Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 1-59998-862-3
Fantasy Romance, 2008

Mary Winter’s For Love and Country is somewhat different from the other two stories in the Serving Love series in that this one features a French vampire and a Union soldier vampire on Valentine’s Day in 1862. Yes, it’s “Liberty! Freedom! Equality” meets “Emo! Angst! Lestat is my hero!” time.

Emil Franks, our soldier, was vampire Basile Gagnon’s lover until they parted ways about ten years ago due to one of them being human and the other being a fang face and OH, THE EMO. Well, Emil is now a fangface too. He catches up with Basile one night on Basile’s ship Commerce de Souverain when it makes its stop at the Baltimore Inner Harbor to persuade Basile to participate in the Union blockade of the Confederate states. The ship has big guns and all, which will be useful when it comes to sinking Confederate ships, but unfortunately, Basile is currently going OH, THE EMO about war and pain and OH, THE EMO so the only big gun he is interested in using on Emil isn’t going to further the cause of freedom anytime soon. OH, THE EMO. Basile also accuses Emil of using the war as an excuse to keep Basile by his side because, you see, it is so mean and nasty for the whole country to create such problems just to inconvenience Basile like that. Why can’t the poor dear catch a break? OH, THE EMO.

Of course, we all know that all it takes to get that self-absorbed twit Basile out of his nonsense is hot sex. But even so, Basile is not going to go down without a show of melodramatic whine and moan about how he just wants to shag Emil one last time because the world is bleak, he writes Goth poetry on LiveJournal while listening to Dashboard Confessional, and he will never love because love is blue and ugly and painful and OH, THE EMO. Never fear, then he’s all shagged up and then he decides that he’s in love after all.

For Love and Country – oh, for the love of God.