Sisters of the Night : The Angry Angel

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Summary: The shining light in historical horror
Review: As a child, Kalene of Salonica was blessed by visions that her family believed came from the Militant Angels. No one heeded her Aunt Iacasta's warnings that the visions could just as easily have come from the fallen ones. When Kalene's family is driven out of their land by the Turks, they travel to the locale where the angel in the vision dictates they go.

In Belgrade, during a dark moment, her angel appears in the flesh. He turns out to be Count Dracula, who is determined to have Kalene join him as one of his queenly undead. Will Kalene have the ability to resist the allure of the living dead or will she shed her humanity and become one of his vile minions?

Anyone who reads SISTERS OF THE NIGHT: THE ANGRY ANGEL will quickly understand why Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has written over 50 bestsellers and has a large fan following in several diverse genres. Her current dark fantasy is the first of a trilogy based on the "Three Weird Sisters" who appear in Stoker's Dracula and is quite simply one of the best Vampire novels to be published in several years. Fans of horror, especially vampiric tales, will want to read this book and the subsequent next two tales of the "Three Weird Sisters".

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: No words..
Review: Fans of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro may not like this book as much as they did her Saint Germain titles. I didn't. I am not a fan of dark vampire novels, like Anne Rice's or this one. I much prefer the vampire as anti-hero, for example, Saint Germain or Tanya Huff's Henry Fitzroy.

When I finished this one, I put it down and tried to figure out what my overall impression was. I think I was disappointed. I expected more from Ms. Yarbro, since I have read and reread all her Saint Germain novels.

Still, if you're a fan of Anne Rice's Lestat, I think you'll enjoy The Angry Angel.

Rating:
Summary: Very very dark
Review: Fans of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro may not like this book as much as they did her Saint Germain titles. I didn't. I am not a fan of dark vampire novels, like Anne Rice's or this one. I much prefer the vampire as anti-hero, for example, Saint Germain or Tanya Huff's Henry Fitzroy.

When I finished this one, I put it down and tried to figure out what my overall impression was. I think I was disappointed. I expected more from Ms. Yarbro, since I have read and reread all her Saint Germain novels.

Still, if you're a fan of Anne Rice's Lestat, I think you'll enjoy The Angry Angel.

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Summary: No words..
Review: I am still reading this book, but I would like it to never end.... Only few books are capable of touching divinity...and here is one.. M.

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Summary: A tedious text.
Review: The promise of this book was great. It was so tedious to get past the first 150 pages that I almost gave up repeatedly. Finally, it improved and Dracula entered the scene. I thought I would scream in the beginning while the book dribbled on about the "militant angels". A little of that went a long way.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable read....but
Review: This is my first novel from this particular writer so I was a bit weary....especially all my vampire reading have been from Anne Rice novels.

This novel I thought was beautifully written and had such great detail. I could clearly see the Kelene's family and could relate to them on many levels. The father and mother to me ver yvery well thoughtout and described, along with the other minor characters. Kelene's character throughout most of the book was rather sad/tragic and interesting.

But one problem I did have with the book was it's treatment of Dracula's and Kelene's relationship. I thought the character of Dracula was well done...he was ominous and tragically sad at the same time, and it left me wanting more about him throughout the book. Iknow this is the first of the series so I will eargly await more info. But for his relationship with Kelene.....during the first couple parts of the book..it was very good...and griping, but towards the end it just became repetitive. During the whole journey to his castle it seems to me that thye were repeating the same scene over and over again. I felt these last couple of chapters could have been cut short.

Overall, I was pleased with this book and look forward to the next installment.

Rating:
Summary: A promising novella maybe but not a full length book
Review: When I first received this book, I looked forward with anticipation to reading it. 20 pages into it, my enthusiasm was dampened mainly by the use of the phrase "Militant Angel" in every other sentence (are there no editors anymore?). However, I thought if I persevered, it was bound to get better and it did for the most part. This book has so much promise, so much potential that is lurking just below the surface, you just want to scream at the author to keep working on it, to reach for those hidden details and fleshed out storylines. As it stands now, "The Angry Angel" could be shortened by a third or more and be a very good novella but as a book it loses some of its punch in the padding. This is probably due to the publisher making a trilogy out of this but I'm going to bet the story of all three "sisters" could be told in one longer book. I will probably check out the next one but from a library before I buy. To summarize, not a bad book but one that disappoints as much as it entertains.

Rating:
Summary: A promising novella maybe but not a full length book
Review: When I first received this book, I looked forward with anticipation to reading it. 20 pages into it, my enthusiasm was dampened mainly by the use of the phrase "Militant Angel" in every other sentence (are there no editors anymore?). However, I thought if I persevered, it was bound to get better and it did for the most part. This book has so much promise, so much potential that is lurking just below the surface, you just want to scream at the author to keep working on it, to reach for those hidden details and fleshed out storylines. As it stands now, "The Angry Angel" could be shortened by a third or more and be a very good novella but as a book it loses some of its punch in the padding. This is probably due to the publisher making a trilogy out of this but I'm going to bet the story of all three "sisters" could be told in one longer book. I will probably check out the next one but from a library before I buy. To summarize, not a bad book but one that disappoints as much as it entertains.

Rating:
Summary: Has Yarbro read Stoker's text?
Review: While at the 1997 Vampire Con in Los Angeles, I was very interested to learn of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's pending series Sisters of the Night consisting of three books which would provide voices for Dracula's brides. Yarbro would tell readers how the three brides came to be turned and their stories would be told. I was excited at this prospect despite that I usually dislike such vaults into poetic license (such as Alexandra Ripley's Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind from Mass Market Paperback 1992 and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea 1996 from W.W. Norton & Company). I find they do not represent the vision of the original text, and, rather, operate in a direct affront to it (namely Marie Kiraly's Mina: the Dracula Story Continues from Mass Market Paperback 1996-who, when I asked her what she did to prepare to write Mina, responded that she simply "thought" and did not even have the respect for Stoker or the character of Mina to read the original text. For shame, Ms. Kiraly! But, as we know, is reflected in the mediocre work that she produced). I had hopes that Yarbro, based on her Saint-Germaine series, would have a bit more panache than other similarly assuming writers.

The first of the series, The Angry Angel (Avon, 1998) is an interesting work. The writing is fantastic, with gorgeous landscapes and interesting characters. I thoroughly enjoyed the Romanian proverbs and quotes Yarboro offered at each chapter opening. However, to cast Dracula as a psychic, sadistic pedophile? Yarbro completely misses her mark in representing Dracula, and instead writes a fetish text with nice scenery. While I come to care about Kelene and her family, I am too distracted by the ill formation of Dracula to much care for the text as an elaboration of Stoker's story. One of the most detracting, annoying plot points that gives Yarbro away as having not truly read the text from where she hopes to leap is that she makes Dracula fatally vulnerable to sunlight. Dear readers, vampires withering into dust when struck by sunlight originated in our collective conscious in 1937 when Mr. Bela Lugosi penetrated to our hearts' darkest corners as The Count to which all others would be compared. Stoker's Dracula, as emulated in Francis Ford Coppola's film representation, does not die when exposed to the sun. Vampires, according to Stoker, merely lose their superhuman powers during the daylight hours (they are weakest at noon and strongest at midnight). Vampires, during the day, are just regular Joes.

As for Kelene as a character, I'm not terribly impressed, either. She is marked as the blond vampire bride, about which Stoker's Jonathan remarks, "I seemed to somehow know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where" (p. 38, Bantam edition). She is the first female vampire who will approach Jonathon and lick "her lips like an animal" after she finishes gloating over him. I am to believe that Jonathon Harker will find this slip of a woman-child "deliberate[ly] voluptuous"? (p. 39). Are we then to see Harker as the same pedophile Yarbro casts for Dracula? I think not.

Kelene just doesn't measure up and the fair girl who is "the first" and responds to Dracula's threats with "a laugh of ribald coquetry" (p. 40). For as much as I enjoyed the mechanics of Yarbro's text: the striking imagery, the creative mind who provided the "fair girl" a name, a history, a mind, I am even less impresses with Yarbro for sexualizing and erotisizing a pre-pubescent girl. Yuck! I can only hope that for the next two books in the series, that Yarbro actually bothers to read all of Stoker's text and does some forward thinking before writing the tales of the remaining two vamps who require more ritual and fanfare to kill than the Count himself.