I get a bit annoyed by the main character--she just can't give in on anything. I just don't see how she could keep any relationship without a willingness to compromise. Also, so far we haven't seen anything in her past that would cause her severe dysfunctional reaction to any type of relationship. The story went somewhat off the rails at one point as well. So...a break before the second book in the compilation. However--a mummy wandering around Toronto is an interesting premise! ( )

Blood Lines:

Huff's hitting all the traditional ghoulies - this one's a mummy. It's a creepy little plot, with some truly horrific stuff that has nothing at all to do with supernatural, and Vicki's relationship with Henry deepens in an interesting way. (I still remain unwarmed by her relationship with Celluci, though - Huff never really convinces me that they're not actively bad for one another.) Better than the earlier ones, I think.

Blood Pact:

God, how creepy. Frankenstein is the monster of the day and while it's a pretty straight-up retelling, there's enough going on that it is quite a pageturner. The ending, not to give everything away, turns the whole series neatly on its head. This is by far the strongest book in the series so far, even if it's not always emotionally easy to read. ( )

Blood Lines
A mummy, seriously? Vicki Nelson has seen vampires, demons and werewolves oh my, but a mummy? The previous two books Blood Price and Blood Trail were well constructed when it came to the more supernatural parts of the plot, and I don't even mind mummy stories (I love the first two installments of the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies and the third one wasn't bad either). So I'm not sure why I felt a bit of apprehension when I realized Blood Book #3 was going to be about a mummy.

I shouldn't have worried though. Just as she managed to weave demons, werepeople and vampires into modern life she managed to do it with a thousand year old mummy (though, I'm sure that the mummy didn't think of himself as a mummy).

The plot is nothing flashy, there's a mystery. Vicki, Henry and Mike try to solve it. Just like her other books what matters is the relationships that Huff writes. In Blood Lines there's lots of Mike/Vicki and Henry/Vicki talk and action also.

I still haven't gotten used to the character of Tony, Vicki's friend, but he is growing on me, mostly because Huff knows when to use him and when using him would be gratuitous and unnecessary.

Supernatural mystery lovers will like this Huff offering and I would also recommend it to those mystery readers who like more 'normal' (i.e. cozy, gory, procedurals) mysteries. A great and solid read.

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Blood Pact
This book was horribly hard to read. Not in a technical way, but an emotional way. Death in the mysteries I read is common, but what's not common is for the death to be so personal, not just someone Vicki knows or even someone in her family, but her mother. Add to that the supernatural goings on and this was Huff's most intense Blood Series book yet.

This book was also interesting because its main plot wasn't rooted in the supernatural, other than Henry of course. These books are also fun to read because here and there I'll run into a plot fragment, a scene, or an interaction between the characters that was replicated in some way on the Lifetime TV Show based on the books ("Blood Ties"). Although this book had many fewer similarities with the show than the previous three.

All in all this was a great book that anyone and everyone should read despite its intensity. It was real and the emotions contained in it seemed to practically explode off the page. This was a keeper. ( )

Blood Books Volume 2 was an anthology of two Tanya Huff novels; Blood Lines and Blood Pact. The volume could have been subtitled “Night of the Living Dead” since they both had similar themes.

In Blood Lines, we have an ancient Egyptian wizard that was magically bound as a mummy. He’s accidentally released and starts taking over Toronto by enchanting all of the high ranking officials. The regular cast of characters- Vicki Nelson, a female detective that left the force because of failing eyesight, her ex-partner and current lover Mike Celluci and Henry Fitzroy, a romance writing vampire- work together to save the city. The tale was entertaining, but there wasn’t much character development.

Huff, however, really moves her characters along in Blood Pact. During the course of a medical study run by insane college students where bacteria is being used to reanimate dead tissue, a main character that recently passed away is turned into a zombie. To save the life of another character, Henry needs to “make them” into a vampire. This will obviously impact the story lines in the series from this book forward. Of the first four, this novel was the most entertaining and fundamentally “creepy.” It will be interesting to see where Huff takes her characters next. ( )

In the second installment of these 2-book omnibuses Toronto-based PI Vicki Nelson, and her sidekicks Henry Fitzroy, a 450-year-old vampire who's also the bastard son of king Henry VIII, and Toronto detective Mike Celluci take on a mummy released from an ancient curse, and a pack of zombies, at times led by Vicki's recently deceased mother

I really enjoyed reading this entire series, but I have to say that as I read it, I found the character of Vicki less and less appealing. She seemed to be somewhat amoral - she didn't appear to be very conflicted over sleeping with both male characters throughout the books and that made her a much less sympathetic character to me. Also, her personality was abrasive and hostile to both Henry and Mike at times, and I just couldn't see one man being so ga-ga over her, let alone two.

Henry, the vamp, was a somewhat jaded, very experienced lover who seemed to have more gay tendencies than heterosexual, so why he was interested in this annoyingly one-note woman, who at times bordered on incivility to him was beyond me.

But I still say, read these books. They are fun. ( )