Jade is a vampire slayer, though she denies it. She comes from a family of vampire slayers, with the inherited ability to sense vampires or blood nearby. But slayers are the hired assassins of the supernatural world, and Jade is through with it. She wants to make a positive difference, so she has left them behind to join the Magical Response Task Force. Teaming up with wizards, were-beings, and vampires, they form an elite force that patrols the streets of Magiford to take on any supernatural rowdies who disturb the peace.
But Jade is not really accepted by her teammates They assume nothing good about her attempts to talk. When she approaches two teammates, who are exchanging friendly insults, “My movement killed Brody and Tetiana’s verbal sparring. Their smiles disappeared when they glanced at me.” (p. 6) What makes it worse is Jade has a phobia of socializing. Her attempts are pathetic, whether with her teammates or ordinary humans in her apartment complex, ending in silence or a few words that don’t sound friendly. When a neighbor holding a baby and a diaper bag tries to talk to her, she just mumbles. Then when the neighbor struggles her way into an elevator, Jade is belatedly able to talk. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I should have—and she’s gone.” (p.74) Going back to the Task Force, Jade has to be careful when she bleeds, because her blood can be deadly to vampires.
Jade turns out to be quite effective. She has enough dexterity that she can climb a chain link fence with a dagger in either hand, then perch on the edge of an open dumpster. She also seems to sprint farther than a normal human can. And when six insects the size of cars invade from the fae realm, six members of the Task Force fight them. Jade doesn’t want to use her handgun, since humans are around, so she stabs two of them to death by herself.
The running gag/slow burn throughout the story is her relationship with an immensely old, extremely powerful vampire named Considine. Jade encounters him and wonders what he is doing in Magiford. He happens to move in next to Jade and calls himself Connor. Since Jade always wears a mask while on patrol and never reveals her name, and since Considine always has his hood scrunched together when outside so only his red eyes can be seen, they don’t recognize each other. Since Jade finds it easy to talk to vampires, they spend time together, each lying about their backgrounds. And so Jade finds someone she can get close to.
K.M. Shea’s The Lies of Vampires and Slayers kept my interest throughout. But it was not because of the quality of the storytelling. It had all to do with Jade’s personality. Her phobia of socializing is realistically described, and her fumbling attempts to do small talk are achingly realistic. This continues throughout the story, and it never gets old.
A couple of supporting characters also never get old. Tetiana is a female vampire from Ukraine. Since vampires live so long, they often do not keep up with the latest technology. When they are supposed to call in to headquarters, she always shouts into her handheld radio, because headquarters are so far away. Grove is a fairy who constantly carries potions. He offers them whenever a teammate gets hurt. Since some are poisonous concoctions he hurls at monsters, his teammates often turn him down.
So the characters are interesting, but the storytelling is not the best. Often, Shea puts in too much detail. She goes to great lengths to describe the clothing of even minor characters, including the color of each item, which just slows down the storytelling. When running with her radio, Jade notes, “I had to slow a little bit so I’d be understandable as I unhooked my radio and pressed the button so I could talk.” (p. 142) These details do not make the scenes more vivid; they just lard them down.
Also—and don’t roll your eyes at this—she often does not separate participial phrases with commas. When Grove hurls one of his potions, “It shattered on impact showering him with golden liquid.” (p. 267) We need a comma between “impact” and “showering.” This occurs constantly throughout the book, and it jerks a reader out of the story.
On a more meta level, The Lies of Vampires and Slayers is part of a shared universe. This is great for her fans, and is a reason to buy more of her books. But it does not always work smoothly. Jade’s Magical Response Task Force is part of the Curia Cloisters. Shea never defines in this particular book what that is.
But overall, Jade has an engaging personality, and the action scenes are interesting. A great plus is that the novel has no sex scenes and no swearing or foul language. I wish more urban fantasy novels were like that.
