Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "trackback" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+trackback" bit from the end of the URL.
Operation: Immortal Servitude
As previously mentioned, at MileHiCon last week I attended a talk about vampires by Tony Ruggiero.
I have now finished his vampire book Operation: Immortal Servitude, the first of a planned series of 4 books. I will definitely be on the lookout for the other volumes in the series.
The characters are nicely three dimensional, except for a few who are given in-story reasons for being flat (a nice trick for handling spear-carriers -- I'll need to remember that one). I want to read more about both the vampires and the main human character. And the ending provides a nice hook for the next volume in the series.
The story moves well and the military details have a nice authentic rhythm. Mr. Ruggiero was in the Navy for 23 years and obviously paid attention to the people around him. The world builds on traditional vampire stories and adds some interesting twists of its own.
My only minor complaint is that the text could have used a little more human copy-editing. There were a few sentences that weren't, and a couple of instances of the wrong real word, especially a few instances of 'then' that should have been 'than'. But even books from major publishers show occasional copy-editing glitches, and this is from a fairly small press.
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