Sunglasses After Dark: Full Blooded Collection

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Nancy A. Collins (born 10 September 1959) is a United States horror fiction writer best known for her series of vampire novels featuring her character Sonja Blue. Collins has also written for comic books, including the Swamp Thing series, Jason Vs. Leatherface, Predator: Hell Come A Walkin and her own one-shot Dhampire: Stillborn. Sonja is a tragic figure. Memories of who she was before she was turned into a vampire plague her and drive her to the edge of madness. Make no mistake though, when push comes to shove, Sonja reacts in true vampire style. To sum up, when it's good, it's very, very good, when it's bad - which is more often than not - it's utterly dreadful. Collins has written twenty novels since 1989, many of which refer to and directly include races of creatures the author calls Pretenders, monsters from myth and legend passing as human to better hunt their prey. When we first meet Sonja, she's cooped up in a loony bin and is slowly but surely starting to shrug off the drugs she's sedated with and able to figure out her predicament. Sonja's "other" is getting stronger and stronger and enables her to finally break out and into the freedom of the night, to pursue her identity and some vengeance.

Maybe I will prove myself wrong but I don't think I will finish the series. While I can see why it is a well written book, I frankly didn't like it. No not that I remember, but she really manages to deliver with this performance, the main character is a monster after all.

If there is such a things as a splatterpunk masterpiece, Nancy A. Collins has written it.”—Asimov’s Science Fiction Sometimes, context is everything. Nancy A. Collins wrote this book in the 1980's, after the rise of Anne Rice's pretty-boy, drinking-blood-as-a-metaphor-for-sex vampires. She went against that tide by making Sonja Blue the monstrous killer of older vampire stories, but forged a new path by giving her the tools and motivation to kill other monsters.

Fantastic vampire novel with not a sparkle in sight. Looking forward to reading the rest of the Sonja Blue series. But Collins' style of storytelling...in short vignettes...takes away from the character building in that we don't spend enough time in any one situation to bond with the characters. Nobody is deep enough, including Sonja herself. And I mourn that a bit because I think I could have really like some of these characters, given time and development.Nancy A. Collins's world of darkness is painted from a rich palette populated not only by vampires, but demons, ogres and other bump-in-the-nighters. All of that gore and sex does lend it a lurid air - but I want to salute Nancy Collins here, because it felt like it was trashy deliberately. Everything felt over the top that by the end I was just riding with every awful thing. Man strung up by his intestines? Not the first time, won't be the last. The sexual violence was treated almost exactly the same, too - you're horrified, it's awful, and it makes that horror sing. While Nancy A. Collins is not a "new" author by any means, you need to run, not walk, to your nearest book source and read what you've been missing.