Story review: Jeaniene Frost's "Devil to Pay"
(Review for fantasyverse.)
I’ve been in a mood for reading a lot of short stories lately, especially with school beginning and having little time right now. (I’m somewhere between sophomore and junior year, going by my seminar schedule, which means for the next year’ll be nonstop seminars.) Because of that, my book review had to center on quick reads.
I’m a huge fan of Jeaniene Frost. Like auto-buy major, which is why I’ve got her Twitter and LJ friended. I found out she had a brand new short story out called “Devil to Pay.” It doesn’t center around the main hero, Bones, though he does appear, along with his wife Cat. This about Mencheres , Bones’s co-ruler, and his line Set before Eternal Kiss of Darkness, it involves a more emotionally-unavailable Mencheres , his progeny Elise, and a demon-ridden human Blake. All three are in a bankrupt situation, where none have anything to lose so why bother trying. But it’s about the three very different approaches that makes me enjoy the story.
At 4500-years-old, Mencheres is a beautifully tired vampire that feels like the end should come soon. This is all too much now, and helping a human will be fine but he’ll have to die anyway because demons don’t give up their prey easy. (And for the visual people, Frost sees the character as the yummy Oded Fehr.) He’s willing to help Elise because she’s family but doesn’t have a lot of faith in winning. Too much life shows the inability. Thanks, in part, to previously being forced to kill his wife of nearly as long as he’d been a vampire. Of course, she was batshit and trying to kill him, so you know.
On the other hand of the vampire spectra, you have Elise, who is 99-years-old with little interaction with mankind after they tried to kill her. See, she died in the Great Depression, suicide after her husband and child died while living in a Hooverville. Mencheres saved her, brought her back, and she was happy for twenty years. She became engaged again, told her fiancée the night before, and woke up to people staking her. Didn’t kill her, since only silver can do that, but it created a lot of distrust for people. That distrust led her to living under the D.C. subway, killing only those that attempted to kill or harm her. Unfortunately, it’s caused her sire to worry about her.
Then you get Blake, a former stockbroker that lost it all once the demon possessed him. He lost everything, including a friendly divorce with his ex-wife. He’s been plagued with the knowledge and scenes of the demon’s killing spree, and his inability to stop it. A former nice guy, not to be confused with “Nice Guy,” he sees Elise as his salvation. All his attempts at suicide failed because the demon wouldn’t allow it. But now, now he has what he wants: a group of supernaturals that will allow him to die, to not kill others. Being possessed means he’s forced to fight against his nature, which is generally do-no-harm. And now he’s doing nothing but harm because a strong demon possessed him at a car wreck that he thought he’d killed someone at. It was harsh, it was dangerous, and it cost him everything. Eventually, Elise makes him into a vampire and rids him of the foul thing inside. But at the end, he’s able to keep his compass and compassion in tact: the two things that define him throughout the short. His personality doesn’t form an Angel-Angelus separation. He maintains his goodness.
Bones and Cat show up, with Bone’s no nonsense attitude in full swing while the Red Reaper feels for Blake but knows he’ll have to die. It’s a nice counter, the cutthroat mentality to the overall tone that Blake sets. Bones and Cat are only on about 10 pages, but in a 75 page short that’s a fair amount. It's very clearly a family affair in the story now. It's about protecting everyone, including humans since both Bones and Mencheres believe heavily in protecting them if humanity has done nothing wrong. Similar to Spike's take of "Happy Meals with legs." But more than that, they like helping because many of the vampires weren't the winners in their human years, having to fight their way.
Frost has been talking about writing these stories that aren’t novels but aren’t insignificant awhile. It allows her to flesh out the Night Huntress and satellite series without forcing another sort. What I love about her the most is the character studies and are purposely different characters that make up the world. The vampires, or vamp progeny like Cat, all share this sort of “kill or be killed” mentality but it’s not the defining characteristic because they all react in different forms. And not every 4500-year-old vamp craves power, like Mencheres, who only wants peace after this long on earth. Red Reaper is cold when executing but warm in her own way to her husband. Just as Elise is dethawing, so is Cat. And it’s interesting that anyone that calls Cat “Kitten” might end up dead. They give each other space but don’t give up entirely, either.
I’m not going to grade the review, obviously, since I didn’t discuss the story over all. But I am going to recommend, again, to read Frost’s work.
I’ve been in a mood for reading a lot of short stories lately, especially with school beginning and having little time right now. (I’m somewhere between sophomore and junior year, going by my seminar schedule, which means for the next year’ll be nonstop seminars.) Because of that, my book review had to center on quick reads.
I’m a huge fan of Jeaniene Frost. Like auto-buy major, which is why I’ve got her Twitter and LJ friended. I found out she had a brand new short story out called “Devil to Pay.” It doesn’t center around the main hero, Bones, though he does appear, along with his wife Cat. This about Mencheres , Bones’s co-ruler, and his line Set before Eternal Kiss of Darkness, it involves a more emotionally-unavailable Mencheres , his progeny Elise, and a demon-ridden human Blake. All three are in a bankrupt situation, where none have anything to lose so why bother trying. But it’s about the three very different approaches that makes me enjoy the story.
At 4500-years-old, Mencheres is a beautifully tired vampire that feels like the end should come soon. This is all too much now, and helping a human will be fine but he’ll have to die anyway because demons don’t give up their prey easy. (And for the visual people, Frost sees the character as the yummy Oded Fehr.) He’s willing to help Elise because she’s family but doesn’t have a lot of faith in winning. Too much life shows the inability. Thanks, in part, to previously being forced to kill his wife of nearly as long as he’d been a vampire. Of course, she was batshit and trying to kill him, so you know.
On the other hand of the vampire spectra, you have Elise, who is 99-years-old with little interaction with mankind after they tried to kill her. See, she died in the Great Depression, suicide after her husband and child died while living in a Hooverville. Mencheres saved her, brought her back, and she was happy for twenty years. She became engaged again, told her fiancée the night before, and woke up to people staking her. Didn’t kill her, since only silver can do that, but it created a lot of distrust for people. That distrust led her to living under the D.C. subway, killing only those that attempted to kill or harm her. Unfortunately, it’s caused her sire to worry about her.
Then you get Blake, a former stockbroker that lost it all once the demon possessed him. He lost everything, including a friendly divorce with his ex-wife. He’s been plagued with the knowledge and scenes of the demon’s killing spree, and his inability to stop it. A former nice guy, not to be confused with “Nice Guy,” he sees Elise as his salvation. All his attempts at suicide failed because the demon wouldn’t allow it. But now, now he has what he wants: a group of supernaturals that will allow him to die, to not kill others. Being possessed means he’s forced to fight against his nature, which is generally do-no-harm. And now he’s doing nothing but harm because a strong demon possessed him at a car wreck that he thought he’d killed someone at. It was harsh, it was dangerous, and it cost him everything. Eventually, Elise makes him into a vampire and rids him of the foul thing inside. But at the end, he’s able to keep his compass and compassion in tact: the two things that define him throughout the short. His personality doesn’t form an Angel-Angelus separation. He maintains his goodness.
Bones and Cat show up, with Bone’s no nonsense attitude in full swing while the Red Reaper feels for Blake but knows he’ll have to die. It’s a nice counter, the cutthroat mentality to the overall tone that Blake sets. Bones and Cat are only on about 10 pages, but in a 75 page short that’s a fair amount. It's very clearly a family affair in the story now. It's about protecting everyone, including humans since both Bones and Mencheres believe heavily in protecting them if humanity has done nothing wrong. Similar to Spike's take of "Happy Meals with legs." But more than that, they like helping because many of the vampires weren't the winners in their human years, having to fight their way.
Frost has been talking about writing these stories that aren’t novels but aren’t insignificant awhile. It allows her to flesh out the Night Huntress and satellite series without forcing another sort. What I love about her the most is the character studies and are purposely different characters that make up the world. The vampires, or vamp progeny like Cat, all share this sort of “kill or be killed” mentality but it’s not the defining characteristic because they all react in different forms. And not every 4500-year-old vamp craves power, like Mencheres, who only wants peace after this long on earth. Red Reaper is cold when executing but warm in her own way to her husband. Just as Elise is dethawing, so is Cat. And it’s interesting that anyone that calls Cat “Kitten” might end up dead. They give each other space but don’t give up entirely, either.
I’m not going to grade the review, obviously, since I didn’t discuss the story over all. But I am going to recommend, again, to read Frost’s work.