I hesitate to be too mean about this book, because author OM Grey seems like a perfectly nice lady. At one point she was even following me on Twitter - I'm too lazy to check and see if she still is. When I saw her at WWWC she seemed nice, enthusiastic about steampunk and happy with her writing. I suppose other people may enjoy her work, too, I just found it to not be particularly good. It's not just that the concept doesn't appeal to me - and it doesn't - it's that it's also not the best writing from a technical sense. Neither the characters nor the story did anything to me, and even the numerous sex scenes failed to save it for me, maybe because they're told from the point of view of the rather caddish narrator.

Hey, did I mention that the narrator/protagonist is Arthur Tudor, who didn't really die but was actually turned into a vampire? His infatuation with the love interest Avalon starts out as mere sexual obsession because she looks like his late wife and she rebuffed him. It deepens into something more because the story says it should, despite the fact that Avalon is a vampire hunter. You'd think that sort of thing would put a damper on relationships, but somehow it never does.

Now let's just move on from the fact that I didn't like this book and I don't recommend it. Let's talk about something far more entertaining. What is up with vampire romance novels anyway? I'm surely not the first person to wonder about this, and I surely won't be the last, but it's not like you're paying money to read this so you can't complain if my thoughts aren't terribly original.

Forgive me for being crude, but how exactly do vampires get erections? I've been told that some authors address this directly. OM Grey does not. We're told repeatedly that Arthur's heart doesn't beat. I believe there's even mention made at one or two points about how he can't blush. Anything that involves blood rushing from one place to another doesn't happen. Unless, of course, the blood needs to rush into his penis, and then there is no problem. None whatsoever. This lack of internal consistency drives me crazy.

And honestly, what is the appeal of sex with a vampire? They're almost always described as being cold. Maybe it's just because I am incapable of producing my own body heat, but cold times and sexy times are mutually exclusive to me. The idea of an icy cold vampire hand caressing my delicate parts is actually painful, not arousing.

Don't even get me started on the necrophilia aspect, because that's definitely been gone over before. I'm assuming vampires must not smell dead, because that would be another major turn-off. Personally, I can't even stand the smell of a guy who hasn't showered, let alone one who died centuries ago and has been subsisting off of blood ever since. His breath alone must be pretty rank. Oh, and speaking of rank breath, I'd also have a hard time maintaining a relationship with a guy who couldn't share a delicious garlicky meal with me. That's a deal-breaker right there.

Now I get that everyone has their fetishes, so it doesn't surprise me that there are some people who get off on the idea of a vampire lover. What I don't understand is how and why it's become such a mainstream thing, spawning numerous books and movies and TV shows. How can this one fetish be so wide-spread that it can support such a large industry? Are there really so many women who find male vampires so sexy (since the target audience does largely seem to be female, and I am a woman, that's what I'm focusing on here), or are we just happy to have any sort of supernatural sexy times made easily accessible that we'll ignore the fact that it's a disgusting bloodsucker and focus on the quality of the erotic scenes (be they written or filmed)?

This wouldn't annoy me so much except that it does get frustrating to go to the bookstore in search of something new to read and find that almost everything is either steampunk (which as I mentioned before, is really hit or miss) or a vampire romance, or a steampunk vampire romance. I get that the publishers want to publish what sells the best, but they seem to do it to the exclusion of things that might also sell well and aren't the trend du jour. I read a lot. Even if I did in fact enjoy every steampunk novel, and I did also enjoy vampire romances, I would want to occasionally read something other than those two genres. But given the fact that I do not enjoy vampire romances, I'm left with almost nothing to choose from, browsing the various new steampunk authors and wondering which ones will be great and which ones will have been pushed through to make a quick buck before steampunk is over and replaced with the next sub genre.

So enjoy it while it lasts, lovers of bloodsuckers. Some day your trend will die, and you'll go to the bookstore and see nothing but shelves of faerie porn and monkpunk.