Number of Reviews: 4
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Not Too Campy, Just a Bit Crazy, March 6, 2014When I see "ridiculous" attached to a blurb, I usually translate it as "half-baked" or "I hope you think dumb equals funny". In this case, that'd be unfair.
This is a fun excursion into vampire flicks by way of a grown-up CYOA. It has a rampaging steamroller of a plot (and two separate but intersecting paths through the story) that makes reasonable sense if you don't stare at it too long and keeps things moving at a good clip. Which is good, because I didn't really care much about the characters, even the imperiled ones (which was everyone), mainly because the author did a bit too much telling instead of showing a lot of the stuff that was deemed unnecessary to moving the plot forward.
The tone is uneven, especially along the less violent path; it stays mostly around Buffy the Vampire Slayer but occasionally wanders over to early Laurell K. Hamilton. I think it'd be best described as "breezy". There are a few points where the author leaves a necessary sentence out and it takes a few paragraphs to figure out what's going on, but if you just watch the fun butt-kicking you shouldn't mind too much.
Don't get me wrong, there's a fun game under here. The structure is surprisingly elegant; if you choose the more exciting initial option, you get the more intense path, for example. The human characters are neatly aligned with the classic fighter, mage, and rogue (with the heroine as the rogue) and many of the choices presented give you a solid sense of this, and present a plausible conflict in the heroine's personality as well.
Ultimately, this would have been more fun if it were either a bit more ruthless or a bit more campy, and if the author had hit a few more of the expected genre points. But not at all a bad way to spend an hour, and definitely worth playing through both major paths (one is harder hitting than the other but they're both fun).