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"More Than a Vampire"
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“Well, aren’t you Mr. Popular.”
Simon was a powerful warrior before he became a vampire. After becoming a vampire he meets another from a rival cabal who becomes his greatest weakness, because they fall madly in love with each other. As a new world order takes shape and a transfer of power takes place between respective cabals, Simon must become “More Than a Vampire” to gain the strength necessary to overcome the supernatural obstacles that stand between him and his beloved, but without either of them losing their heads in the process.
Simon was a powerful warrior before he became a vampire. After becoming a vampire he meets another from a rival cabal who becomes his greatest weakness, because they fall madly in love with each other. As a new world order takes shape and a transfer of power takes place between respective cabals, Simon must become “More Than a Vampire” to gain the strength necessary to overcome the supernatural obstacles that stand between him and his beloved, but without either of them losing their heads in the process.
Readability
“More Than a Vampire” is a character focused story told from the protagonist’s point of view. At first glance, the plot comes across as a meandering series of seemingly disconnected events that take place over a fifty year period of time. The only through-line of this entire novel is Simon’s relationship with Lina, and their perpetual desire to reunite whenever duty pulls them apart. Other than that, there really is no conflict and the stakes seem pretty superficial in the grand scheme of things. The story relies too heavily upon the emotional investment of Simon and Lina’s relationship to justify carrying the narrative as long as it does. It’s not even a “will they/won’t they” situation, because they bang within the first twenty percent of the story. This book reads more like a memoir. The narrative presents itself as though Simon is reminiscing about a specific period of time in his life, as he recounts the events that transpire in this seventeenth century wannabe romantasy.
The prose also could have used another round of line edits, because I found some minor errors here and there that made cause for pause while reading. There were some misused words that got mixed up, like “tail/tale” and “shutter/shudder”, and some misspelled names that made for moments of confusion: “Maushop/Moshup” & “Maat/Matt”. There were also several instances where the author shifted from past to present tense in the middle of a sentence. These errors don’t break the story overall, but they do affect the reading experience by disturbing the narrative flow. I had to stop and ask myself questions to figure out what I thought the author meant to say as opposed to what was actually published on the page, and that’s never fun.
Creativity
Power level seems to be a big deal for the characters in this book, especially within the vampire hierarchy, and tends to be linked to a vampire’s age (with the “millennials” a.k.a. 1000+ year olds being some of the most powerful). The whole premise behind the idea of Dracula creating these four cabals really didn’t make much sense to me. Why go through the trouble of eradicating the planet of virtually every vampire and sucking up their strength, and practically becoming a demigod, only to decide later on that it’s better to repopulate the earth with more vampires?
In a world where there already exists other mythological gods, like Egyptian gods, Norse Gods, and other supernatural entities like Lycanthropes, Skinwalkers, Fairies, and Giants/Trolls, why would Dracula want to create unnecessary drama for himself?
The fact that the cabals are at odds with each other, at least on the down low, only proves that the vampires cannot get along or be kept under control. I think the idea was just a silly kind of YA cliché sort of thing, like incorporating pseudo Harry Potter houses – where each “cabal” represents a set of character traits. The superficial “cabals” (more like cliques) are really just used to create a sense of contrived tension for the titular star-crossed lovers (Simon & Lina), like a vampire style Romeo and Juliet story, which only works in this case because Simon’s character reached his peak in high school. The only reason why there is a story is because Simon is willing to risk it all for some strange – even though he could probably just as easily find a broad within his own cabal to lust over and then everything would be just kosher.
It’s not like there’s anything inherently special about Simon and Lina’s relationship, which would constitute why they would feel the need to risk their lives just to be together. It’s a relationship based on love at first sight, and as a couple, they’re pretty basic to the point that they’re insufferable. Lina never gave Simon any reason to be so head over heels for her; she simply existed as an attractive female and responded to his flirting with low effort favorability. At no point during this entire story was I under the impression that Lina was into Simon as much as he was into her.
In the beginning of the novel, a lot of the supernatural elements are explained in detail under the assumption of keeping the story somewhat grounded, but as the story unfolds the author relies more and more on the use of “magic” to further the plot. However, I think some stuff was explained to a fault, like when the vampires feed they have two sets of holes in their fangs – one for releasing a virus that will turn a human into a vampire and the other is for injecting venom which quickly/temporarily immobilizes a victim so that the vampire can feed. I think this critical detail provided in chapter five gets overlooked and swept under the rug for the rest of the book, when it could have come in handy several times later on in the story, but I digress.
After a while the battle scenes start to blend together, and the shock value of the violence loses its luster early in the narrative. I’d say as early as the scene where Simon is sharing his backstory with Lina. I felt like I was stuck in a one way conversation with a jock who was giving me the play by play recap from the big game. The battle scenes are very descriptive and clinical in delivery. There’s very little razzle dazzle or colorful commentary to chop up the action, or even some metaphorical wordplay to spice it up for that matter – it’s mostly just Simon giving the straight rundown of how everything played out while occasionally popping off at the mouth (trash talking or tooting his own horn). For example:
“His attack was lazy and had no chance of success. I ran forward, and with a horizontal strike, I cut halfway through his waist and his wrist that was hanging to his side. I spun and finished him with a strike to the back of his neck. His head tumbled to the floor.”
Now imagine those deadpan prose going on for several paragraphs (even a page or so) for every battle scene in this novel, in which there are quite a few, and then take a drink every time someone gets decapitated.
Delivery
The way the novel is structured started to become quite formulaic for me at about the halfway point. The story is written like serialized fiction, with Simon’s character starring in a variety of standalone episodes where he is either helping or meddling in the affairs of other characters. The issue with this concept is that for one, Simon is usually going solo on these missions, and therefore that kills any tension within the scene, because I already know he’s going to survive every frigging battle he gets into. There’s also this constant play on “the odds” in terms of how many enemies Simon is up against, but again it’s a moot point, because this whole novel is essentially presented as a flashback. Therefore, the stakes of the battle scenes should have never been hinged upon whether or not Simon’s life was in danger, because I already know he survives, so the majority of the battle scenes in this story can be written off as a superfluous means of world building (as far as I’m concerned) – basically just a lot of fluff to pad out the page count.
What I think this story needed was a twist ending. The narrative plays it too straight, and the lack of an overarching plot means the episodic nature of the narrative just drags for too long. However, the ending was not only rushed, in terms of pace (compared to the rest of the novel), but the conclusion felt inevitable – like it was both predictable and just a matter of time, which was given away at the beginning of the story by specifically stating that there’s a fifty year timeline to Simon’s narrative. A twist ending would have given this story more merit, because it would have provided a revelation that could have served as a reason to make Simon question all the events that led him up to that point in the story. It could have also been cause for the reader to question how certain events went down, and if there were some details to clue them in that Simon was being played.
That idea crossed my mind during the scene where Simon bumps into Lina while she is breaking into one of the businesses controlled by the Ecne cabal (Simon’s clique). If the conclusion had been about betrayal, and Lina was really just one of Maat’s spies thirsty for power the whole time, then not only would the ending of this novel made more sense, but Lina’s character could have also added a layer of mystery to the seemingly random events that take place throughout the book. Her character could have been the linchpin that held them all together. That would have been better than creating a bunch of random inconsequential adventures for Simon to go on, but ultimately they had nothing to do with his relationship to Lina’s character, which is what I thought the whole point of this story was supposed to be focused on.
So instead of Simon discovering Lina in rags about to be executed (after being arbitrarily kept alive for weeks by Maat for no apparent reason except to make sure Simon had time to level up before embarking on his rescue mission – even though it was already established earlier in the narrative that subordination is met with swift punishment), Simon could have walked in on a really awkward situation and/or trap, which could have ended with his death. From “star-crossed lovers” to “love is war” (“Sorry hon, it was just business,” Lina said in another dimension).
Lina was Simon’s primary source of motivation throughout the whole book. Let’s be real, Simon is a simp. So I really see no reason why she had to be the one to die while Simon survives. There’s really nowhere for his storyline to go after she is gone. He’s a vampire who went against his initial principles and turned rogue for the love of his life, but Simon has also stated that he has no desire to acquire power and status. So without Lina, and without his cabal, Simon’s character is now stuck in limbo without any sense of purpose or personal motivation (since Maat is also dead, so there’s no need for a revenge-plot that could have been in a sequel). Since the story is from Simon’s point of view, then the revelation for the reader could have been that it was all an idealistic flashback before the realization of betrayal occurred.
If Simon had died in the end, thanks to Lina’s betrayal, then that would have opened up the possibility for side characters like Rattenfänger to keep “the lovers” storyline relevant and give it some meaning in the grand scheme of things. After helping Simon infiltrate Maat’s embassy, I would imagine Rattenfänger would want to know what happened to his friend, which could have led him on a quest to seek redemption/revenge for Simon by revealing the intentions of Lina and Maat to the Ecne cabal – not only to prove that Simon didn’t actually conspire against his own people, but also to serve as the catalyst to justify a grand-scale war between Ecne and Maat, because allegedly:
“The Maat and Ecne cabals haven’t got along for as long as anyone can remember.”
…and maybe Ecne was just waiting for a justified reason to pull the trigger without looking like he was betraying Dracula. In other words, he could go to Dracula and maybe get the green light to take out Maat and then maybe someone new could have taken over her cabal. Needless to say, I saw a lot of creative potential in this work.
“More Than a Vampire” is a character focused story told from the protagonist’s point of view. At first glance, the plot comes across as a meandering series of seemingly disconnected events that take place over a fifty year period of time. The only through-line of this entire novel is Simon’s relationship with Lina, and their perpetual desire to reunite whenever duty pulls them apart. Other than that, there really is no conflict and the stakes seem pretty superficial in the grand scheme of things. The story relies too heavily upon the emotional investment of Simon and Lina’s relationship to justify carrying the narrative as long as it does. It’s not even a “will they/won’t they” situation, because they bang within the first twenty percent of the story. This book reads more like a memoir. The narrative presents itself as though Simon is reminiscing about a specific period of time in his life, as he recounts the events that transpire in this seventeenth century wannabe romantasy.
The prose also could have used another round of line edits, because I found some minor errors here and there that made cause for pause while reading. There were some misused words that got mixed up, like “tail/tale” and “shutter/shudder”, and some misspelled names that made for moments of confusion: “Maushop/Moshup” & “Maat/Matt”. There were also several instances where the author shifted from past to present tense in the middle of a sentence. These errors don’t break the story overall, but they do affect the reading experience by disturbing the narrative flow. I had to stop and ask myself questions to figure out what I thought the author meant to say as opposed to what was actually published on the page, and that’s never fun.
Creativity
Power level seems to be a big deal for the characters in this book, especially within the vampire hierarchy, and tends to be linked to a vampire’s age (with the “millennials” a.k.a. 1000+ year olds being some of the most powerful). The whole premise behind the idea of Dracula creating these four cabals really didn’t make much sense to me. Why go through the trouble of eradicating the planet of virtually every vampire and sucking up their strength, and practically becoming a demigod, only to decide later on that it’s better to repopulate the earth with more vampires?
In a world where there already exists other mythological gods, like Egyptian gods, Norse Gods, and other supernatural entities like Lycanthropes, Skinwalkers, Fairies, and Giants/Trolls, why would Dracula want to create unnecessary drama for himself?
The fact that the cabals are at odds with each other, at least on the down low, only proves that the vampires cannot get along or be kept under control. I think the idea was just a silly kind of YA cliché sort of thing, like incorporating pseudo Harry Potter houses – where each “cabal” represents a set of character traits. The superficial “cabals” (more like cliques) are really just used to create a sense of contrived tension for the titular star-crossed lovers (Simon & Lina), like a vampire style Romeo and Juliet story, which only works in this case because Simon’s character reached his peak in high school. The only reason why there is a story is because Simon is willing to risk it all for some strange – even though he could probably just as easily find a broad within his own cabal to lust over and then everything would be just kosher.
It’s not like there’s anything inherently special about Simon and Lina’s relationship, which would constitute why they would feel the need to risk their lives just to be together. It’s a relationship based on love at first sight, and as a couple, they’re pretty basic to the point that they’re insufferable. Lina never gave Simon any reason to be so head over heels for her; she simply existed as an attractive female and responded to his flirting with low effort favorability. At no point during this entire story was I under the impression that Lina was into Simon as much as he was into her.
In the beginning of the novel, a lot of the supernatural elements are explained in detail under the assumption of keeping the story somewhat grounded, but as the story unfolds the author relies more and more on the use of “magic” to further the plot. However, I think some stuff was explained to a fault, like when the vampires feed they have two sets of holes in their fangs – one for releasing a virus that will turn a human into a vampire and the other is for injecting venom which quickly/temporarily immobilizes a victim so that the vampire can feed. I think this critical detail provided in chapter five gets overlooked and swept under the rug for the rest of the book, when it could have come in handy several times later on in the story, but I digress.
After a while the battle scenes start to blend together, and the shock value of the violence loses its luster early in the narrative. I’d say as early as the scene where Simon is sharing his backstory with Lina. I felt like I was stuck in a one way conversation with a jock who was giving me the play by play recap from the big game. The battle scenes are very descriptive and clinical in delivery. There’s very little razzle dazzle or colorful commentary to chop up the action, or even some metaphorical wordplay to spice it up for that matter – it’s mostly just Simon giving the straight rundown of how everything played out while occasionally popping off at the mouth (trash talking or tooting his own horn). For example:
“His attack was lazy and had no chance of success. I ran forward, and with a horizontal strike, I cut halfway through his waist and his wrist that was hanging to his side. I spun and finished him with a strike to the back of his neck. His head tumbled to the floor.”
Now imagine those deadpan prose going on for several paragraphs (even a page or so) for every battle scene in this novel, in which there are quite a few, and then take a drink every time someone gets decapitated.
Delivery
The way the novel is structured started to become quite formulaic for me at about the halfway point. The story is written like serialized fiction, with Simon’s character starring in a variety of standalone episodes where he is either helping or meddling in the affairs of other characters. The issue with this concept is that for one, Simon is usually going solo on these missions, and therefore that kills any tension within the scene, because I already know he’s going to survive every frigging battle he gets into. There’s also this constant play on “the odds” in terms of how many enemies Simon is up against, but again it’s a moot point, because this whole novel is essentially presented as a flashback. Therefore, the stakes of the battle scenes should have never been hinged upon whether or not Simon’s life was in danger, because I already know he survives, so the majority of the battle scenes in this story can be written off as a superfluous means of world building (as far as I’m concerned) – basically just a lot of fluff to pad out the page count.
What I think this story needed was a twist ending. The narrative plays it too straight, and the lack of an overarching plot means the episodic nature of the narrative just drags for too long. However, the ending was not only rushed, in terms of pace (compared to the rest of the novel), but the conclusion felt inevitable – like it was both predictable and just a matter of time, which was given away at the beginning of the story by specifically stating that there’s a fifty year timeline to Simon’s narrative. A twist ending would have given this story more merit, because it would have provided a revelation that could have served as a reason to make Simon question all the events that led him up to that point in the story. It could have also been cause for the reader to question how certain events went down, and if there were some details to clue them in that Simon was being played.
That idea crossed my mind during the scene where Simon bumps into Lina while she is breaking into one of the businesses controlled by the Ecne cabal (Simon’s clique). If the conclusion had been about betrayal, and Lina was really just one of Maat’s spies thirsty for power the whole time, then not only would the ending of this novel made more sense, but Lina’s character could have also added a layer of mystery to the seemingly random events that take place throughout the book. Her character could have been the linchpin that held them all together. That would have been better than creating a bunch of random inconsequential adventures for Simon to go on, but ultimately they had nothing to do with his relationship to Lina’s character, which is what I thought the whole point of this story was supposed to be focused on.
So instead of Simon discovering Lina in rags about to be executed (after being arbitrarily kept alive for weeks by Maat for no apparent reason except to make sure Simon had time to level up before embarking on his rescue mission – even though it was already established earlier in the narrative that subordination is met with swift punishment), Simon could have walked in on a really awkward situation and/or trap, which could have ended with his death. From “star-crossed lovers” to “love is war” (“Sorry hon, it was just business,” Lina said in another dimension).
Lina was Simon’s primary source of motivation throughout the whole book. Let’s be real, Simon is a simp. So I really see no reason why she had to be the one to die while Simon survives. There’s really nowhere for his storyline to go after she is gone. He’s a vampire who went against his initial principles and turned rogue for the love of his life, but Simon has also stated that he has no desire to acquire power and status. So without Lina, and without his cabal, Simon’s character is now stuck in limbo without any sense of purpose or personal motivation (since Maat is also dead, so there’s no need for a revenge-plot that could have been in a sequel). Since the story is from Simon’s point of view, then the revelation for the reader could have been that it was all an idealistic flashback before the realization of betrayal occurred.
If Simon had died in the end, thanks to Lina’s betrayal, then that would have opened up the possibility for side characters like Rattenfänger to keep “the lovers” storyline relevant and give it some meaning in the grand scheme of things. After helping Simon infiltrate Maat’s embassy, I would imagine Rattenfänger would want to know what happened to his friend, which could have led him on a quest to seek redemption/revenge for Simon by revealing the intentions of Lina and Maat to the Ecne cabal – not only to prove that Simon didn’t actually conspire against his own people, but also to serve as the catalyst to justify a grand-scale war between Ecne and Maat, because allegedly:
“The Maat and Ecne cabals haven’t got along for as long as anyone can remember.”
…and maybe Ecne was just waiting for a justified reason to pull the trigger without looking like he was betraying Dracula. In other words, he could go to Dracula and maybe get the green light to take out Maat and then maybe someone new could have taken over her cabal. Needless to say, I saw a lot of creative potential in this work.
#LFLR Indie Rating: 5/10
“More than a Vampire” is the first book from “The Unbreakable Trilogy”. The next book (“More Than a Gunslinger”) is considered “A More Than Human Novel” in the sense that it takes place within the same supernatural universe, but that book isn’t a part of “The Unbreakable Trilogy” because it focuses on a new protagonist named Izzy. The second book of “The Unbreakable Trilogy” is actually J.R. Carrel’s third published book, entitled “More Than a God War”. Carrel has also published a short story collection based on some characters from the “More Than Human” universe, called “More Than Legends”, but the book’s cover still advertises the work as “A More Than Human Novel” even though it is indeed a collection of short stories and not actually a novel.
“More than a Vampire” is the first book from “The Unbreakable Trilogy”. The next book (“More Than a Gunslinger”) is considered “A More Than Human Novel” in the sense that it takes place within the same supernatural universe, but that book isn’t a part of “The Unbreakable Trilogy” because it focuses on a new protagonist named Izzy. The second book of “The Unbreakable Trilogy” is actually J.R. Carrel’s third published book, entitled “More Than a God War”. Carrel has also published a short story collection based on some characters from the “More Than Human” universe, called “More Than Legends”, but the book’s cover still advertises the work as “A More Than Human Novel” even though it is indeed a collection of short stories and not actually a novel.
THIS BREAKDOWN IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE #LFLR NETWORK.
