Dead on My Feet (Halflife Chronicles #2)

In this rather longish second episode of Chris Chejthe’s adventures we are presented with nearly every possible fantastical creature: even an archangel and a rusalka make a short appearance.

Add to this many debates about the nature of life, of good, of evil, of ethics, of war, of religion, etc.: Mr Simmons has done his research and invests his readers with heaps of knowledge ranging from pop culture to philosophy through voodoo and American literature.
This should not bode well but Chris manages to remain a very interesting and likeable character, a little wordy at times, with a little proneness to being judgemental but alive and ***-kicking.

Our author plunges him in a perilous adventure and is certainly unafraid of using every conceivable plot twist.
His writing is in the main neat and only from time to time does the reader need to check energetically occasional deluges of words that threaten to overwhelm him/her.

Our author does not comply with the unwritten rules of this genre: there are violence and gore but they are not the book’s main course; sex (straight sex – no homosexuality here) is mentioned more in passing than indulged upon unless it is to open a moral debate.

A pleasing if excentric -so to speak- read.

I’ve been waiting a long time for this book to come out, as I very much enjoyed its predecessor “one foot in the grave”. Chris Csjthe the almost-vampire is back. Now living in Monroe he’s working as a part time private investigator and university lecturer, and life is pretty good for him with the exception that his werewolf lover, Lup, has left him because she couldn’t stand the competition from his late wife’s ghost taking up Chris’s attention.
Things unexpectedly start to unravel for Chris when he takes a case to investigate if a local psychic is the real thing. It turns out she is and she has some dire warnings for him. Then another vampire turns up in town and tries to kill him and the local corpses start turning up on his doorstep asking him to dispense justice for them because he stands between life and the undead – and the local police are NOT impressed.
This is a wise-cracking, literary and fast moving novel. Chris reads like an old friend. Once you start this book you’ll want to see how it ends as Chris is pushed to his limits and finds out more about himself and his new powers than he ever guessed.
I’m already looking forward to the next book in this series, and hoping its as much fun as the first two books. If you like your vampire/supernatural novels with a twist that doesn’t rely on sex and excessive blood then these books are worth reading, but start with the first book to get the most out of this one. Though I do hope the next book will tie up some threads left dangling at the end of this one. (eg what happened to his secretary and her sick nephew etc)

This book alternated from holding my attention to losing it and back again all the way to the middle of the book where I almost gave up on it as being too wordy – too much skimming and scanning the slow areas to get back to the fast areas. It finally picked up to the point where there was little skimming. The author uses an abundance of literary devices which sometimes enhance the story and sometimes seem unnecessary other than to add words. The story line is very good, the ending was very good – I just would have liked a more direct ride to it and maybe a few less sarcastic comments and less philosophising. I’m not saying cut it out as it’s part of the character’s personality, but maybe a lighter hand – or mouth as it were.

in the first book, we see how Chris is introduced to the problems of being a half-vampire. In this book, he is thrown into another series of fast-paced situations where he is often in over his head and he uses his wits to get him out.

I would like to say I have read this but it is hard to get. I enjoyed Mr. Simmons first book so wanted the next two. The first and third were easy to find but the second is missing. I first tried ordering from Borders but after no response for 2 months I tried Amazon. It is on back order. Why have the middle book in a series unavailable? It’s frustrating.

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