No Glitter Blown

Totally loved this dystopian future that's blended vampires, a plague, and humans battling it out in militant states.Okay, I'm reading this and thinking how cool would it be as a Noh play? Take a classic hero myth format throw in some Buddhism, add an apocalypse and watch it unravel. Tatsu, a young man driven by revenge confronts more than his past as he seeks justice for his family. Arisada having searched for centuries finally finds what he lost and still covets. Both are formally trained in the art of the sword and there are a couple scenes that are just beautiful and erotic and transcend the more pedestrian, but equally entertaining brute force ones with Tatsu's mercenary team of incredibly hot men. They are the usual assortment with the competent, the insane, and the dead. Definitely room for another story or two to be told. Things that didn't thrill me and distracted enough from the story to be an issue when rating are the flashbacks and the awkward and aggressive insertion of Japanese when the English would suffice. These both yanked me around enough so that I resented it. Usually I adore foreign terms interspersed, but these were clumsy and overdone in areas that they were glaring instead of supplemental to the story. I'll be honest and admit I'm not a big fan of using flashbacks at all to tell a story, but I'm happy to allow it once for pertinent information that is relevant to the story. In my opinion that should be sufficient with a prologue and epilogue to complete a story. Unfortunately, in this case we had a handful of incidents and the fact is not all of them are needed. An author really can't tell every character's complete story in one book--that's what sequels are for. I think the eagerness to the cover bases here interrupted the pacing of the story and distracted the reader as well as drawing it out. Some scenes could have just been cut. Editing choices aside, I really enjoyed this story. It flipped all the right switched for me: body count, dystopian, fun weaponry, well developed characters and a world I'm willing to get lost in for a few hours or maybe more if there is a sequel planned. Favorite quote: “I’m not a fucking candle. And I sure as hell have enough shit to deal with in this life without worrying about a previous one.”~A copy was provided for a No Glitter Blown review.~Reviewed for Hearts On Fire Reviews