Review Courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: Such fun to read, wild and witty.

Opening Sentence: Alec Darwin was dying, or as close to it as one could be without having that last little spark of life flutter away into nothingness.

The Review:

This is the story of Corazon Ferreira, a budding real estate agent, and known vampire hater, well serious vampire dislike-er. As the story opens, we find Cora taking pictures of an old mansion along with the woman who stole her husband, who also works at the realty agency. While Cora is exploring the basement, she gets mixed up in some sort of demonic tool theft, and it’s “Welcome to Hell” time…well, Hell/Purgatory. Thankfully she stumbles upon someone who should be able to help, but needs a little saving first. But *gasp* the creature she saves is none other than the vampire that has been haunting her. Actually, he is haunting her dreams, and past life regressions, but I digress.
Alec Darwin has been sentenced to Akasha (sort of like purgatory) for crimes against his kind. Just as he has decided to fade away into nothingness, along comes Cora to bring him back. Which, by the by, was the exact opposite of his wishes. Having lost his beloved some centuries ago, Alec has merely existed all this time, and wants his time to come to an end. However, now that she has given herself to him, in every way…ahem… Alec cannot find the will to turn Cora away, especially when he finds out what a real mess she is embroiled in.

Alec and Cora, once out of the Akasha, must enlist the help of their friends, and some of their enemies, to rid themselves of the dangers of death, destruction and perpetual imprisonment. And in doing so together, they realize that even after all this time, they truly are meant to be.

Set in the age of cell phones and credit cards, Much Ado About Vampires takes place in several countries and on many separate planes of existence. Ms. MacAlister seems to have that knack for tying the dramatic into the funny, and I found myself chuckling out loud, much to the consternation of those sitting by me at the restaurant I was in while reading a good chunk of the book.

The only thing I wonder about is if some of the concepts in this story are covered in some of the previous books. It would have made some of the more bureaucratic and political situations a tad bit easier to follow.

Otherwise, as I stated before, this book was a lot of fun. Makes me want to run out and grab books 1-8 and all the other related stories. If only.

Notable Scene:

“You know, this doesn’t look like hell.”

“That’s because it’s not Abaddon. It’s the Akasha.” Alec strolled beside me as we walked down a long hallway, our footsteps echoing slightly along the smooth walls and stone floor.

“Yeah, but that greeter person told Diamond and me that this was a place of perpetual torment, and that sounds like hell to me. However, this…” I waved a hand around our surroundings. “This just looks like any old office building. I don’t see anything tormentish about it.”

“Try opening one of the doors,” he said, nodding to one as we passed it.

I paused. “Why? Is something ghoulish going on in there? Are people being dismembered? Tortured? Eaten by fire ants?”

He crossed his arms and nodded toward the nearest door. “Open it and see.”

“All right, but if it’s something gross, I’m aiming at you when I barf up my breakfast.” I opened the door and looked in, braced for the worst.

A group of a half-dozen people sat around a long table, papers scattered across its surface, which was also littered with half-empty bottles of water, and a rainbow of highlighters. Crumpled paper spilled off the table onto the floor, leading in trail to a whiteboard covered in several different styles of handwriting.

“We are agreed, then, are we not,” said a man in a business suit at the head of the table, “that examining the cost-savings that will accrue from our cutback on the performance-related functions will make good any and all productivity shortfalls we experience this quarter?”

A woman shook her head and tapped at the table with one of the highlighters. “I believe that if we realign our organizational aims to better benefit the enterprise, we can absolve our office of the clearly unsustainable redundancy of not only the expense claims, but of the external consultants, which I think we all agree will lead to the downfall of this and other management teams within the venture.”

“No, no, no!” a third man said, hoisting his pants up over his beer belly as he rose to his feet. “If we form a task force to investigate the benefits of a mentor program—“

“Good god,” I said softly, closing the door. “It’s worse than I thought.”

Alec nodded. “Middle-management committees. Still think this isn’t a bad place?”

I shuddered. “We have to get out of here.”

The Dark Ones Series:

1. A Girl’s Guide to Vampires

2. Sex and the Single Vampire

3. Sex, Lies and Vampires

4. Even Vampires Get the Blues

5. The Last of the Red-Hot Vampires

6. Zen and the Art of Vampires

7. Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang

8. In the Company of Vampires

9. Much Ado About Vampires

FTC Advisory: Penguin Group provided me with a copy of Much Ado About Vampires. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )