Adventures in Death and Romance: Vrykolakas Tales Paranormal Romantic History/Vampire
Solstice Shadows
March 21, 2016
317
Review by: Charlayne Elizabeth Denney
Paranormal Romance Guild
It’s 1503 in Greece. Mikos has become undead and is fighting the dead who he has killed who now reside in him. All he really wants to do is find acceptance and love, the soul of the woman he was killed with. The demons in his head push him to kill and every time he does, he risks absorbing yet another demon. Or is he just doing it himself? He has fought through time to try to become loveable, taking on the Turkish Army, fighting with pirates, outwitting the Tories in Revolutionary America, and having an almost game of hide and seek with a lawman in the Old West. Mikos takes the name Arabus Drake as time goes by, and by the Great Depression, he’s a tired Hollywood actor with what turns out to be a last chance to be loved and accepted for what he is, a member of the undead. But the ghost of someone else he’s killed is going to stand between him and the woman he loves, putting the old familiar feelings of wanting to kill but also wanting to overcome the nature of his own being.Adventures in Death and Romance was an interesting book. It’s several stories about Mikos/Arabus and how he deals with being a vampire, or Vrykolakas, and his looking for the woman he died with. It took me awhile to get into the story, the twists and some of the storylines, they felt “foreign” to me and I believe that was by design. I honestly wasn’t sure if I would finish the book because of this and it’s the reason that it lost the last half-star rating. Monette Bebow-Reinhard has a great grasp of history (she has a master’s degree in history and it shows) and that was what kept me from laying it aside. Once she got to the American Revolution, the history and, in all honesty, the narration loosened up abit and I got more into Arabus’s search.The little known vampire myth of the vampire absorbing the souls of the people he kills was very interesting, as is her use of various vampire myths in the different eras. She managed to keep the story from getting out of hand with a supreme apex predator who can basically handle everyone who comes against him. The fight for balance in the character and love slipping out of his grasp at the last moment made the book very sad but hopeful.I do recommend picking this one up for your vampire library, it’s got some very wonderful and little explored vampires in history to savor.