Review: Blood Rights - Kristen Painter

Series: House of Comarré #1
Genre: Help! What is it really... UF/PNR hybrid? Gothic/ mystery
Pages: 416
Published: October 1, 2011
Publisher: Orbit
Review by Lis

Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarré—a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the mortal world…and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks. Now Chrysabelle and Malkolm must work together to stop a plot to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. If they fail, a chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen will threaten to reign.

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B. sent this book over because the library was evil and not lending her an e-reader. While the blurb makes this book sound pretty cool, me, myself and I had several head shaking, growling, sighing and even hair pulling moments. At some point I just wanted to step into this book and shake some sense into the main characters and scream: can we get our priorities straight here? In theory this book is not all that bad. In practice, this book is just not my eye of newt in the witches ‘cauldron. Guess, now you want to know why that is ey?

Blood Rights is the story of Chrysabelle – a falsely accused of murder comarré (she feeds vampires) – and Malkolm – an outcast who’s cursed. They are the main character along with an unbelievable evil villainess Tatiana in this lengthy story that lacks momentum. 

Chrysabelle is a comarré, a special breed that feeds the vampire nobility. All is fine and dandy is this world of lies and secrets until the vampire she feeds ends up permanently dead. Now she’s on the run in the world of humans where she meets Malkolm, who is burdened with his own secrets and very much cursed. The first half of this story is made up of their endless arguing on whether or not Mal should help and whether or not Chrys should leave and be a big girl and find out on her own. 

While the story itself is not entirely bad, it lacks a bit of pacing and momentum. It focuses too much one thing and not too much on the other. Fortunately once Twit and Twat make their minds up, things go better and the story picks up. This makes the story a lot easier to read. 

I know, I know, I’m always criticizing how some story should have been expanded more and how there is not enough story. This is actually the other way around. While not bad, this story would have benefitted if it was a little more compact. 

In itself the world of the comarré and the vampires is not entirely badly written. There is a lot of world building and background. A fact I very much enjoyed reading. 

Just like the world building is not bad, the characters itself are not bad either. They are well written, just not likable. In fact, it would be better if they kept their mouth shut. Once they team up in the second half, they are a lot more likeable. There is a not quite romance between them. I kept wondering if there would be more, but the story focuses more on the mystery than the romance. 

All in all, not a bad story, just not my thing. However, if you like a mystery, bickering character, a bad villain and an intriguing world, this story might just be your thing. 

---On a not review related side note, I wanted to thank you for all your comments! I always read them, but lately I haven’t had time to reply to them as faithfully as B. always does. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your comments :-) ---