I was given this book to read through The Nexus group for an honest review. Thank you.

EDIT: Please read edited comment about the book cover.


The book blurb does a good job of describing what the book is about so I won’t go into much detail.

Jerry is a teenage boy that has special blood that makes vampires turn into supervamps and makes them impervious to the age-old vampire problems, like dying from sunlight or stakes. There are two factions of vampires, those that believe that Jerry’s blood holds the key for them regaining their humanity, and those that wish to use Jerry’s blood to create a supervamp army to rule over humans. And so the battle against the renegade sect of vampires begins.







POSITIVE POINTS:


Blood Heavy was a fun and entertaining read, I didn’t want to put it down.

Once the pace started after the first vampire attack, the story continued to move along at a good clip.

I loved the unique background history of the vampires that the author created. The explanation of how there could be pureblood vampires was very interesting. I had such a big grin when Claire commented that vamps had to be almost completely juiced up on human blood to get all the equipment working again. Finally, an author who recognizes the issue that vamps have to have blood in order to get parts working.

I was surprised by the spirituality that many of the vamps felt about the nature of Jerry and his blood. It is an interesting idea that the author created.

One of the other things I loved was that the author threw in references to Harry Potter. And since I'm an HP fan, this thrilled me no end. It was truly awesome.

The characters each have their own personalities, with pluses and minuses to them. They aren’t perfect people or vamps, which makes them more real because they are capable of doing stupid things. I think two of my favorite characters are Joe, Jerry’s uncle, and Goose, Jerry’s best friend.

I liked the slow revelation of Jerry’s ‘powers’ and the unusual effects it had on vampires. Now I wonder if it also has any interesting effects on other creatures.



NEGATIVE POINTS:


Book Cover: I just saw that the book cover has been redone (August 2012). I really wish it hadn't been because I think the original cover with the gritty text and gray toned background was so much better than the current image of the boy. It used to be one of my favorite covers, now it's just average. The new cover would not attract my attention to purchase the book as much as the original one did. Not everything redone comes out better.

Maybe I’m missing the point, but I don’t see why Jerry had two names? Was it so that when he was spoken to in a serious tone the vamps would call him ‘Daniel,’ but friends would call him ‘Jerry’? I don’t understand why he wasn’t just called ‘Dan’ or ‘Danny’ instead of choosing a completely different name for him, I actually found it confusing.

Jerry got on my nerves. His emotions seemed to ping-pong all over the place and I didn’t care for them. I understand that everything that was happening to him was uber-stressful, but his vacillating moods were too much for me as was his ‘Rambo’ mentality in wanting to just go out and kill monsters without doing any planning or investigation. He fell into the ‘TSTL’ category.

I had trouble with the POV. It was mostly told through Jerry’s POV, but many times it would suddenly shift into a different character’s POV for a few sentences or a paragraph then quickly shift back to Jerry’s. The POV changes were not smooth or precise; they just happened randomly whenever the author felt like it. At other times there seemed to be an omnipotent POV where Jerry didn’t know what was going on because he’d left the area. However the reader knew because we were still watching it, we weren’t in any particular character’s head but were left with the odd feeling of floating around through the scene.

Conversations between the characters would quickly turn into arguments or screaming matches which I think was excessive. This allowed for overuse of the dreaded ‘exclamation point.’ In one paragraph the first seven sentences all had an exclamation point at the end. I counted them because I couldn’t believe there were so many. Exclamation points need to be kept to a minimum throughout the entire story. There are better ways to convey strong emotion through words, than to simply tack on an exclamation point at the end of a sentence.

SPAG errors were in abundance. Examples are:

Using the word ‘draw’ instead of the word ‘drawer’ (this occurred numerous times)

Using the word ‘past’ instead of the word ‘passed’ (and many other words such as this)

Using the word ‘whilst’ instead of ‘while,’ considering this story is in the US and not the UK

Names and objects in their possessive form that left off the apostrophes

There were also many instances of the incorrect use of words such as ‘much’ for ‘must.’ (There were a lot of these kinds of mistakes that should have been easily fixed.)

There were many missing and misspelled words.

And last but not least again, the dreaded overuse of the ‘exclamation point.’ The excessive amount of exclamation points was extreme, and felt like the author was trying to bludgeon me over the head to tell me how exciting or important the scene or argument was. It was overkill to the max. (Can you tell I really didn’t like the exclamation marks?)

There were also continuity errors when a paragraph seemed out of place and would have been better in a different part of the story. Also segues from paragraph to paragraph could have been smoother so that they flowed instead of jumping to the next paragraph and not correlating to the one before it.

I hope the author finds someone more qualified to beta/proofread/edit his work, because whoever checked it didn’t do as thorough a job as possible. This book could have been so much better without the numerous SPAG issues that this story had.


My advice to the author:

If the books are to get better, the author needs to clean up the numerous SPAG errors in future books. Check, check, triple check, then check some more. Don’t rely on the exclamation point so much and try to find out ways to convey the excitement of the moment without using them. And watch the POV changes. Don’t suddenly switch from one to the other so haphazardly, it’s confusing and weakens the story.

Blood Heavy is a very entertaining read. Despite the numerous SPAG issues and other problems, I still give this story 3.5 stars because it is such a fun read and because I really liked the author’s version of the history of the vampires. It just could have been so much better if it had been better edited/proof read because the errors are so easily spotted and would have been easily cleaned up.


( )

A robust and spicy flavored story that changed from the one the reader are used to browse this past years.
Sure there is some paranormal creatures but the context seems real and believable.
In this book, there's action, fightings mostly diluted between the verbal sparring matches from the different characters that are very, very funny.

The language used is very contemporary, sometimes with a lot of swear words. Do not be shocked, this is what gives the feeling of reality despite the supernatural. Some dialogues between Cassandra and Claire or Goosse and Jerry are real gems really well written by the author.

As for the story, the reader has no time to get bored. He is plunged into a whirlwind of adventures while following in the footsteps of Jerry and his friends. Friendship, family are very important themes as well as redemption.

Twists, fights, muscular guns and some blood splashed on walls are scenes worthy of a blockbuster movie. A special mention for the final battle... A more masculine novel that made me turn the pages eagerly.

Regarding the characters, they are all very endearing. Thanks to the colorful arguments between the vampire's sisters or the young smart ass psychic: Rachel. I admit I had low for Goose and his crazy hormones talk. A real treat!

In short, a very nice first opus with which you have a good time relaxing, reading. I can not wait to get my hands on the next one ...

Lucie
http://newbooksonmyselves.blogspot.fr/2012/08/blood-heavy-by-slj-shortt.html ( )

Originally posted http://ufreview.com/2012/05/19/blood-heavy/

First things first, I received a copy of Blood Heavy from the Read it and Reap program on Goodreads, so thanks to the mods and the author for giving book junkies like me their fix. Secondly, this book was awesome!!!! I don’t review a lot of YA books because…well….*looks to see who is listening*…I hate YA. Yup you heard me I hate YA, teenage angst gets on my last nerve and YA romance bores me stupid and don’t even get me started on the characters…ugh. YA teenagers never drink, smoke have inappropriate sex or have any decent flaws making them interesting, angst aside. So when I read the blurb on this book I thought hmmmm maybe this one will be different. It was, it pushed all the happy buttons I have when reading urban fantasy.

The hero, Daniel (Jerry) Jericho is an orphan living with his uncle Joe aside from that he is pretty much your typical teen guy, into muscle cars and electronics, full of raging hormones and trying to make it through school without getting kicked out. After leaving a party with some friends Jerry is attacked by vampires. He learns of a whole supernatural world he had never believed in before. The action never stopped after this, both the good and bad vampires are after Jerry for his unique blood for their own ends. Jerry has no intention of being a bystander in the battle that follows.

I loved Jerry, he is snarky, sarcastic and loyal to the point of being suicidal. He is also surrounded by a great cast of supporting characters and enough weapons to invade a small country. He has a great group of friends from school that stick with him til the end and two beautiful vampire sisters tasked with protecting him, when they stop trying to kill each other. The vampires were what vamps are supposed to be scary, ruthless and vicious in reaching their goals, the bad ones that is. There was not sparkling to be found and the author managed to discretely throw in a couple of Twilight digs .

The author has said that he has been influenced by the TV show Supernatural, Joss Whedon from Buffy and Angel and the movie the Avengers. I can definitely see the Joss Whedon influences. It reminded me of both Buffy and Angel by the way Jerry and his friends interacted together, bith the TV shows and the book have a strong central character who relies heavily on his group of friends to help beat the bad guys. If you’re a fan of Joss Whedon and the vampire genre without the sparkles definitely give this book a go it was great. I will be grabbing book two asap! ( )