Liquid Silver Books, $6.10, ISBN 978-1-59578-574-9
Fantasy Romance, 2009 (Reissue)
Vivien Dean’s Chains of Jericho was previously released by Linden Bay Romance. Since the publisher website merely states that this one is a reissue, I’d assume that there is no revision made to this particular version.
It will be nice if the author had rewritten the heroine’s occasional bouts of stupidity though. How stupid is the heroine? Well, let me put it this way: when our human heroine Dr Maya Sheldon sees a wound on a vampire whom she had witnessed recently gone berserk, she’d rush in to try to treat that wound because she’s such a compassionate darling like that. Alas, she never did get the fate she richly deserves.
Dr Maya, our heroine, has been kidnapped by our vampire hero Declan Jericho because he believes that our supposedly brilliant pediatric oncologist is his last hope. You see, vampires on the street are dying from a mysterious disease, and he thinks Maya can save them. This is a pretty interesting set up, I have to admit, and it’s a nice change from the typical me-mate-you-mate vampire stories.
However, the heroine’s reactions to her situation is never believable to me, and this is a big problem because I can never appreciate the story when I’m too busy trying to figure out that woman. Maya is, as I’ve said, pretty dumb because she’s exactly the kind of twit that will react without thinking of her own safety. Survival instincts are absent from her. First it is a brief moment when she will deny the existence of vampires even after seeing the fangs and getting the feel of them on her neck, and then it’s a bizarre kind of concrete trust she has in Dec, constantly rationalizing any potentially suspicious antics from him when she has no reason to do so. Maya isn’t just incapable of fear, she also behaves as if she’s aware of the plot armor Ms Dean has given her, acting as if she knows that she won’t end up as vampire chow even no matter how stupid she is. Mouthing off to vampires, trusting the biggest one of them all after he has kidnapped her to his hospice for the fanged ones, even feeling lust for him – all in a day’s work for Maya, really.
Chains of Jericho has an interesting set-up and it could be good, only, the execution is on the half-baked side and it ends up nowhere as great as it could have been.
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