth Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel. This was the book where I really fell in love with Jean Claude, the Vampire Master of the City. He and Anita have a tumultuous relationship especially in the early novels—well she IS a vampire executioner. In Bloody Bones Anita is hired for a zombie raising (her principal job) that goes a bit wrong. When she is forced to call Jean Claude for help he comes to her aid, but there is seldom any easy solutions when vampires are involved.

One of the things I love most about the series is that the vampires are the traditional cursed creatures of legends. In this book, Jean Claude finally allows Anita to see his vulnerabilities and she might have been able to resist him, but I couldn’t. 

The first two chapters are available on Laurell K Hamilton’s website.

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Primary format: Print

Publication date: October 1996

Thanks, dear readers and fellow bloggers, for all you have taught me and shared with me in this first six months. I never knew blogging could be so much fun.