Review (Part 1): 'Twilight's Edge Volume One', by Heather Renee* Holden

(Sorry Heather, I'm not smart enough to do the little thing above the 'e' in Renee.)

'Twilight's Edge, Volume One' earns a Happy Hamster rating, because I will be recommending it to other readers.:-) The first installment of a serial about teenaged diabetic vampire hunter Raven Radley, 'Twilight's Edge' is definitely a story aimed at teens rather than kids,* with some mature content (high level of violence, non-graphic sexual situations, death, no swearing/cursing that I noticed though). I gave this story a reader enjoyment rating of four out of five, and a technical rating of four out of five. If you like a gritty vampire tale that doesn't stint on the violence and is filled with witty one-liners, then why not preview this story?

*Depending on reader sensitivity/maturity/preference, and/or parental decision-making... ;-).


Raven Radley has type 1 diabetes; in other words, she's the opposite of someone on the Atkins diet. *They* go out of their way to eliminate carbs - hopefully they'll donate the carb sources they don't need to her, because she needs to keep her blood sugar up.
If her blood sugar level falls too low, she won't be able to concentrate, and she needs to concentrate, because vampires keep trying to kill her, and some of them are smart.

Sure, since the mysterious 'Blessing' that made her the new slayer, she's developed her own unearthly powers, but the mysterious Vampire Master who keeps sending his stooges after her doesn't seem too concerned. After all, he only has to be lucky once.
And it's not like he's going to run out of vamps any time soon - he's got all the cemeteries in Crescent Valley to choose from, and they're filling up at quite a rate.

The Vampire Master has plans. He's going to do a ritual - he's been looking forward to it for rather a long time. Raven, a practising Wiccan, knows all about rituals - they're life-affirming events that tap and direct the positive energy in the universe. Not this ritual, though. This one will allow the terminally insomniac vampires to overturn the curse that turns them to ash in the sunlight, so they'll have twice as much hunting time. Raven has to stop them, before they slaughter her and her friends, or worse, capture her alive. The Vampire Master wants her alive so he can turn her into a vampire.

Slayers-turned-bloodsucker are famous for their power, their pure evil, and their ability to be able to cancel that pesky curse forever. If Raven's arch enemy gets his way, regular cravings for fruitjuice will be the least of her worries...

I will post part 2 later/tomorrow. In the mean-time, here's Heather Holden's website.