Tasty, tasty human heroine! Crunchy delish!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Sexy kickass heroine battles werewolves and vampires in a world that is beyond her control. You’ve heard it right? Bought the t-shirt, wore it for a few years, and now it’s lurking crumpled and tatty at the back of your closet?

Nope, you haven’t heard this. D.D. Barant’s Dying Bites is better than that in every way that matters. Our sexy kickass fed heroine Jace Valchek is pulled into a parallel world where vampires, werewolves and golems are the majority. Monsters make up the bulk Earth’s population, and humans are the invisible, vulnerable (but very tasty) minority.

So not only are the monsters bigger, smarter, more vicious, and really really interested in our heroine’s juicy insides, they are also — most frighteningly — the status quo.

Monsters run the governments, make the rules, call the shots. Werewolf soccer moms. Golem stockbrokers. Vampire yakuza. Humans don’t count, not one bit. But a human serial killer is out to change all that by murdering monsters in disgusting, drawn out, and highly publicized ways. Jace’s job is to find the killer and survive working with the monsters helping her.

Dying Bites is hugely entertaining, endlessly inventive, surprising, hilarious, and just one heck of a rollicking good ride.

But it’s not just flash. The social structure, history and economics of D.D. Barant’s monster society is incredibly fun and well thought out. I had no trouble believing that the a monster-populated Earth would work in exactly the way he proposes. In addition, the magic system is highly original and has cool implications that will be explored in the sequel Death Blows.

Unput-downable!

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