I actually quite enjoyed this. The characters were varied and interesting and the vampire genre was done well, I even felt sympathy for the vampire's Rashed and Teesha.
The pace was decent and I felt the story wrapped up well enough to satisfy you yet also eager to read the next installment. ( )

4.5 stars

Dhampir was quite good. It starts off a little slow, but quickly picked up and became hard to put down. Magiere is a "vampire" hunter. What she is really doing is swindling villages out of their hard-earned cash. She, along with her half-elf partner, Leesil, set up schemes to make is seem as though these villages are being plagued by vampires and she is the only one qualified to rid them of these abominations. The vampire is really Leesil in disguise. After four years of playing this game, Magiere decides she had enough and wants to retire. Leesil is not too thrilled with this at first, but eventually agrees. She purchases a tavern in a town called Miiska and wishes to live out a peaceful existence. Little does she know that vampires do exist and some currently reside in Miiska.

What follows is a tale full of action, suspense, intrigue and some behind the scenes machinations. Magiere comes to find out that she is a Dhampir, half mortal, half vampire. She has the natural skills and talents to kill vampires, but it's not something she truly wishes to do. There's a man in the village who seems to know quite a bit about Dhampirs, but is not very forthcoming with the information. I felt for Magiere struggling to figure out what was going on with her, even though it was difficult for me to like her at first because she was a con artist. The vampires did not really appear evil and we do get to learn quite a bit about them. I liked them almost as much as Magiere and Leesil. This is a story that I would recommend. ( )

a woman and a half elf scam villagers by pretending to kill some imaginary vampire threat. They settle down to run an inn and have their old business come back to haunt them, only this time there are real vampires. The woman turns out to be the daughter of a vampire and is consequently a dhampir, a human with some vampiric powers.

This was a very simple book, with many details glossed over or left out, but it was a good entertaining read. I would call it trash fantasy, but not in a bad way, more of a disposable way. I'll probably read more of this series. ( )

Decent enough fast read, with pretty good characters, except the main characters companion and dog are unfortunately a lot more likeable and fleshed out than the main character herself. Even the enemies feel a little more rounded. But this was clearly a series opener, so filling in all the back story is like expecting to learn everything from a tv pilot, and I admit I didn't see the final page twist coming, so I'll definitely read the next one in the series at least.

( )

Ignore the back of the book. And the tagline on the cover. And the title of the book, if possible. They will give you entirely the wrong impression. Let me try again.

Magiere doesn't know what she is. (Necessary because of the title of the book.) She's been traveling for years with her half-elf partner Leesil, rescuing superstitious villages from the monsters lurking in the night, and now she's ready to find a home and settle down. But their newfound peace will not last. (Part of this shamelessly stolen from the back of the book.) Magiere has come to the attention of a trio of powerful and dangerous vampires, and their machinations will force her and her partner to recall their events from their pasts, events that might be better off forgotten...

There, that's fairly good. I loved the book. A good, rollicking story about vampires and hunters and people trying to make a life. Definitely a pageturner. I liked that it reinvents no complex mythology, just sticks to what we all know and love about vampires already. It shows you can write a good story without having to create tons of background. ( )