Shadows After Dark

Rating:
Summary: Not your typical vampire novel
Review: Shadows After Dark is the story of women living in two different dimensions, on two different planets, whose lives cross and make connections. Kyril comes to Earth to discover what the strange illness is that killed her lover on her home planet. She is sure that it is something that was brought back from a previous visit. She has also been infatuated with a woman she met on a previous trip, Kathryn, who is searching for a soul mate and has been fixated on Kyril for two years after a brief meeting in a lesbian bar. What Kyril will quickly discover is that her deceased mate contracted AIDS. This is a special threat to Kyril's homeworld since all of the people there are vampires. It turns out that her people have been crossing the dimensional time line to live on Earth, and yes, occasionally feed off of its people, for centuries. Kathryn ironically is an AIDS researcher who is trying to find the cause and cure of this epidemic on her own planet. The book is about how these two join forces, become lovers and try to overcome some significant cultural differences to be with each other. It's an interesting book, but not one for those who are looking for creatures of the night who are running around draining humans and sleeping in coffins during the day. It's sort of a blend of scifi, vampirism, lesbian romance, coming together of different cultures and social awareness lecture all in one book. It's a good first novel for Crozier and the ending is open ended enough that, if she wants to, she could pick up this pair in a later book.