But when it comes to this novel, the story suffers for it. I wasn’t too surprised that Rhiannon Frater’s Vengeance of the Vampire Bride was really slow compared to its predecessor, The Tale of the Vampire Bride, but I was hoping that some of the momentum would carry over; that just didn’t happen unfortunately.
Glynis is adjusting to her new undead life as Countess Dracula, plotting and planning revenge against those who literally led her family to slaughter, all the while trying to find her way back to her true love. But the presence of her vampire maker and husband Dracula isn’t making things so simple. Though she’s got superhuman powers of the undead, it’s going to take more brain than brawn to exact her revenge exactly how she sees fit.
While it had its moments, the book was an overall let down for me. It started out fairly promising, but then it hit a brick wall of boring and it took a while to climb over it. To be quite honest, I didn’t crack open these books to read about how she plans to kill these people as opposed to actually doing the deed. Instead we’re forced to suffer through countless dinner parties she attends involving uninteresting human side characters that receive significant screen time. There’s not enough development of Glynis’s actual powers steadily throughout the book. There’s more whining about how she wishes Dracula could have taught her something as opposed to her actually doing something.
It’s just impossible to go from an imposing, horrifying, complex, and enigmatic character such as Dracula to the mere humans he’s manipulated and threatened, while still producing a book that’s remotely as compelling, pulse-pounding, and unpredictable—everything that encompasses the first novel.
In the end it was all bark, and not a lot of bite. In a vampire story, bite is practically mandatory. By the end of the novel I felt as if the next installment should be an improvement. I do hope the series continues because it has potential to become a favorite of mine. I just hope it’s not too little too late.