The Last of the Red-Hot Vampires

Author: Katie MacAlister
Published: April 3, 2007 (Signet)
Category: Paranormal Romance
Rating: 7/10

This entry into MacAlister's "Dark Ones" books is a stand-alone novel and you don't need to read previous titles to understand what's going on in LOTRHV.

Portia Harding is touring the English countryside with her best friend Sarah, a best-selling author, researching paranormal phenomena. The only problem is: Portia is a die-hard skeptic, believing on things that can be proven with science. Think of Agent Scully on the X-Files, before she got abducted by aliens and all that stuff. However, Portia soon finds herself in possession of weather-controlling powers after some time in a faerie ring. Right after that, Theo North, a nephilim (son of an angel), is chasing after her and then supposedly protecting her. Of course, she doesn't believe him.

As a new virtue, Portia has to undergo a series of tests to see if she should be allowed into the Court of Divine Blood, which humans have a based their idea of heaven upon, and it is the opposite to MacAlister's Abaddon (Hell). I was really interested in the development of the idea of the Court, as we've read about Abaddon in many of MacAlister's paranormal romances, but no real mention of a heaven-type of place. Hopefully it will appear again in a later book, and we'll get to see it in a less-turmoil-filled light.

Portia is supposed to be a physicist, but I think there's a problem with trying to make your main character have a career that is so far removed from the author's experience. You have to make the character sound convincing in such a technical field, so you can't be too simple in your references to physics, but at the same time, when referring to really complex and obscure physics facts, the reader can't relate.

Anyways, she spent the first third of the book denying that anything magical or unexplainable by science could occur, even though a raincloud following you around is a pretty good sign of something odd. Once she admitted that there are some things beyond logical explanation, the book really took off.

Poor Theo gets turned into a Dark One as punishment for the unorthodox way Portia handled one of her trials, and so they've to to get his soul back through the 7 steps of joining. So amid Portia being accused of murdering a virtue (the one who bestowed the weather-control powers on her), they've got to get Theo's soul back and solve the mystery of the missing virtue.

The story was good, but Portia annoyed me for that first third of the book too much. Once she stopped being so stubborn, I was able to fully enjoy myself.