Dain Reston is human and a leader for B-Ops (Battlefield Operations) in charge of keeping the peace between all the conflicting species. Fleur Dumont is vampire and heir apparent to the Dumont family bred to lead the vampire people but after a youthful mistake when she turned a human to a rogue they no longer trust her. Her two half-brothers take over leadership. But when her half-brothers are killed the vampires have no choice but to make her their leader even though they still don't trust her. Dain and Fleur are forced to work together after a rash of vampire killings to try to discover who and what group is behind the murders.

Worldbuilding in paranormals can sometimes be confusing for me since I read so few of them. Crimson City had many different species and sub-species to keep straight: Vampires, humans, werewolves, rogues that are vampires that have been made from humans, and mechs that are humans with mechanical limbs. Vampire (fangs) control the sky, humans control the surface, and werewolves (dogs) control the underground. Most of the time I was able to follow all the rules but not always.

But aside from that this book seemed to have several problems, the greatest being the uneven pacing. Some scenes were gripping, dark and intense but others were ho-hum and still others were just confusing. It's always a bad sign to me when I have to flip back several pages repeatedly to figure out characters, dialogue, and worldbuilding details that I must have missed. I don't know anything about the publishing world but it seems to me that this book could have used a good editing job.

I did like Dain and to some extent, Fleur, even though I thought she was a bit weak. But I never really bought their love story. It seemed a little forced. The most intriguing characters were actually Cyd, Dain's partner, and Hayden, the rogue vampire that Fleur had 'made' in a rash moment. I am hoping that these characters appear again in the series. (Grade: C) ( )

Dark for the genre, other books in series are written by different authors.

I'm stepping out of my comfort zone a bit in picking up Crimson City, but I thought I might as well start somewhere in delving for the first time into the realm of urban fantasy/paranormal, and this book seemed as good as any. I don't know how original or formulaic Crimson City might be, but I really enjoyed the world building that Liz Maverick accomplishes in this first instalment of the series. The relations between humans, vampires, and werewolves were set up very well, grabbing my attention with questions of inter-species conflicts and tensions. As for the romance, I think it paled in comparison to the fantasy and mystery elements of the book, and was its weakest aspect. Also, after creating such an interesting world, I thought that the book failed to deliver on its promise and mostly fell flat by the end. ( )

I've heard many compare this series to Underworld, and having not read any of the rest of the series (yet) I can't speak for it as a whole. As a stand alone book, however, this one can't be compared. The werewolves are barely mentioned in this book.

While I very much like the idea of Crimson City, a futuristic LA where the three races (vampires, humans & werewolves) must live in a delicate symbiosis, I feel it left something to be desired. For a novel set in a futuristic society/world this book greatly lacked in the descriptive scene setting a look for in a book. What few descriptions I got mostly concerned the clothing of Fleur, the heroine, and the same redundant descriptions of the state of her hair. I would have liked to know more about the physical state of the city, the weather, the true scene setting.

As far as the romance is concerned it was predictable, seriously lacking in the Romeo and Juliet-like qualities I was lead to believe would be in play. In the end it felt as if this was nothing more than a surface attempt at riding the coat-tails of some stronger grounded futuristic romances.

I will be reading the full series to give it a chance, it is not unenjoyable, just predictable and missing one of the elements of futurism I feel is needed to establish a good setting for a full series. ( )

Sigh... I'm still trying to fill the void in my reading life that the current Anita Blake books have left. I had such high hopes for this series. I loved the idea of having different writers for each book in the series but having the same setting and characters. Unfortunately, here is yet another paranormal series that has fallen flat for me.

The story takes place in an alternate reality L.A. nicknamed Crimson City after the last war between species. The species in question are Werewolves, Humans and Vampires. Currently their is a tentative peace between the species but when a human killing machine (a mech) takes out the two head vampires leaving our heroine Fleur (dela something or other) as a defacto leader, Crimson City is teetering on the brink of another species war.

Dain is a member of some kind of night patrol for the military down on the humans level and for reasons I still don't understand (don't leaders of one society generally go talk other leaders when crap hits the fan?) Fleur and Dain form an alliance to try and figure out who sent the mech in the first place and who is responsible for all the random killings of vampires and humans.

My first problem with this book is that the romance between the h/h was really weak. Outside of the fact they were both ridiculously attractive I can't figure out why these two fell in love with one another and I certainly didn't see it. There was plenty of mental lusting going before the declaration of love but it didn't seem like the author put a whole lot of effort into the relationship. I still wasn't discouraged though I like lots of books that don't even have a relationship as long as the plot is interesting and action fast paced I'll still enjoy it.

As far as plot and action go this book was pretty meh. I don't know how to explain it but I couldn't get into the fighting scenes I just didn't care. I ended up skimming the last half of this book because it was just not holding my attention.

I don't know if I will pick up the next book or not even though it's by a different author I really don't care what happens to the characters or Crimson City. If your looking for an exciting paranormal series you may want to look elsewhere. ( )