Nancy A. Collins

I first encountered Nancy Collins when I read her debut novel, 'Sunglasses After Dark' (1989), which won the Bram Stoker Award. It featured Sonja Blue, a kickass vampire very different from the Anne Rice version. It was fresh and clever and filled with casual, graphic violence and transactional sex that felt raw and real rather than contrived and exploitative. Sonja Blue lived in a heartless, vicious, blood-spattered world so completely lacking in glamour or romance that it made other show more vampire books seem like Disney World.

I picked up 'Wild Blood' (1994) because I wanted to see what kind of werewolves Nancy Collins would conjure up. It turned out I was in for quite a ride.

As always, Nancy Collins' storytelling was vivid, violent, original and strangely believable. She twists the werewolf tropes just as vigorously as she did the vampire ones.

The story starts strong. It's action-packed, violent and on a different path to most werewolf books. At the start of the book, our hero thinks he's human, then he gets caught up in a spiral of violent misadventure that would rip most men's humanity away. Oddly, although this process reveals his non-human nature, he mostly remains the kind, thoughtful young man he was raised to be.

Then he falls in with other werewolves.

Nancy Collins' werewolves aren't strong, decent men trying to control their wolf taint while looking for a soulmate. This isn't a paranormal romance. These werewolves aren't and don't want to be human. They want to be all the wolf they can be. Humans are meat. But smart meat that needs to be stalked, not battled. Sex is neither erotic nor romantic. It's a rutting frenzy that fuels rape and murder. They're not led by a wise but ruthless alpha male who enforces discipline and respect. They're led by a highly-sexed bitch who they all fight to the death to mate with.

It isn't all violence and gore (although it is mostly violence and gore). There is a bigger story arc to do with our hero's origins and with the other shifter races.

I liked the idea that the werewolves are as violent as they are not because they've given up control to their wolves, but because, for centuries, they've been behaving too much like humans.

I had a lot of fun with this book. I found the ending a little hard to swallow, mostly because it moved from the personal, immediate and threat-laden into the political, strategic and potentially peaceful.

Even so, it was good fun. A sort of fast food horror: highly seasoned with violence and mayhem and best eaten quicklywhile it's hot.

I read the ebook version of 'Wild Blood', published by Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy in 2022. They didn't do a great job. There were lots of typos, missing words and incorrectly substituted words. This was distracting and, given current technology, insulingly incompetent. Buy a different version if you can.

Oh, and this is the cover they produced. It has to be one of the worst covers that I've seen, and it has nothing to do with the story. show less

'Sunglasses After Dark' is the first book in a book vampire series. Published in 1989, it was one of the books that kicked off the Urban Fantasy genre. It was a debut novel that was so ground-breaking that it won the Bram Stoker award.

Sad to say, I'd never heard of it. I was just looking for a book written or set in the 1980s that I could use for my Stranger Things Halloween Bingo square. I didn't have particularly high expectations. I thought a thirty-two-year-old book that kicked off a show more genre would be showing its age and be mainly of historical interest, but 'Sunglasses After Dark' strutted onto to stage of my imagination with all the bravado of the young tough and talented and demanded my attention, looking me in the eyes and saying with confidence that felt like a threat, 'My name is Sonja Blue and you've never met anyone like me'.

I gulped the novel down in two days. It was fresh and clever and filled with casual, graphic violence and transactional sex that felt raw and real rather than contrived and exploitative. Sonja Blue lives in a world splattered with blood, much of it her own work. Sonja Blue lives a heartless, vicious, violent world so completely lacking in glamour or romance that it makes other vampire books seem like Disney World.

The story starts in classic gothic style with the nightshift warder at the mental asylum who, hardened by decades of experience, is unafraid of the patients on the Danger Ward. Except for the women kept in an unfurnished padded cell, who wears nothing but a straightjacket and who scares him even in his dreams. The book launches into rapid, violent action that unleashes the strange woman on the world and introduces us to the two identities who share a body, one a teenage American heiress and the other a predator who is always hungry. Then we meet the baddy. A woman evangelist in a blonde wig and a gold lamé pantsuit who has her own TV channel where she performs miracle cures live on air. The pace slows a little, the timeframes widen and the geographic settings become more exotic as we get the backstory of both women both of which are filled with abusive men, violence, rage and more than human abilities. From there we build to the inevitable ballet of hate-driven violence as Sonja Blue confronts who she is and seeks retribution.

As I read the novel I was struck by how its strengths were those of a graphic novel: vivid original, uncompromising images, strong lead characters each with a distinctive style, strange creatures in exotic settings, a fast-moving plot, an atmosphere of evil and corruption and spectacular bloody carnage at regular intervals. Sonja Blue would have been at home on the pages of '2000AD' in the Eighties.

The books were turned into graphic novels in 2014 with stunningly stylish artwork by Stanley Shaw.



'Sunglasses After Dark' was a fun ride from beginning to end and a great start to a new series. I'll be reading the other three books in the coming months. show less

This book is exactly as it seems - which is to say - it is dark, violent, at times uncomfortable, and is perfect read when you are looking for something a bit more macabre...

The writing is tight, the first three volumes makes a fully complete story, with an interesting ending. The characters are flawed, but interestingly so, at times, it is almost too dark. The vampires are not sparkly, the creatures of the night inhuman. Its a bit refreshing to read after much of the paranormal urban show more fantasy that is out there.

This book isn't for everyone - it has rape, torture, and horrific violence. show less

I was looking forward to this novel, having truly enjoyed the animated series.

And man was I disappointed. It seems that main comic Blade Runner series will remain the flagship for a long time to come.

Art is interesting, slightly on a cartoonish side of things, but OK. Most important it is consistent throughout the volume. Coloring is also beautifully done. So graphically very well done work.

Problem is in the story. Story must be the most bland story I read in a while (including comics and show more prose fiction, even poetry I might add). It is just that story goes from A to B to C to D, even after first issue I knew exactly where this story will go. There is no dramatic element, no place where you wonder if our heroes will survive, will they manage to overcome the next hurdle. There is nothing because from the start it is visible there is no danger to our heroes. Yes, people will die but this happens in the background, almost noiseless because these characters are there just to show how bad things are but we could just as well be without these characters. They add no ..... weight?..... to the story, they are just part of the set, basically nothing.

Don't get me wrong, this is comic, I do not expect some high level of story presentation. But let us look at the stories like Conan, various crime stories (pulp fiction) and even let us go to the main story line of Blade Runner comics - we all know our heroes will survive, but these comics kept me interested to see what is going on, what is lurking behind the next corner, how will our heroes handle it, I mean some kind of progress of both characters and the story, some hint of challenge. This is what makes good story. Otherwise we could all read phone books or political pamphlets for entertainment.

All of this is missing from this volume. Everything is just straight forward, everyone is highly knowledgeable, highly capable that basically there is no ..... story. Two panels could have made the whole volume - Elle coming into the town outside LA on one panel and Elle leaving the city with all dead bad guys in the background on another panel.

Hopefully author's will improve in follow up stories about the Elle. Animated series was great, I truly enjoyed it, I just wish they build up the equivalent story-wise in graphical format.

And one thing that is so cringy and you cannot miss it on pages of this comic, is political messaging. I understand that this is now trendy and everything but it just makes the entire story blah - Russian mafia leading the fracking company that looks like Sauron's lair with all the smoke and towers, good guys living in, for all means and purposes, Eden with enough propellers on all the wind turbines to be able to elevate few miles above ground. Living in such a clean condition and in harmony with nature that I was ..... huh? I mean, what, in else completely polluted world few miles outside LA you basically have equivalent of zero pollution area, clean beautiful blue sky (as opposed to dark, ridiculous smoke area of fracking company) where you can grow food without any problems to feed hundreds o people (in bloody desert)? Not to mention that hover bikes that noone saw for decades, oh yeah they can be fixed in couple of days by only changing the circuit board in mechanic shop in the middle of nowhere (whaaat?). And this Eden of course is built and led by the best and brightest from all over - scientists, engineers, medical personnel etc. I mean in any apocalyptic, dystopian story this would be the Holy Grail for all people to find and live there and it exists just outside of LA, few days ride away. I mean, what? I could just see common sense (and I mean it in terms of fiction story) going out the window.

As I said, this political element and preachiness just kills of the story.

In summary, interesting. But nowhere near the quality of the main Blade Runner series. show less