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"Bloodlust" by KMB (mind control) 9, 7, 4
"Bloodlust" by KMB (KMB_76@yahoo.com). Guest review by BillyG (hayden@mindless.com). In attempting to review "Bloodlust," it helps to type the story. It's guise as a modern day vampire story notwithstanding, it's really a mind control (MC), non-consensual (NC) horror story that has almost nothing to do with anything remotely sexy. There are intermittent sex scenes here and there - brief, violent, episodes of rape - that are made less disturbing by the stereotypical technique of MC stories. The evil guy, a pathologically disturbed vampire, simply looks at his victims and they succumb to his desires. That's it. After his ritual rape and blood draining, they - his victims, good-looking women of course - later arise from their death to be his slaves. His small army of vampire slaves becomes too big to know without a program. Indeed, the story labors with too many characters, few, save the vampire, who emerge as identifiable people. More believable and likable are a cast of characters that comprise the police who, blood-drained dead bodes aside, don't have a clue. One suspects the police will either stumble into the case or, more likely, be pulled in. One of the problems I had with this story is that it takes a long time for anything much to happen. Actually, this isn't a story, it's a short book at - 300K bytes and 163 pages, but unfortunately, not the type of tale that pulls you along. While there's a clear-cut villain, there's no concomitant identifiable hero, at least in the first half of the novella. The vampire's MO is overworked. He's evil and arrogant and impossibly strong. We're left with the suspicion that the "good guys" will probably win, but only through blind luck. They'll muddle their way through to some stunted partial victory. For the NC, MC, violence-loving fans, this may work. For the vampire fans, this is no Anne Rice story. Mostly, it becomes tedious. Ratings for "Bloodlust" Athena (technical quality): 9 Venus (plot & character): 7 (Too many characters) BillyG (appeal to reviewer): 4 (Might have done better in alt.horror.) |