To Walk the Night by ES Moore

ESMoore-Walk the NightSo, I’m on a big UF kick right now. I also love vampire stories (hey, to me they aren’t overdone. *wink*).  To Walk the Night by E.S. Moore was a decent addition to the genre and to vampire stories.

Even a vampire has to face her inner demons…

Kat Redding is the very thing she hunts: a vampire, thirsting for blood, capable of killing any creature unlucky enough to get in her path. The difference is, Kat kills her own kind in order to protect human Purebloods. She’s good at what she does. Good enough to earn the nickname Lady Death—and the enmity of every bloodthirsty being around. But now a vampire Count is intent on merging his House with a werewolf cult to create a force of terrifying power.

Kat can’t allow that to happen. Even if it means taking on a den of weres and a vampire more ruthless than any she’s encountered before. She has the weapons, the skill, and a few allies. But that may not be enough to eliminate the Count before her own dark nature rises to the surface—and costs her whatever is left of her humanity…

A vampire vampire-hunter named Kat? Hmmm, why yes, count me in on reading this story! However, the play on the name and an affinity for silver knives is pretty much where the similarities to Jeaniene Frost’s Cat and Ms. Moore’s Kat mostly end.  Kat is dang tough, no doubt, but even she has her soft spot and emotions that she doesn’t even let show when she’s alone and no one is looking.  Kat has a bad past, the past that led her to becoming a vampire.  It’s why she now kills her kind. It is also what leads her to helping the Luna Cult when they request her assistance in taking down a vampire house.  I liked Kat, but I wish we could have seen someone break through that shell.  No heroine should have no one she can lean on.  Kat has her housemate, a human she saved and is one of very very few who know who she really is and her haunted past, but she won’t even let him in.  Hopefully as this series develops, someone (and there could be a potential person that develops at the end of To Walk the Night) will be there and penetrate that hardened shell she wears around herself.

To Walk the Night was paced fairly evenly.  There were parts that were slow and not necessarily due to world building.  I can lose interest fairly quickly when the pace slows and I did find myself skipping or rapidly skimming pages/paragraphs.  I never felt I was actually missing anything important when the plot picked back up.  There also didn’t feel like there was a lot of world-building to be done.  The story is set in what appears to be modern day, but in a much darker realm.  Vampires and weres weren’t always out in the open and the story is set a good few decades after the supes made their presence known.  What I did miss is any indication as how a vampire or were is created.  They aren’t born and throughout To Walk the Night, the blood of a vamp/were is referred to as “tainted” and humans are known as “Purebloods”; but I never read the “how”.  It may be small, but I feel this is important, gives more depth the story.  Vampires and weres are not the romanticized creatures so often featured and are made to be the villains of old.  I would love more backstory here, and felt Ms. Moore failed to give us that. However, To Walk the Night is only the first book in this new series, so hopefully we’ll get more information as the series progresses.

Overall, To Walk the Night was a decent book.  I’m definitely intrigued enough to read the next book, Tainted Night, Tainted Blood, which is due out in July, 2012. I like Kat and am wondering what kind of trouble she’ll find herself in next and whether that nugget of information about a possible love interest pans out.

Read Order:
To Walk the Night
Tainted Night, Tainted Blood


 

About Nicole 146 Articles
Attorney by day, Publicist for Barclay Publicity and reviewer/LE (assistant) editor by night. I'm a huge book nerd and love to read. I have 2 dogs, both Labrador retriever mixed breeds, who are very rotten and think they run the house. Let's not lie, they totally do, I just can't them know it ha ha! My usual genre is romance or urban fantasy. I love all things having to do with paranormal, with the occasional good contemp/BDSM/erotica thrown in to spice it all up.