One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Night Runner, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 146 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.


She tried retirement. It didn't agree with her.

Vampire courier Sydney Kildare survived a turf war in Alaska and retired to Hawaii, a wonderfully vampire-free state. She was enjoying island life just fine (being bored senseless) until the goons of a sucker with a grudge showed up and tried to kidnap her. That's about when she realized the danger was the most fun she'd had since she retired.

Now Sydney is in Chile with her vampire sorta-boyfriend Malcolm, who had been sent to South America to manage the holdings of master vampire Bronson in his continued absence. Sure, Sydney can't speak the language beyond a few important phrases, she's stuck with the low-money newbie routes at her new courier agency, and the car she's driving is a real POS, but the thrill being a runner is universal.

All in all, life is going pretty well for her. At least it is until vampires on her route start dying under highly disturbing circumstances and an old enemy of Malcolm's decides that the best way to piss him off is to break the little human courier he's so fond of. As she is that little human courier, that's a plan that just doesn't work for Sydney. Whether or not she'll survive long enough to lodge a formal complaint is another matter entirely.


There's just something about Sydney Kildare, and because of her, this series, that makes me smile. There is a lot of charming...and sometimes not-so-charming quirks in her character. She's an inveterate adrenaline junkie, but she's not foolhardy with her safety. She runs messages, a dangerous occupation on lots of levels, and that puts her into direct contact with vampires she mostly fears and dislikes, but she is hyper-vigilant around them. She keeps everyone she knows at a distance and looks at the world through street-wise, sometimes jaded eyes, but throws herself into a relationship with a vampire she doesn't exactly know that well.

Those sorts of quirks, when paired with an inner monologue peppered with sarcasm and attitude, make her a very appealing and interesting heroine. She's certainly not out to save the world, just survive it while making the most money possible. I have to admit, her prosaic approach to her life appeals to me.

I like the stories Summer writes surrounding her, too. This is not a warm, fuzzy world. It's dark and gritty, and while vampires may have an excellent PR firm, Sydney is under no delusions about their nature. That's probably a good thing given how often she seems to find herself in situations that show off the worst of it. Meanwhile, her relationship with Malcolm, which is really more of a subplot of the story, is fraught with the sort of growing pains one would expect from two people who not only don't know each other well, but are in very different places in their lives, despite the obvious chemistry between them.

I like Malcolm a lot. I like his relationship with Sydney, too, and I literally laughed long and loud when he cooked (or tried to) paella for her. I'm just not on real firm footing about the potential longevity of that relationship. There is a lot about them together that works, but there's also a hell of a lot of things that could explode them at any given moment, and they don't actually seem to really have a place in each others world. It makes me leery of becoming too attached to him.

I'm already attached to the series. I do wish there'd been a bit more resolution of the plot thread left dangling in Don't Bite the Messenger, but that got only a passing nod a time or two in this story. It looks like it was being set up to be addressed in the next book, so hopefully we'll see resolution some day. I still believe that reading DBtM before this one is the way to go, even if you're like me and prefer to avoid prequel novellas. In this case, it was integral in setting up the world and the relationship between Sydney and Malcolm, and shouldn't be missed if you're going to read this book.

And really, if you like urban fantasy that's just a step outside the box with a heroine who can drive like a demon and the vampire who will brave electronic equipment for her, you should read this book. I just hope like hell we'll see a "second" book in the series soon.


The Night Runner Series:

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Night Runner, Book 0.5
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 91 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Being a courier for the technologically challenged vampire population is a balls-to-the-wall adrenaline rush that pays very well, but it doesn't come with any of those nifty bennies that safer, tamer jobs offer. Like a long life. In fact, at twenty-six, Sydney Kildare is the oldest runner in Anchorage, and she's just a few runs shy of her goal of retiring somewhere hot and sunny. And vampire-free.

Unfortunately for Sydney, one of her runs lands her smack in the middle of a vampire turf war, and as excellent as Sydney is at staying off vampire radar in normal situations, the grim fact is that they are the ultimate predators. If they focus their attention on finding you and using you, you get found and used. For whatever nefarious purposes they have.

Well, either that or you get real dead, and that would definitely put a crimp in Sydney's retirement plans.


Novellas and short-length novels are often hit-or-miss with me not so much because of what's written on the pages, but because of what isn't. Novellas such as this one, which appealed to me on a lot of levels, can still leave me feeling like I was missing something from the read. When the story is especially promising, or the characters particularly likable, as was the case here, I can often feel very frustrated by the end.

I loved Sydney, and the gritty, dangerous life she's living as a vampire runner. Her character, which is nicely rounded out with several quirks and peccadilloes to make her interesting, had enough heart and inner strength to make her an easy champion for the series. The brief but tragic glimpses into her past were especially nice. I loved Malcolm, too, though I still don't feel like I've got a complete handle on his character just yet.

The world they inhabit felt fresh and original, and the amount of world-building was excellent for novella-length fiction. For all that goodness, though, I felt several key elements of the external conflict lacked the definition and explanation necessary to make it really work for me.

The bulk of the plot conflict revolves around Sydney's significance to the vampire community in general and the master vampire Bronson in particular, but I never really felt that the importance of her job and her uniqueness in doing it had been defined well enough to allow me to accept the amount of effort spent in targeting her. Because of that, and despite how much fun her being targeted was to read, the reasons behind it fell flat, which crippled the plot for me.

I was okay with the abrupt ending and lack of resolution to a big portion of the external conflict, though, which surprised me. Maybe the fact that I had the "first" book in the series to read at the end of this "prequel novella" tempered my feelings in that regard. I will say this, though, I can't imagine, given where and how this novella concluded, that reading the "first" book in the series would be a good idea without first reading this "prequel." This story just contains too much groundwork for a world and conflict that, if not resolved in this story has to at least be given some attention in the next.

With Sydney's appeal as the heroine, and the intensely awesome burgeoning relationship between her Malcolm, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what Summers can do with it all in a full-length novel. Using this novella as a measuring stick, this series has a ton of potential to rock my Happy Reader buttons in all the right ways.