Immortal: Love Stories With Bite [Kindle Edition]

Cynthia Leitich Smith's Haunted Love: This story wasn't exactly bad but it wasn't good either, it was "blah." It was ok for a short story, nothing special though.

Kristen Cast's Amber Smoke: Ugh, where to start? Just like the House of Night series she tries WAY too hard to sound teen friendly, like a cool hip teenager. It is ridiculously over the top, no teen actually talks like that. It is cheesy and irritating, Kristin really needs to tone it down. Being in touch with teens is one thing but sounding like that sad middle-aged mom trying to fit in with her teen daughter's friends is another. As for the story itself, awful. The author took every overdone, cliché story idea and threw it into one story. She also put way too much random info into the story and it got to the point where you were like "wtf?! why did that happen, how did that happen" every few sentences. It was the type of storyline that needed to be a novel so that everything could be explained, instead its a short story that doesn't make sense and doesn't flow smoothly at all. It wasn't much of a short story at all, just random nonsense thrown together with no meaning at all.

Rachel Caine's Dead Man Stalking:
Excellent! I haven't read the Morganville series but now I want to. The author's tone was great, the story was interesting, plus clear and solid and it made sense. It was what a short story should be, a whole story in just a few pages, not too much but not too little either.

Tanith Lee's Table Manners:
Very well written. A new interesting look on vampires. I enjoyed it.

Nancy Holder's Changed:
Another excellent, well written story. Showing a different kind of love and a different kind of vampire world. Instead of the dark brooding romantic vampires, you get the evil apocalyptic ones. A great read.

Richelle Mead's Blue Moon:
I really liked this one. I almost always love vampire stories where the vampires are known to the world.

Claudia Gray's Free:
I loved this one. It was a great story about a strong woman doing what she needs to do to make herself happy. It was also the only story that wasn't set in the present which was a nice change of pace from the other stories.

An earlier version of this book was published by Borders (or at least for Borders) exclusively sold within their stores. However for this new edition a new story was added by Rachel Vincent.

"Haunted Love" Cynthia Leitch Smith
There's more at stake (get it? at stake? vampires? work with me people) in this story then a love triangle. There's a decades old murder and hiding your true self and learning to move on from bad experiences. I admit I did not see the twist coming at all and I enjoyed the 'romance' of this story. Just gotta believe right?

"Amber Smoke" Kristin Cast
I enjoyed this story, and the premise behind it (let's go Furies!), but it felt rushed and as if it didn't have enough space to really explore everything. Alek's motivations were vague and defined only in that he wanted to protect Jenna. Jenna accepted her role fairly quickly. The pacing was off and I think if this was made into a full length novel it would smooth out the pacing faults easily.

"Dead Man Stalking" Rachel Caine
This ties in with her Morganville Vampires series. In The Eternal Kiss we saw the Morganville Universe through Eve's eyes and this time we see it through Shane's eyes. This isn't a story of romantic-love, but of family-love. Or whatever passes for family-love in Frank Collins' (Shane's father) eyes. This wasn't a story you could really read independent of the series either, as it relied upon knowing about Frank's last visit to Morganville and the fall out from that for development purposes. I enjoyed this look through Shane's eyes, saw a side of him we don't normally see. As with Eve's story, this could certainly be a set up for another arc in the series proper, but it makes you wonder--how many chances is this man going to get to burn the town?

"Table Manners" Tanith Lee
I wanted to like this story, because it looks at vampirism so differently, but the writing style was rather odd. It was almost like a gothic novel, with some of the sentences awkwardly phrased and elaborate descriptions of scene and mood. I liked that Lee looked at vampirism as an evolution of humankind, not a disease or curse and made it clear that really vampires didn't need blood or to avoid the sun or any of that, the media had just convinced them that's how things should be. Popular Culture--it will be the death of free thought and rational thinking.

"Blue Moon" Richelle Mead
I've not yet read the Vampire Academy series (it sits so forlornly on my shelves...beckoning I swear), but after reading this I have a new sort of impetus to. Blue Moon has nothing to do with the VA series (that I know of), but Mead's writing has a sort of urgency to it that I responded well to. I liked that her two characters, Lucy and Nathan, were both not quite sure what to do. Vampire-Human relations are, at best, categorized as Master-Servant class. It was enthralling simply put.

"Changed" Nancy Holder
Holder's story was brutal, emotionally and in how it depicted vampires. These aren't your brooding romantic vampires--these are amoral, cruel and inhuman creatures parading around in human guise. I felt so bad for Jilly, for everything she went through all because of a doomed (romantic) love. Her development throughout the story was fairly astounding, given the short nature of the story, but it flowed so easily. So logically as Jilly went from being desperate to find her friend Eli because she loved him so much, to finding him and understand that he loved her but not enough and ultimately to her realization that it didn't matter what form of love they shared, it was love and that's what mattered.

"Binge" Rachel Vincent
This is set in her Soul Screamers universe. A story about a siren and a leanan sidhe, of what power they have and what destruction they can cause. This was a painful story as Mallory, who always made sure Andi didn't go too far with her siren songs, learned that sometimes its hard to know when to stop even when you know better. You could feel how painful it all was for Mallory and how badly Andi wanted to save her from herself. In the end they both learn a powerful lesson, but at what cost.

"Free" Claudia Gray
This is set in her Evernight universe (featuring Patrice, Bianca's roommate from the novels). We learned the bare facts of how Patrice became a vampire in Evernight, and here we learn the whole truth. Over a century later we see what this one choice, how powerfully Patrice wanted to be truly free, becomes. Beauty is her weapon, her way to survive and charm. I enjoyed learning this little about her and what makes her tick.

These stories were at times surprising and at others times heart-breaking. I enjoyed this anthology a lot, and can only hope for more such anthologies in the future.

Courtesy of [...]

Review:
"Haunted Love" by Cynthia Leitich Smith kicks off the anthology with Cody, a new male vampire who re-opens a haunted movie theater in his sleepy Texas town, but he never planned on an All-American human girl maneuvering her way into a job and possibly his heart. I was surprised at how strong Cody's voice was almost from page one, especially his accidental transformation into a vampire after ordering a strength potion off the internet. I wish he'd been given a full length novel to play around in, but even in his 30 or so pages, I cared about him. I cared less about the twist at the end. It was sudden and not at all in keeping with the rest of the story.Sexual Content: None

Review:
"Amber Smoke" by Kristin Cast is probably my least favorite story in this anthology, now granted I'm only halfway through Immortal, but still. This story is the reason I've mostly avoided reading YA. 18 year old Jenna (who comes across more as a vapid thirteen year old) is a shallow, self-absorbed high school senior when she meets hottie son of The Furies/vampire Alek who helps her transition into her new nonhuman existence. Dripping with pop culture references in an attempt to be `teen friendly,' this story is mess of unlikable characters who are nothing like any teenagers I've ever known. I've been looking forward to starting the House of Night series, but if they are anything like this...ugh. Sexual Content: None

Review:
"Dead Man Stalking" by Rachel Caine revisits characters from her Morganville Vampires series. Shane gets abducted by a zombie controlled by his estranged father seeking to enlist Shane's help in eradicating the vampire species. I've enjoyed Rachel's Weather Warden series, so I knew she was a good writer, but I only got Glass Houses yesterday, so this was my first visit to Morganville (although I'm now planning an extended stay), and there were characters with back stories I didn't know, but my ignorance didn't in any way diminish my enjoyment of this story. If anything it made me want more of this series.
Sexual Content: None

Review:
"Table Manners" by Tanith Lee is an odd story written in an odd way. It feels like a regency period story except for the occasional modern reference (cell phone, elevator etc.) A girl meets a Brad Pitt-esque vampire at a ball and tries to help him realize his vampiric weaknesses are all in his mind. The writing was very unique and sentence structure was often haphazardly ordered. I'm not sure what effect the author was going for, but the story was generic enough that it doesn't really matter.
Sexual Content: None

Review:
"Blue Moon" by Richelle Mead
This short story takes place in a world where vampires rule and humans live as second-class citizens. Lucy, the daughter of the most powerful vampire in Chicago, suddenly finds herself being hunted by her own kind and must rely on the help of a cute human guy who's spent his whole life hating the vampires who rule his city. -RichelleMead.com This is the best story (so far) in Immortal. The new spin on the vampire/human relationship was immediately intriguing and one that I hope Richelle plans to explore in a more books (pretty please). Vampire Lucy is just beginning to see life from the perspective of the humans living in servitude to her kind, while human Nathan has been fighting against a lifetime of hatred for the monsters who destroyed his family. When these two are thrown together, sparks fly in more ways than one. The story is set up in such a way that while the ending isn't a complete cliffhanger, it leaves a lot left unresolved. I'm hoping that is because, like me, Richelle realizes this world is too good to be used only once.
Sexual Content: None

Review: "Changed" by Nancy Holder (who I loved from her work on Buffy) pens a pulls no punches diatribe this time out. On just about every single page of this story (sometimes several times per page) the author reminds us that Eli, the unrequited love interest of the main character Jilly, is gay. Eli's stereotyped Jewish parents throw very un-politically correct insults at him, whereas Jilly's parents let him and his boyfriend Sean be together at her house. Jilly, a reformed `slut and drug addict' is the character we're supposed to identify with and root for, yet she has so little self worth that she doesn't care that her former boyfriend Eli, who left her for the jerk Sean, consistently takes her love for granted and even taunts her, I think, by kissing and showering with her and then dragging her into almost certain death to get to Sean. There is a vampire takeover going on in the background, but its far from the focus of the story. I don't know, maybe if the author had taken a less heavy handed approach with her message (a la Buffy) I wouldn't have felt like I was being lectured for 30 pages on homosexuality and the bigotry of Jewish people.
Sexual Content: two 16-year-olds take a shower together.

Review: "Binge" by Rachel Vincent is the bonus story included only in the updated version of this anthology. You've heard the expression `worth the price of admission'? Well Binge is it. Whether this is you're first introduction to the Soul Screamers series or not (and don't worry if it is), this story about a siren and a leanan sidhe will hook you. The girls struggle believably with envy, jealousy and above all loyalty. These rarely explored creatures from folklore are a refreshing addition to the paranormal cast and Rachel writes them with aching realism. "Binge" takes place in Kaylee's world, but features characters/creatures she will (probably) never meet in the series. Although one of them is mentioned, in My Soul to Lose, I think. Originally Nash had a cameo (he knows one of the characters in this story) but his small part got cut to make room for more actual story. This is a YA vampire romance anthology, but my "vampires" are very, very non-traditional. And non-literal. There's no blood sucking at all, and no fangs, and they aren't dead. Their vampirism is more... symbolic. But the girls in this story have some pretty scary abilities, and a fascinating (at least to me), twisted kind of relationship. -Rachel Vincent
Sexual Content: None

Review:
"Free" by Claudia Gray is a prequel of sorts to the Evernight series. This story focuses on Patrice (Bianca's roommate in the main series) and explains how she became a vampire in pre Civil War New Orleans. Claudia Gray lists on her website that Gone with the Wind has had an influence on her writing, and while I can't vouch for that in the main series, that influence is very apparent in this period story. The characters are very strong and vividly portrayed, however if you need the urban factor in your fantasy you might want to skip this prequel and jump right into Evernight.