Deadworld

Deadworld is another one that looks like an Urban Fantasy Detective Romance, but is clearly just a Romance, borrowing from the UFDR genre. I like it since it so clearly shows that however much you borrow, you have to decide whether you’re a Romance or not, and there’s a big difference.

The cover is a woman with leather pants and a halter top posing with a gun in an alley. No men, but I’m sure the next printing will add one. So that wasn’t a clue, but maybe the acknowledgement to the local RWA (Romance Writers of America) should have clued me in.

The borrowed elements are checked off pretty quickly: the main character works for the FBI with a semi-psychic partner on X-Files type cases. She has serious personal problems making her incapable of having a stable relationship wih a man. The secret supernatural stuff is, well:

The villian is a vampire, sort of. These vampires don’t have fangs – they get the blood out with mundane means. But they can teleport at will, and the mind-control is jacked-up to be instant and irresistable (but don’t worry – they forget to use it during the big fight scene.) They also have no weakness to sunlight, holy ground, stakes to the heart and so on. And they actually get more energy feeding on ghosts. But sure, they’re vampires and not the necromancers which they clearly are.

The male lead is a good vampire who only drinks artificial blood. Real blood is pretty easy to get, but whatever. He was also a sheriff in the old West. And a quirky private investigator with a sexy psychic assistant and bombshell vampire best friend. He’s also rich, owning the company that makes the fake blood. You’d think he sells it to all the other good vampires, but that would be overthinking things.

He also owns a 5-star Italian restaurant, and is an execellent cook himself. In case you were wondering, the book explicitly describes how hot this makes her. I just want to see him on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. Chef Ramsay can ask him “do you feel employees are afraid to come to you with problems, you being a vampire?” and “answer honestly, how many customers have you mind-controlled into not bothering you about undercooked linguine?”

In case you haven’t put it together, the book does it for you. He’s referred to only as one of: cowboy vampire, sheriff, vampire PI or vampire cowboy sheriff. I was going to be impressed, except a quick search on “Vampire Cowboy” shows a book written a month later, May 2011, named “The Zillionare vampire cowboy’s secret werewolf babies.”

 

One way you can tell its a Romance is the sheer amount of pointless small talk. When she questions the leading man as her murder suspect, we learn what kind of coffee they all drink, who brings it, how good they thought it was and what types of pastry they all like. The millionare cowboy vampire likes “very strong” coffee. That sounds cooler than saying he likes French Press, which is how you’d actually order it. The FBI women like their coffee the same way they did in the previous two scenes. Later on, she accepts tea (from the FBI psychologist who warns she can’t outrun her personal demons, but allows her to stay on the case.)

After the questioning, we get more small talk with her partner about how hot the guy was, how hot his assistant was (the main character’s now lesbian assistant psychic partner gets to have sex once before being killed. No! You murdered my partner, just when she came out to me!!) But it’s fine, since dead psychics always come back as helpful ghosts. This sounds like the origin story of “FBI agent with ghost partner,” but I assume the author’s dog ate those pages.

It’s a pretty typical romance: lonely, incomplete heroine meets mysterious man; is suspicious at first, but slowly sees how studly he is and comes to rely on him. She’s tricked into spilling her deepest secrets (as he shows her how powerful vampire hynotism is,) but he accepts and appreciates her flaws. He has to put her to bed and fantasizes about taking advantage, but doesn’t. Then her love helps him overcome his greatest weakness (he doesn’t think he can beat the bad guy. Yes, her role in killing the bad guy is only to inspire her man. Evil vampire even dies off-camera, his purpose accomplished.)

My favorite part is when they meet the ghost of his dead wife. She gives him permission to move on to a new woman, and adds that she and the other ghosts approve of his new girlfriend, then disolves into spirit power.

Ah, let me explain. The final showdown is where the bad guy has trapped the ghosts of his victims, drinking them as needed for power (but he’s a vampire, not a necromancer, dammit.) I guess they could break a window to let the ghosts out, but whatever. The bad guy very, very slowly calls one ghost at a time to suck from (I guess mind-control works on dead people.) The good guys watch, since it’s just rude to attack people before they’re fully powered-up. Then the ghost best friend and the cowboy PI’s ghost best friend (who isn’t dead, but we’re long past asking questions like that) help him to accept the help of all the ghosts who believe in him, saving the day.

 

As far as an UFDR, this fails in a lot of ways. No one cares about the secret history of these vampires (in fact, the teaser for the next book involves an opiate-addicted cop possessed by some new type of vengeful ghost.) The book teases at “how would an ancient vampire survive in a modern world,” but then just drops it – evil vampire is apparently also rich, and has an evil chauffer, but that’s all we get. Ghosts can’t affect the physical world unless the plot requires it.

The heroine doesn’t drive the plot, doesn’t grow except to realize she can love the leading man, and there are no subplots involving consoling her best friend who got dumped that also affect the main plot. There’s no approaching problems the way a woman would, with empathy and sudden rage at being treated like a helpless chikita.

The plot just moves ahead, having them react to evil guy. Vampire PI has been locked in a recurring struggle with him for 100+ years, but just dribbles out things during a chase which he happened to remember. This is all fine for a Romance – the plot is supposed to be bland and generic enough so you can focus on their burgeoning desire. But it’s the opposite of a world-building, character-driven “finding her way” woman-led story.

The spine says “Kensington Urban Fantasy.” Wikipedia says Kensington also has a Romance line, but doesn’t mention the Urban Fantasy one, and Kensington’s web site doesn’t mention lines at all. Even so, someone is probably getting fired over this mix-up. I feel bad, but if an editor couldn’t tell this was a Romance, maybe they should change jobs.

[Game]Clash of Zombies

I enjoy Clash of Zombies for its incoherence. Clearly it has a zombie theme. It’s also science fiction — your base is a crashed spaceship which the upgrades are repairing. It also has comic book superheroes. If you’re looking for the eloquent way they combine, you can stop. Mechanics-wise, you might assume it’s a boring clone, but it tries some new things, including a new idea for monetizing.

As for the zombie theme, your 3rd resource is Survivors. The generator is a radio tower calling people fleeing from zombies to come towards your camp. That’s cool, but it means you’ll later be spending humans. In the mini-game where you defend your base, the computer attackers are zombies. You can capture some of them for 1-time use later. That’s the only way to use zombies in your attacks. Out of all the heroes, only 5 are zombies. Except 1 is really a mutant from Resident Evil, another is Stitches the blobby hulk from World of Warcraft, and the last is zombie president Trump. The cut-scene at the start shows a base being overrun with zombies and tells you to rescue some guy from it. I never saw anything more about that.

Sci-Fi-wise, the whole base is futuristic. Defenses are blasters and lasers. One troop have an energy blade and one is a robot. The dragon is a huge anti-grav pod.

Idea-wise, it’s a mixed bag. Some seem pointless. “Arena” mode has you attack one base it picks, for Arena points. They give weekly prizes. I don’t think that adds much to the game. You can attack a computer base where the HQ has about ten million health, using all your heroes but no troops, and the damage you inflict stays. There’s a second defense mode where you’re attacked by only heroes, not troops. Nothing wrong those things, but they’re not all that fun.

As for good ideas, defense mode allows you to assign builders to repair buildings under attack. It’s somewhat fun, it gives you something to do while you watch.

The defensive buildings have customizations, unique to each type: a stun chance, damage over time, power-up nearby defenses, and so on. That’s some nice extra effort. But they can only be bought with special currency which can only be bought with cash. That’s pretty much the worst thing to do in a Freemium game — a big, obvious “I bought this and am better than you”.

I suppose once you have superman fighting zombies on an alien planet in the year 2300, you’re not expecting the rest of the game to be a well-crafted masterpiece.