Crimson City

With little to no memory of life before but haunted with the knowledge that he lost a wife and should be mourning her lost yet unable to remember whatever feelings he may have had for her, the hero is quite content with his job as a police officer. Crimson city is a town on the edge of chaos. Werewolves running the tunnel below the city, vampires towering over in there high rise building and the humans stuck trying to regulate things in between. Tensions run high and everything hangs of the end of a needle and once night succeeds in sparking the fire that will burn them all. The hero is called to incident where a human designed Mech has apparently gone rogue and assassinated the 2 ruling parties of the Vampire assembly. His superiors show more deny responsibly and the hero is tasked with working with the new vampire leader to find the culprit in a sign of good faith between the species. There the hero meets the stunning heroine. After making a grave mistake in her young by changing a lover to a vampire, something that's forbidden, the heroine has been overlooked for the leadership position that's supposed to be her hers by birth right. Now that her brothers are dead, it falls to her to leader their people. But she's horribly inexperienced and in over her head. She hides it well but soon her lack of understanding of her new power becomes apparent. Though their two species are reluctant allies, the hero and heroine soon develop a deep understanding and partnership. They are very much alike they soon discover despite being so vastly different. But together they are the only thing standing between peace and war. The hero was always a level headed guy, able to listen to all sides of every story and giving loyalty to the truth rather than the humans. But as time progresses it becomes apparent that the humans have no loyalty to him. He begins to see darker and darker things from his people who claim the vampires and werewolves to be savages. And no matter how impossible their love might seem, the hero finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the heroines possession. I liked this story. I thought it was smooth in it's pacing and interesting with his level of intrigue and politics that laced well with interments of action. I really liked the hero and heroine respectively. I liked the hero with his complex balance of easy going carefree attitude and inter dark and sometimes violent tendencies. I liked the heroine being a badass vampire and fierce warrior when cornered yet still being a vulnerable and inexperienced woman who relies on the strength of the hero himself as well as her cousins. I can't say that I was over the moon in love with this book but it was a very nice story none the less. show less

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 show more the book failed to deliver on its promise and mostly fell flat by the end. show less

This is a horrible book to review.

Parts of it are excellent, parts of it dire. Fortunately it's so obvious where the story is going there's no need to avoid spoilers (although there are a couple of twists in there that I will avoid).

Dain Reston is an unhappy street cop/militia man, part of the front line of humans keeping an uneasy peace between humans, vampires and werewolves. He falls for the person who steps up to become leader of the vampire nation. Political, confrontational and emotional baggage make for a bumpy ride for them, and will true love prevail?

The core of this book is really the rising tide of passion - which is pretty predictable, but nicely written. The fight scenes however, are well worth skipping. The human politics show more is, sadly, all to plausible and believable. Vampire politics is suitably alien, but rather sketchily painted in given our Juliet is, certainly for most of the book, in charge and doing what she has been expected to do.

If the next book in the series was from the same author I'd probably not get it. However, it's by a different author. Some of these things work, some don't, but I'm going to give it a go. show less

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 show more 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) show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show 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. show less

Spoilers..sort of

This was an ok story but it lacked something. I can't even really place it. Maybe it was the lack of any defining character development. It was a good story with plenty of action. Some places have you rushing to turn the pages while others are not so much. I liked the concept behind the plot and the characters were good but there were a few things that seemed left undeveloped. Like when Dain takes Fleur to meet with a werewolf. She just snapped and they fought and then she killed the wolf. You can ask why but it's not really answered and the story continues like it never happened and there weren't any reprocussions. Then Dain's partner Cyd goes missing or maybe killed but there again was no development on why or any show more answers. The story just moved on like it was no biggie.

Overall it was an ok read but could have been better. show less