***Disclosure: Andrew's an ex-pat Brit who's been an online friend of mine for several years.***

PAGAN: An MPRD novel is the anti-emo of the Vampire/Urban Fantasy genre... and its about damn time! If I gotta hear about one more curly-haired, hemoglobin-challenged, eternally tortured soul who can seduce anything that breathes but somehow still can't find true love while wearing his religion-revealing ballet pants... I just had to get that out.

The premise is straight forward: vamps have been playing humans for the past 20+ years with all the Twilight/Interview crap, softening us up for the worldwide sucker punch known as Black Tuesday. Five years later, there's still some disparity as to how to deal with being at the top of the menu instead of the food chain, but not so much that governments aren't swinging back. Enter the Ministry of Paranormal Research & Defense and their best bloke- Jack 'Pagan' Henderson- a former SAS turned fangbuster who also possesses a unique trait that prevents him from being controlled by vampires. The other fearless vampire killers comprise his team- as both comrades in arms and friends for life. Two are a bit of a surprise: Anna, who was turned into a vampire after she'd been a hunter, and Marie- a full-blooded werewolf who also doubles as Jack's sweetie.

The antagonists are cruel, nasty, vicious and bloodthirsty- in short, they're vampires! This one adds new flavor to the stale recipe of vampires and werewolves, introducing some intriguing sub-classes into each group. And in this world the lycanthropes are out in the open and siding with humanity, making for a nice twist. And there are a few vamps working for the Ministry itself, setting the stage for current and future intrigues. After our boys and girls finish clearing out a rural area, Pagan is brought to HQ for a Special Ops assignment: a hit on one of the most powerful vampires in England. Though it struck me as a little too easily accomplished, the aftermath of the mission leads to some unexpected developments whose ripples are felt all the way into the finale.

There's a wealth of detail- maybe a little too much- about guns and ammo; someone else joking referred to it as 'gun porn'. Ordnance fetishes aside, it's a fun read with lots of depth and humor. Jack's a likable enough guy but I kinda found myself more interested in the other team members as things progressed. Being former military I appreciated the jabs and snaps aimed at the upper ranks and bureaucratic types, as well as the crude and crass tension-breakers just before a fight.

PAGAN is a worthy first effort, nicely crafted with a few dull spots; the ending was too neat and pat, and there were parts of it I'd already seen coming. But I'm expecting the spit shine in the sequel.

3.5/5 stars

So I got interviewed as a book reviewer as part of an ongoing feature over at BlondeWriteMore.  I think it went pretty well- I'm talking about me, after all- but I can't help but feel like I should've fleshed it out a bit more.  Ah, well. 

(reblogged from BlondeWriteMore)

Welcome to my weekly series – Book Reviewer Interviews. 

I believe that book reviewers hold valuable insight for us writers and their answers to my interview questions make intetesting blog posts.

Please welcome my new book reviewer friend John Green and author of the blog Illuminite Caliginosus

John, thanks so much for sitting in my interview chair. Please tell us about yourself.

First one’s always the hardest. Lessee now- born, raised and still living in Brooklyn, NY. Wanted to be either a baseball player or paleontologist when I was little. Ended up joining the Marines instead, traveled the globe and can’t really say a bad word about my tour. To paraphrase Malcolm X: the plan was theirs, any mistakes were mine.

Worked for Virgin USA for over thirteen years; had a blast and met a lot of good people and had some great experiences. It was like getting paid for hanging out with your friends! If there ever was such a thing as a good retail job, that was it.

The last few years I’ve been in the Sports & Entertainment field; blogging and reviewing was something I kinda fell into, and I really enjoy doing it. I’ve met a lot of good and… interesting… people during my online career.

I’m also a member of Amazon’s Vine program and a former Top 1000 Reviewer on the site.

Been an avid & voracious reader all my life; I was that nerdy kid who’d always get “volunteered” to enter trivia contests, spelling bees, etc, and I always had to take something into the bathroom with me to read (once upon a time that wasn’t always seen as a good thing. Neither was being nerdy). One of these days I’ll finally finish my own novel and then get to see how the other half lives.

Anyone who wishes to contact me for any reason can do so via: Email / Booklikes /
WordPress / Twitter / Pinterest

What made you start reviewing books?

During my time at Virgin USA I was the Magazines Buyer for the NY stores, getting my hands on more books and reading material than I’d thought possible (rubs hands gleefully).

**The store was located in the same building where Random House had their offices, and I was on good terms with the building guys so they always let me know when RH would dump out books. Discovered a lot of new authors that way- good, bad and ugly. I’ll always be proud to call myself a Dumpster Diver.**

**Our UPS driver, Joe, offered to grab a few books for me while he was delivering up there, and part of the stack he brought back included the first three books of GRRM’s Song of Ice & Fire- all hardcovers with original artwork.**

After Virgin USA closed I spent a lot of time on Amazon buying even more books. I got in the habit of sifting through the reviews for recommendations, etc, and picked up on a few individuals I felt I could rely upon not to steer me wrong, like EA Solinas, Chibineko and others. I’d always been the one my friends and family would go to for a critique because they knew I was hard but fair, and it finally occurred to me that I should write a few reviews myself- sort of give back a little and have my say. Next thing I know I’m making steady progress through the ranks and I wondered what I could do with this.

How many books do you review a month?

It varies. I’ve slowed down over the past couple years; used to aim for maybe 5-10 a month, right now maybe half that. One of my goals is to clear out some of my TBR pile; I know- we ALL say that, but my work schedule affords me a lot of free time, so I have a good shot at it. I’ve still got stuff going back to the 2010 BEA I haven’t checked out yet.

What is your selection process for reviewing a book?

Nothing set in stone. The easy answer is “whatever catches my attention”, but defining that is the trick. I’m a very eclectic reader; I’ve always been chiefly into Fantasy/Sci-fi but right now I’m really into Steam/Diesel/Atompunk- though I haven’t seen much of the latter two so far. There’s also Lovecraftian Horror, which I think’s been under-appreciated but seems to be enjoying a renaissance now. Guess we can thank the oversaturated PNR/UF genres for that.

Both the blurb and the cover are key, of course- you never get a second chance at that first impression. There’s been quite a few eye candy covers that made me stop to check them out, only to get let down by the synopsis. So many books nowadays, especially in the YA genre, immediately drop the ball from sounding like carbon copies of each other that it’s hard to find anything worth investing time in. I swear you can choose ten, TEN, YA novels at random and the blurbs will all sound the same! How many Chosen Ones with Destined/Fated/Soulmates stories does the human race need? When’s the next Alice in Wonderland/Brothers Grimm ripoff due out? Will this end up being Gregory Maguire’s enduring legacy?

For me, it’s gotta be something at least a little different; whatever the genre it has to be something that makes it appear like the author actually had something to say- a story they wanted to tell and not just aping the latest trend to try and make a quick buck. And that gets harder to find every day.

A good one was Pagan by Andrew Chapman. It’s a PNR/UF/Horror series about vampires having existed for centuries but only certain agencies like the Catholic Church knew of them. All the books, movies, etc, served as misdirection and softening up for when they finally emerged and basically sucker-punched the entire human race. Some countries tried to make nice and assimilate them True Blood-style while others said F-that! Even the werewolves sided with humanity against the vamps. Made for a refreshing change of pace from sparkle-pires and woobie-wolves.

Read the rest of the interview here.

This gamebook was in a word rubbish. It was poorly written and the character that you play is a moron and does not act or speak like the undercover detective that you are supposed to be playing. Granted, while offering some silly choices can put those foolish decisions in the hand on the player, simply having the character open his mouth to a potential source of information, and then saying something completely stupid, just simply did not seem to gel with me.

In this science-fiction book you play an intergalactic federal agent who travels to the planet of Kether to attempt to destroy a drug ring. Why is the drug bad? Well, you are not told, you are just told that it is, and the only time that you see it in action is when you use it to kill an alien. Okay, granted, drugs work differently on different people, and no doubt in a realm occupied by aliens the differing effects can be all too common, but seriously, peddling a drug that kills the user seems to be a little over the top. Granted, drug users that get too caught up in their actions usually end up dead, whether it be through an overdose or a bullet in the head, but in the end dealers have a motive in seeing their customers remain alive, and addicted.

The other thing that jumped out at me was it seemed that in the book you are playing the role of the imperial enforcer. No matter what you think of drugs (and I am not a big fan of them, having been down that road and seen the effects upon others lives, and to an extent my own), the feeling that I get from this book was that it was a part of Ronald Regan's war on drugs, namely a piece of propaganda. Granted, while I have little time or sympathy for those we call the drug barons, I do have a lot of empathy for the user and the street dealer. I have been there, and in many cases it is the result of a misjudgement and an experiment that ends up going wrong. Users and small time dealers (who are usually users themselves and have turned to dealing to maintain their habit) do not need to be incarcerated, but treated, just as an alcoholic requires treatment.

Drugs and sex are similar in many ways. I say that because both can give you the feeling of pleasure, and it is that desire for pleasure that keeps you coming back for more. However, those who promote them and those who attack them may have two different methods, but all end up with the same result, and that is to taste the forbidden fruit to find out what it is really like. In a way I would prefer somebody to approach it thinking the world of it and then being sorely disappointed as opposed to somebody who doesn't think much of it, gives it a try, and then becomes addicted.

When our media constantly bombards us with messages that 'drugs are bad' and the church bombards us with messages that say 'sex is beautiful but only in the confines of marriage' those of us who have never tried it are suddenly filled with the urge to give it a go. Drugs and sex are similar in that to experience them you need to get your hands on it, however where drugs are a commodity, with sex you need a willing participant (otherwise that would be rape). Finding the willing participant can be difficult at best, but then again so can finding somebody who is willing to sell you something that is illegal (and in many cases finding both can actually be quite easy).