Bad Blood

Kristen Painter

House of Comarre, book 3

Orbit (2011)

ISBN: 978-1-84149-971-0

Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack

Bad Blood is the third in the House of Comarre series; there are at least four books in the series. Book two, Flesh and Blood, is reviewed here. Like book two, book three is challenging to follow if you haven’t read earlier books in the series. Although there are strengths to the books individually, I would strongly recommend that intending readers start with book one.

In this volume a spate of violent serial murders are striking fear into Paradise City (a renamed Miami). All of the girls bear a resemblance to Chrysabelle; a real Commarre – a human bred to provide blood to vampires. As well as bearing a superficial resemblance to Chrysabelle herself, each victim was a fake Comarre, who sold their inferior blood to vampires who either didn’t know better or didn’t have access to a real Comarre.

The murders are only one sign of a breakdown in the centuries old covenant which has enabled humans to live in blissful ignorance of the supernatural world right under their noses. With the breakdown of the covenant, it’s getting harder to ignore. And with Halloween coming, it’s likely that human noses will be well and truly rubbed not only in the existence of the supernatural, but in how dangerous it is.

Flesh and Blood

Kristen Painter

House of Comarre, book 2

Orbit (2011)

ISBN: 978-1-84149-970-3

Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack

Flesh and Blood is book two in the House of Comarre series; there are at least four books in the series. None appear to stand alone – they are written as instalments of a series and there isn’t a lot of recapping for people who haven’t read the earlier book (or books). They are well written and have considerable strengths, but it’s not really a series you can jump into part way through and fully enjoy.

I have not read book one, so was very much picking this up as I went along. It was reasonably easy to pick up the basic plot, but many of the motivations were a little murky to me, and there were past events that seemed critical to events in this novel but which were never fully explained here. In addition, there were some really important things about the relationships between characters that appeared to be very dependent on events in the first novel – referred to in passing here but again not clearly recapped.

Chrysabelle is a Comarre, one of a group of humans bred to provide blood to vampires. It’s not clearly spelt out, but I assume that this is part of the covenant which has allowed the supernatural world to exist side by side with humanity, with most humans entirely ignorant of it. It appears that Comarres and their relationships with vampires are governed by a complex set of traditions and rules. However, Chrysabelle appears to be somewhat isolated from the Comarre House in general, and it’s not particularly clear if she is, indeed, still technically a Comarre. (Not clear to me as a new reader, that is.)