Maria the Wanted

One of the benefits of being a vampire is not the insatiable lust for human blood, but the eternal life. It can make meeting other vampires a tad strange as that 25-year-old looking person may actually be 100 years old, or a 1000. They try to act all modern, but they always have that whiff of the Renaissance about them, but when a kick arse Vampire is born, she will no longer be the victim and starts to take the fight to those that would exploit the innocent.

Newly pregnant and with dreams of escaping to America, Maria works nights in a factory, a dangerous job, but one that pays that little bit more, but that danger is not worth what happened one night as the boss left the building, locking the doors. Maria and her fellow workers are locked in with three men, or beings that seem to be men. All the workers die, except for Maria who is spared, but cursed to live as a Vampire. Maria swears to protect those who cannot defend themselves, but in doing so begins to reveal a millennium spanning conspiracy that involves not just humans and vampires.

There are hundreds of vampire novels, and I have read plenty of them, there is something about these monsters that appeal. In the case of Maria the Wanted by V Castro, she appeals more than most as a character who is a killer, but also someone you can sympathise with. She never asked to have this unlife but given the opportunity she refrains from killing as much she can unless they deserve it. Instead, she keeps her head down, until she starts to really see the injustice around her and realises that she now has the power to do something about it.

This is Act One, a dark, snappy tale about a vigilante with power. It is a noble book, one that has a brooding noir feel to it. Set in Mexico City it has a different feel and then Act Two begins to approach.

Act Two starts in the first act, Maria survives because she wants to know why she was turned, and who that vampire was. This in turn leads to an international conspiracy that takes the story and leads it away from the hard edges of Mexico to Las Vegas and then England. The number of characters expand, never becoming quite the ensemble, but moves away from just Maria’s story. This was a shame. The softened edges and world of vampires made me think of, dare I saw, Twilight, and they are not books that I would want to revisit.

Do you want a focused, individual story, or an epic world spanning tale? In Maria you get a bit of both. I personally preferred the opening more personal act, it felt different and fresher. However, as the works of Anne Rice et al. will attest there is a great interest in family sagas involving vampires. There is enough in the character of Maria herself to make the book enjoyable, but it did feel like two separate styles in one.