Tanya Goodwin, $0.99, ISBN 978-1628476460
Fantasy, 2013
Fang Hospital is the first entry Tanya Goodwin’s Dr. Gabriella Van Court series, and predictably enough, it’s a vampire doctor urban fantasy thing.
Dr Gabriella Van Court is 850 years old, but our ER doctor is still hot as ever because she’s a vampire.
She has escaped her mean master to now live inconspicuously in a large Dutch colonial house. Well, I’m sure it’s a camouflaged big house or something when she’s not working at the Harry S Fang Memorial Hospital. Oh, and she has the hots for the human doctor Dr Max Cade.
I wish I can say that there are vampire dramatics or even ER dramatics, but sadly, it seems like the author is allergic to the thought of making her readers feel even a little bit of excitement.
Hence, the bulk of the story sees our heroine preening and purring about how awesome she is, how amazing her life is, and how chi-chi everything is because even when she’s hungry, she just has to beckon to someone and her food comes to her willingly.
The romance isn’t very eventful either. He’s hot, she’s hot, they’re attracted to one another, so there’s nothing remotely resembling a conflict there either.
In other words, this story is all about Gabriella going here, doing this, saying that, and generally floating through each page like I have nothing better to do than to read about her having a good time.
Even when her old master shows up, things barely get more exciting.
Volk growled. “Damn you!”
The plan hadn’t gone as planned exactly, but the effect was the same. It bought her time before the next step. She grabbed the dagger and freed K.L., her uncle, and Marcus’s bonds.
Gabriella looked at Max, crestfallen. The dagger wouldn’t work to liberate him from his iron shackles.
Whoa, I almost had a heart attack from all that suspense!
From a technical standpoint, this one is readable enough to work well perhaps as a sleeping aid, or a cozy read for someone wanting to dip their toes into urban fantasy but doesn’t want to read things that are too scary or too sexy so soon.
However, the author’s inability to create suspense or drama makes her makes it hard to take this one seriously as a credible urban fantasy entry.
Therefore, newbies are more than welcome to this, but more dedicated romantic urban fantasy fans may want to look elsewhere.
