No Dominion

I'm a vampire book kind of guy. Book. For whatever reason, Hollywood has yet to really capture any of the really interesting vampire books out there to my satisfaction. Mostly you get a lot of caricatures or hissing or stereotypes, but the interesting ones are few (Lost Boys) and far between (Underworld).The latest book to get the Hollywood nod is the young adult book, Twilight. It was very good, but also very pretty, if you catch my drift. It would take some balls to make No Dominion, though. The second book in the Joe Pitt vampire (or 'Vampyre' as it is in the book) took off from where the excellent Already Dead started and upped the ante.

Written first-person, Huston's Pitt is a rogue vampire enforcer, who is about as cool as he is tough. He's got an HIV-positive girlfriend (whom he doesn't sleep with because he's not sure if he will infect HER with the "Vyrus" -- the blood-born virus that is this series' non-magical and gritty reality basis for vamps) and trouble from all the different clans of vampires in Manhattan. No Dominion is written with great style and urgency, and I found myself not only smiling and laughing out loud (Pitt is a wise-guy, but he's not so much funny as consistently outrageous in that he'll say whatever he wants to say, despite the situation), but riveted to the action and mystery. No Dominion is flat-out fun, scary, horrifying, and I ordered the third installment way before I was done. Thumbs up.