Vampire Lord: Conquering a Bloodthirsty Earth (Vampire Lord #1)

I enjoyed this volume very much – if you like the premise of a vampire apocalypse where our hero is a Blade-type character, you’ll probably like this.

Some criticisms:

1) I couldn’t decide if the gun sections were written by a firearms novice, or written to emulate the thought process of a firearms novice. As someone who is not a novice, it came across a bit like listening to a Fortnite player describe their first time at a shooting range, or some teenage Youtuber telling me how great the Disney Star Wars films are.

In a word: annoying. I appreciated the jab at NY’s gun laws, however.

2) It was very hard to believe the power grid lasted that long. I did initially have thoughts to the effect that vampires ought to have been cutting power to buildings to flush out the humans, but then I remembered that NY tends not to have overhead power lines – subterranean lines are harder to cut for a novice. Still, power plants tend to be designed to require at least a skeleton crew to keep them running.

3) The super-senses of the vampires were very inconsistent. Individual vampires could hear people whispering through a door at two dozen feet, but three fully-fed vampires couldn’t hear the hero hiding from them?

4) Sam isn’t at all bothered by the vampires he kills – not even the first one, really. That is actually the mark of a sociopath, but he’s not otherwise written as a sociopath. There really needed to be more effort put into him coming to terms with what he’s had to do.

This book is an enjoyable spin on the typical zombie apocalypse story. The plot moves fast enough to keep things interesting, with only a couple dry sections. However, the power fantasy nature of this story reduced my enjoyment somewhat.

The main character has a relatable goal but very little personality beyond it. Likewise, the three female characters boil down to a trio of college sorority cardboard cutouts, a fact emphasized by the author’s tendency to refer to them by their physical characteristics. Having beautiful characters is fine, but I don’t need a note that a girl has long legs in the middle of an action scene, or a reminder that she’s beautiful every few pages. Hopefully the protagonists will level up into actual characters in the sequel.

Also, not a fan of the way the author handled the firearm sections. I happen to own a Daniel defense ddm4 v7. It’s a fine weapon. But I don’t really need to know the brand of firearm a character is using or to be reminded of it constantly. I suspect most readers don’t know or care what a Tavor is, either. Details like numbers on the ammo boxes beyond the caliber could easily have been left out. On the other hand, I do like that the red dots weren’t magically sighted in and the protagonists weren’t instantly spec ops level gun maestros for no reason.

All in all it’s a fun story and potentially an interesting series. I just hope the sequel gives the protagonists some room to grow, and I pray that it doesn’t dip too much into tired vampire or zombie tropes.

Van Helsing and Walking Dead had a bastard lovechild and this book is the kickass little tike’s story. When the world goes to zompire shizit, Sam has to get his girl and protect her and her roomates. Time to hunker down and B positive that this will be a healthy dose of apocalypse terror and a bit of fun.

This book started with the main character waking up to find the world has become even more chaotic than ever before. With most of the population of New York City, including the protagonist, having become bloodthirsty vampires, the main character amazes us with the fact that he, while still needing blood, is also able to control his bloodlust for the most part. Sure, he feels the thirst to drink blood, and the moments when he feels the need for blood make us feel for him, he impresses us by the fact he doesn’t kill any humans. The end where he finally drinks directly from his girlfriend, but only takes enough blood to heal himself from his last battle, was one of my favorite moments in this book. I also love how we see what kind of abilities the vampires have, and what we discover about the main characters powers. This book is a winner to me. I hate that it is not getting the recognition it deserves, but hopefully we’ll get more in book two. Thank you, Logan Jacobs.

I’m a big fan of Logan Jacobs series and this one is no exception. My first thought was this would be more The Strain, but really it’s more like Blade. It seems only some of the vampires retained control of their mental state with others turning feral. It was good to see that the MC wasn’t some gun expert and relied on his girlfriend for actual training. All too often the MC in the books are experts at everything. Sam spends his time at the gun store looking for what looks good versus knowing every model of every gun.

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