Venomoid, J.A. Kossler
Received to review via Netgalley

There are some unique ideas in this book; the way vampires and zombies are recognisable, but somewhat different, always makes for some added interest. Unfortunately, I didn’t really get into the world and plot around that. Instead of occurring within the world, the world seemed to be created for the plot — which of course, it is, but you don’t want the reader to realise that. You want there to be an awareness of the world around the events of the novel, and that was lacking here.

As other reviewers have said, the quality of the writing is fairly mediocre; it’s certainly functional, but it’s not deathless prose at all. It’s a very teenage style, and all in all the book comes across as being for the YA audience. That tone in the narration is a little awkward, as the main character isn’t a teenager in one sense — physically, he is, but if I remember rightly, he’s older than that in experiential terms, because he ages slowly as a vampire. The adolescent outlook doesn’t just come with a teenage body, but with teenage levels of experience.

The insta-love thing other reviewers have mentioned is also pretty problematic, not to mention the fact that one of the romantic leads is somehow a “good” zombie, and yet needs to tear apart and eat living humans. Maybe there’s some way to make that less horrifying, more equivocal, but as it is, I couldn’t get past that fact to see him as a unproblematic “good” guy. (And I don’t think the intention was to make him a problematic lead.)

Anyway, all in all, I can’t say I really enjoyed this, which is a shame because the tweaked supernatural characteristics could’ve been interesting.

Rating: 1/5