ice_of_dreams | [books] Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

I managed to get hold of a copy of Halfway to the Grave without Amazon.com. Lucky me. Shipping would have taken forever and my parents are yet to leave for Indy. Besides Zelda: Twilight Princess has been eating my reading time (I've spent 30 hours on it... if you believe the save screen) The cover girl kind of reminds me of Kirsten Dunst... but enough of that.

Another urban fantasy. Lucky me. And all the better to gobble it up with. Catherine Crawford (Cat) is a half-vampire out for blood (okay, bad bad bad joke). She's hunting vampires in the secret hope she'd manage to stumble on to her vampire father who raped her mother and produced the extremely rare half-vampire her. (Halflings really are a great theme in a lot of things aren't they?). One night she ends up trying to stake more than she can handle, and she's given a deal, join forces with the vampire named Bones to kill bad vampires, or die.

First book in the series called the Night Huntress. And I am glad I picked it up. And that

shartyrant pointed me in the right direction. Cat is a character full of self-hate and prejudice. She lives at home where her mother constantly tell her that she is half a monster. And other than the fact that she'd rather stake first before asking questions, she's a great character, even with her flaws. I've read enough urban fantasy to know that most female characters in them have some anguish about who they are, about how they're chosen to be this and about how their lives are current wrecks. A good thing about Cat is, she may be a bigot in the beginning and she may have large doses of vampire hating (thus self-loathing) thrown into the mix of her character, but she shows a willingness to grow beyond that. She gets hurt, but she's not snippy, she's not whiny and she can hold her own. All in all she's one of the better characters that urban fantasy has produced. I give her bonus points for saying that the words "you're not dumb" is actually truth with her. She really isn't dumb. And her actions prove it.

Bones, as a vampire kind of reminds me of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have to agree. He's also a pretty well made character. Unlike most of the other characters, Bones does not have the silver spoon stuck in his mouth in the past. He wasn't an upstanding citizen before he was turned, and he wasn't nobility. (I find that most vampires born out of the 18th century tend to be noblemen and rich sods, not so with Bones) And the characterization works.

Some people didn't like the book after his appearance, probably of all that romantic tinge to it. (more than a tinge...) but I am after all a romance lover, and therefore don't really mind. If they want to skip all that read a male written urban fantasy, I always say, Romance there is underdone.

As for the mystery, they weren't really out to solve it. It's a bounty hunting story. Meaning there was a search for murderers but they were all pretty laid out already. All they had to do was follow the trail. There were little clues, and a whole lot of information gathering, but not really anything to sink your mystery teeth in. You know initially who's behind the murders, you're just out to get them. Pretty straightforwawrd. It's more a book about how Cat trained, how Cat is dealing with all of her self issues and her relationship. 'Nuff said.

I'm definitely waiting on the stands for the next book, One Foot in the Grave, out April 29 (oh God, oh God, my internship) and her part in the Anthology Weddings from Hell on May 27.