Today’s special is a Daily Double: A Rant and a Review
The V Unit by Max Vos
(MM, milthrill, dark urban fantasy, paranormal/vamps).
Only a select few in the human world knew of the existence of the V Unit, a small group of highly trained Marines – who happened to be vampires.
And it would have stayed that way.
But when events in the vampire world threatened the stability of the human world, the powers that be called for the unit’s specialized services. An intrepid war correspondent who’d seen more than his fair share of fighting, stumbles across the unit by accident, and is drawn into their world.
Bronson has no problem with that, given that he gets to spend time with a hunky Marine, Sarge. Although he won’t remember any of this when they’re through.
At least, that was the plan…
Thoughts, aka Review:
The V Unit was a good try. It kept to the vamp mythos without resorting to woowoo tricks to make it different (sparklies, daywalking stuff, the usual), except for one decidedly male thing—I’m still cogitating on that one.
There were manly men, danger, modest suspense, thriller elements, some lighter humorous bits. Unfortunately, the plot was a gimme from the get-go but with dark urban/paranormal milthrill you are limited to some extent by the genre.
The characters were blessedly free of the usual alpha-male, tortured, emo-spouting types. They were guys, military guys with skills, skills put to use in the service of their country by agreeing to be turned/vamperized (I made that up) into a fearsome fighting unit not even the President of the US knows about. The journalist, Bronson, is brilliant, tough, and not the sleaze the fifth estate usually produces in this type of book.
Sarge, the leader of these very special forces, and Bronson are attracted to each other, one thing leads to many others, and a good time is had by all, in several combinations and permutations.
It’s a very solid 4-star read if you like guy books that aren’t real heavy on logic (I actually wanted more milthrill, some techie stuff, liking sniper rifles ‘n such, but oh well). You have vamp politics, internal strife within the unit (there’s always one emo-guy who can’t deal), a pending war between factions in the vamp community, lusty guys getting it on…
Escapism, pure and simple.
Let’s segue into the RANT portion of the entertainment. I’m suggesting The V Unit could qualify for 4-star for being a decent BEACH READ, smiles all around … but (big but) this really belongs in 2-star territory.
Why?
The formatting sucked, as in making it *very* difficult to read on the Kindle Fire (and it was a KDP download, not a Calibre mock-up). Sentences and paragraphs mushed together to the point where you couldn’t tell who was speaking, even with dialog tags. There were no page breaks so Chapter headings slammed into the paragraph above… There were font issues, issues with italics, yada yada yada. In short: it was really annoying.
And editing? Apparently the author didn’t need no stinkin’ editing… Le sigh.
Another case of some assembly required—actually this puppy needs a do-over.
If I spend my hard earned $$, I want, no wait … I deserve a quality product, assembled with care, to professional standards.
Now Part Deux of Ranty McRant:
After browsing some of the reviews, I looked at the 1* offerings for shits ‘n giggles as they say. What made me chuckle, reading the Zon reviews, was screeching from the peanut gallery about how readers aren’t warned there’s a rape scene (triggers anyone?—there were several complaints in this department), another didn’t like big ugly hairy men…
*headdesk*
It’s a guy book. Written for guys. If you look at the cover and tell me that’s a face only a mother could love, I might not argue with you. But guys look at guys differently.
As for those (insert really bad language here) triggers: it has beheadings, drawing and quartering… Disemboweling. Rape. Some pretty brutal stuff. Medieval even.
It’s a MM vamp milthrill … hello?
Sometimes I wish the MM genre hadn’t gotten trendy and attracted the Harlequin crowd who want chicks with dicks and HEAs.
Unicorns farting rainbows.
I’m going to hazard a guess an ox or two was gored here.
So … go ahead.
But if you’re nice to me, we can talk about older vamps and size…
Or you can read it yourself and make up your own mind.
BUY LINK: KINDLE
