A Light To Starve By – Review
Product Description from Amazon: A dark novelette, set in near-future Paris, where vampires and werewolves are hunted like rabid dogs and put down just as quickly. Their existence is common knowledge, the army and police patrol the streets looking for them, families barricade themselves at night, and even the Catholic Church has its own task force. The majority of the population has been vaccinated, making their blood highly poisonous. What little remains of the vampire society is now reduced to dealing untainted blood like drugs, living in hiding, owning clean human slaves to drink from, and generally living a pathetic life.
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I should probably begin by mentioning that I’m quite interested in vampire lit. Not to the degree where I’m a hardcore believer but the idea of immortal, powerful supernatural creatures is an idea that I really dig. I’m a lot more Anne Rice than Meyer and prefer my vampires more philosophical than sparkly, Lestat over Edward.
I became familiar with Axel Taiari from his story Death Jugglar in the Warmed and Bound anthology. It was a fantastic opener to the anthology and I was keen to find more from him. One of the best things about A Light To Starve By is that in it’s short length it tackles the vampire myth and creates it’s own spin on it. The vampires can go out in sunlight, but it may cause irritation to them. The main problem is that everyone has had an injection meaning that their blood is undrinkable for vampires and thus there is no prey. With no blood the vampires begin to weaken to the point where they can become easily killed and are more recognizable as vampires, which makes it harder for them to blend into normal society. Blood is in short supply and is sold similiar to a blackmarket drug. The downward spiral continues when there is an active group of human hunters whose only mission is to hunt and kill the vampires. The novelette is similiar to True Blood in the way that it has all the popular creatures like vampires and werewolves in society, however, unlike True Blood this is an extremely well written piece. The narrator is almost tired of living due to a love that he had to leave behind when he was turned. The sole purpose of his life has almost been protecting and overwatching her and when she is in danger he risks his whole existance to save her.
This is a fantastic novellete, which should convince anyone to welcome the rise of e-readers as this is proof that fantastic stand alone work can be found on there. Taiari challenges the vampire myth and makes it his own, in the meantime while reading it you’re bound to get caught up in his prose. But it now.
A Light To Starve By can be found on Amazon UK here and Amazon US here.
Axel can be found at his official website, here.
