Dying Bites by D.D. Barant – review

Paranormal, romantic, urban supernatural novels aren’t usually my cup of tea, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good Dying Bites: Book One of the Bloodhound Files, by D.D. Barant, was–despite its cover. It’s okay, I guess, as far as generic covers go. I believe it’s supposed to picture the heroine of the novel, Jace Valchek, from the back, with her gun drawn, about to enter a…cemetery (there’s so much fog in the background it’s hard to tell for sure).

Anytime I hear or read the phrase “paranormal romance,” I want to hurl, because though a lot of horror novels or ones about paranormal occurences have an element of romance to them, the phrase makes me think I’m about to be reading a Harlequin Romanticized version of a horror novel–the literary equivalent of a “chick flick.” However, while there is an element of romance in Dying Bites, fear not, guys–there’s enough action, vampires, lycanthropes, golems, and Elder Gods in the book that, in my opinion, both guys and gals should find the plot appealing.

The novel calls for an immense amount of suspension of disbelief; but, then again, most fantasy and horror novels do. There’s also some SF thrown in–FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit agent Jace Valchek gets transported to an alternate universe. She’s a profiler, and the vampire (or pire) head of the NSA, David Cassius, requires her talents as a top-notch human profiler to track down and capture or kill a myterious psychotic serial killer, the Impaler, who has been targeting pires and thropes and murdering them in particualrly gruesome ways. Yes, pires and thropes–no apostrophes–shortenings of the words I’m not particularly fond of, but I got (relatively) used to them as I read on.

Jace Valchek is in a world which has many similarities to her own, but sometime in the 14th century, vampires and lycanthropes started to increase in numbers. Though they warred upon each other, as well as attempting to decimate the human race, eventually they reached a peaceful accord. Vampires mostly stuck to drinking only animal blood, and humans put up their stakes and silver. Cassius tells Jace that after the treaty of 1388, “…killing a member of another species–for blood, meat, or any other reason–was declared to be murder. Except in times of war, of course.”  The populations, however, are skewed vastly from Jace’s Earth:  the pires now make up thirty-seven percent of the population; the lycanthropes, forty-three percent; nineteen percent are golems; leaving only one percent making up the human population.  Jace was brought in because there’s not enough humans to have a profiler experienced enough in tracking serial killers to bring down one of their own. 

Jace has to take a drug to help her deal with the transition between parallel universes, and it has the side effect of making her more sensitive to the emotions/feelings of the people around her. She can tell, for instance, when a male character finds her attractive and is getting turned on, and she becomes more vulnerable to their feelings and desires. There’s not a whole lot of actual sex in the book, but there’re lots of times when she wonders if it’d be okay to have a romance and sex with the supernatural creatures she becomes closest to and gets to know the best.

As the novel goes on, Jace begins to wonder if she’s on the right side, or if the Impaler, despite the brutality of the murders and that they’re broadcast over the Internet, is actually crazy. He fills Jace in on many things that the pires and thropes she’s working for haven’t bothered to tell her, and tries to get her to join his side.

I wound up liking Dying Bites more than I thought I would when I began reading it. Jace is an interesting, strong-willed character who is tenacious and follows her own rules. She shows no fear when confronted by pires and thropes, and she even talks back to her boss, Cassius, and sometimes disobeys his orders. She makes for a realistic character (in the terms of the world she’s transported to and the supernatural beings she encounters). Against her better judgment, she finds herself falling for a Japanese thrope, Tanaka, though it only results in a one-night-stand. Jace puts up a front that she’s capable of dealing with everything in the world she’s suddenly transported to, but she’s filled with internal turmoil and self-doubts that help add to her three-dimensionality.

The alternate or parallel Earth the novel is set in is portrayed in a way that makes you feel like it’s one that potentially could really exist, which is important to getting into the plot. There were a few aspects of the world I had niggling doubts about, that made me not want to accept the “truth” that such a place could exist, however. For instance, I couldn’t help but think that vampires and werewolves generally are portrayed in literature as being ravenous beasts who are concerned primarily with their own survival, and they’re basically killing machines who show little, if any, remorse. There are exceptions, like Anne Rice’s vampires and the Twilight series, of course. But for the two sides to have a mutual society and work and live together in cities without trying to wipe each other out, and to consider humans to be an endangered species and want to protect them from becoming extinct, was a little difficult for me to accept at first, but I’d say I ultimately liked the cooperative society the pires, thropes, and golems formed.

Dying Bites: Book One of the Bloodhound Files is a bold, compelling beginning for Barant’s series, and I’m looking forward to reading its sequel, Death Blows, whenever it’s published. Barant’s writing just might make even a crazy old professor like myself reconsider his possibly unfound prejudices against a genre I’d previously shunned like a vampire does garlic. At the least, I’m glad I gave Dying Bites a chance, and I’d recommend anyone who likes paranormal romances or just good mystery/horror novels to check it out for themselves.