Looking for Vampires? Check this out!

Okay. So.

Interview With The Vampire just came out on AMC+. But it's one episode weekly. What do you do in the meantime to get your sexy, queer, intelligent, suave vampire fix??

Let me tell you. Oh, let me tell you!

I stumbled into an author ages ago — on AO3, of all places. She'd written some otome game fic I'd really liked, so I kept half an eye on her. Skipping ahead quite a bit, I'm poking on Amazon, as I like to do, and she's there on their weird-ass "vella" thing. So I go and look on Amazon for Kindle "Evelyn Shine", because dude.

She. Has. BOOKS. Not just one, but an entire series! Even better, they're vampire fiction. Score one for me! Then, I look a little closer. Not only are they vampire fiction, they're queer vampire fiction! My cynical heart is cautiously optimistic. You know the tropes, the ones we all see when there are queer characters in mainstream books. Hence, cautious.

But I remember liking this author, so I grab book 1. Eyes of Amber is set in Paris in the late 1800s. The book opens with a bang, and we are immediately shown the dynamic of our vampiric leads. They're attractive men, certainly, but they aren't identical. They aren't interchangeable. Lorenzo, whom we meet first, is wickedly smart, laid back, and almost indifferent-seeming. Durant, his occasional partner, is elegant, cautious, controlled, and somehow still carefree.

Enter Evayne. She's ridiculously brilliant, practical, and was born in 1989. She's the kind of interesting that brings Hedy Lamarr to mind.

Now, if you're like me, you're reading this and noting the GIANT CHRONOLOGY ISSUE. Why, yes, we're dealing in time travel as well. It's another one of those tropes, "modern woman, historical man, blah-blah," but this is really well executed. The means for travel is already established, and it's not being figured out as the book goes on.

Evayne meets our vampires, and sparks FLY. It's really kind of cool to read from her perspective, to see how the gears in her head work to make sense of "woke up in 2019, now I'm when?!?" The men are within the realm of "normal" for their time period, but also show influences from other places and times — which is also easily understandable.

The story is one of men-meet-woman, with elements of the noble self-sacrifice, as well as the "why choose?!". While the majority of the book is not as "we have gallons of blood on hand here" as Interview has been to date, there are very few opportunities to forget exactly what these men are — and how that will come to impact Evayne as she has to decide whether she will stay with the vampires she has come to adore... or return to her own timeline where she belongs.

The ending is... nothing short of spectacular. Believe me when I tell you you'll want book two, Dreams of Emerald, on hand when you're done. This is an epic love story across multiple species, times, and places. It is, in turns, swoon-worthy and heart-wrenching, and it is a fantastic way to fill the void when you're jonesing for vampires, especially ones where the mythology is a creative twist on what we all know.

This Wench rates Eyes of Amber: