Item - Curse of Count Blood

This is another fairly strong entry in the series. For one thing, its protagonist is an obsessive collector -- I can kind of relate. Personal associations aside, the book strikes a good balance between internal consistency and multiple storyline options while featuring some well-written action sequences and a few nice quirky touches (like, for example, a comic artist who has retired and now paints seafood restaurant murals, and a vampire happy to sleep on a lawn chair in the basement when no coffins present themselves). Of course, there are plenty of things that are rather predictable and obvious, like a villain named Fang and the fact that the title character pronounces his w's as v's, but this doesn't detract from the adventure, nor is it inappropriate considering the horror comic book origins of the story. Really, the only thing that really struck me as bad writing while I read through the book was one sequence in which a vampire hunter has a major change of heart after seeing the ghost of her father -- it all goes by too quickly and with little explanation, seeming rather forced and rushed. While more could have been done with this, I can't complain too much about one relatively small mistake; this is a solidly enjoyable adventure overall.

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