Blood Like Mine by Stuart Neville

 

Apparently I have read too many mediocre-at-best vampire novels lately, because this was like 350 pages of grinding on my nerves with its predictability. Someone in the blurbs mentions a twist in the middle of it that I think I saw coming at least 50 pages ahead--this is just predictable regurgitation of tropes, some vampire, some detective (there's a detective on his own downward spiral in the novel). None of the characters are particularly interesting as heroes or as villains (or as antiheros or as sympathetic villains, it's possible the novel considers itself above and/or beyond such considerations--fine, none of the characters are really interesting as characters). The prose is relatively solid, I guess, if kinda stolid and inert, which might be weirdness caused by the Irish author trying to write like an American; he mostly succeeds, the dialogue isn't horrible, the places feel as though he night have been to them a time or three. Even the twist in the epilogue is predictable. Not bad enough to force me to quit, not good enough that I don't resent that.