Review: Fangland by John Marks

Title: Fangland

Author: John Marks
Genre: Vampire, horror, suspense
Age Level: Adult
Publication: 2007
Source: Crazy Book Tours

Summary: Evangeline Harker, producer for a popular news show, The Hour, is sent to Transylvania to investigate a renowned crime boss, Torgu. She discovers that Torgu is not who... or what... he seems, and she is in grave danger. Back home in New York, months have gone by with no word from Evangeline who has mysteriously disappeared. Then she shows up, wandering in Transylvania with total memory loss. Once she returns, very strange things start happening at the office of The Hour, including strange sounds on their recordings, the appearance of large mysterious crates at the office, and very odd and frightening behavior from several of the employees. Evangeline, though frightened, knows that the dangerous Torgu must be involved, and that he's in New York. This has been hailed as a modern retelling of Dracula.

My Thoughts: Okay... how to begin. Well, this story was quite disorienting for me... not from fear though, like is intended, but from total confusion. This book was a bit of a jumbled, dragging mess and very strange, though not in a good way, because believe me, I LOVE strange and different novels, just not this one. The characters were not well drawn out, and I felt no connection to, or understanding of, any of them. So much happened in this story, and much of it made no sense and left me with a feeling of "wtf?!", such as Evangeline's strange striptease/seduction of Torgu in order to save her life in a moment of danger which made him run off for some unknown reason. The vampires didn't really seem like typical vampires, more like some random combination of vampire/monster/creature of some sort. Anyways, this book was really quite slow and took me far too long to read, as I never really wanted to read more than a few pages at a time. Much as this book didn't capture my attention, and confused the heck out of me, I did want to know the ending. I do give the author props for stepping out of the norm, and shooting for something different; it just didn't work for me, and mostly left me with a feeling of "hmm?!"

Rating: 1.5/5