33 A.D. by David McAfee.......Fo' Stars

I’ll refrain from straining my vocabulary: vampire books are stupid. That is until one becomes listed as free in the Kindle store and you download it.  Mix in some Romans, irritated Pharisees, some “people” condemned to live eternally with grub worms eating their flesh and a pesky Galilean rabbi named Jesus Christ, and things can get interesting.

There has been an avalanche of vampire books, which I tend to avoid as rabidly as I avoid people condemned to live eternally with grub worms gnawing their flesh. This proliferation of vamp books has caused me to eschew the genre, more than I did previously, anyway, and regard it with derision. One caveat: I read Interview with the Vampire twenty-odd years ago and thought it was good, but that is the extent of it.

Until the freebie download, 33 A.D. I am familiar with David McAfee from a writing board and thought I would help his numbers with the free download.  I went as far as even opening the book and reading the first page. Then the next, and the next.

Serendipity: this was a good book. Well written and cleverly thought out. Strong characters that you care about (even the vampire bad guys, unless you yourself are a vampire, in which case they are the good guys) and characters you can identify with (who can deny their inner Roman legionary assassin?). I cared enough to turn the page - therein proving the author did his job.

McAfee knows the period well, at least to the extent he needs to know it. There is not so much detail that the book gets bogged down and there aren’t a hundred innocuous characters to keep up with. Except for a very few places where it seems he got a bit lazy, it is a smooth read. Even to an eschewer of vampire books.

If you are a writer of vampires and your book is not stupid, I apologize. But I probably won’t read it, unless your name has a McAfee at the end of it.