Make sure all hungers are sated and all food fully digested before you read Holly Black's sanguine The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, with the psychological tensions of her Curse Workers series and the urban goth flair of her Modern Faerie Tales.
The vampire population has increased to such proportions that governments have set up Coldtowns--walled towns that contain the undead who prey upon living humans. Springfield, Mass., boasts the biggest and best known Coldtown, where an Eternal Ball has "raged ceaselessly" since 2004. Its live broadcasts, videos and blogs make it a social media feeding frenzy--literally.
Black taps into the adolescent sense of invincibility as well as the ageless wish to be desirable forever with her portrayal of healthy teens eager to gain access to the Coldtowns. Her descriptions of decaying luxury and bloodstained chic hit all the right notes. Lucien Moreau, who has brought vampires out of the shadows and into the spotlight of his nightly broadcasts, dresses like Tom Wolfe in cream-colored suits and a white shirt, the better to show off the blood of his victims.
The story begins when the heroine, Tana, awakes, hungover, in a friend's tub, to discover a bloodbath wreaked by vampires. Tana's complex past (her mother was infected by a vampire and tried to drain Tana) left her with a healthy respect for vampires' monstrous nature, as well as compassion for the infected. When she discovers her ex-boyfriend, infected and shackled in a downstairs bedroom, and a vampire named Gavriel aids in their escape, she rescues Gavriel, too. During her exit, another vampire grazes Tana's leg, and she's unsure if she's been infected.
Black lays out the "scientific" parameters of infection versus "turning" (there's an 88-day "cold" period during which, if an infected human does not feed on the blood of another human, he or she can theoretically return to a "normal" human state). She also inserts chapters that fill in the back story on Gavriel and Lucien, or that shift the action back to Tana's family. At times these disrupt the narrative flow, but just as often provide welcome relief from the vampiric killing sprees. Readers learn of Gavriel's role as the Thorn of Isra, for instance, and his job "cleaning up mistakes"--dispensing with infected humans before they turn.
The chemistry between Tana and Gavriel ("You are more dangerous than daybreak," he tells her), and the complicated relationship between Gavriel and Lucien keeps the suspense mounting until the final pages. The author's exploration of the desire for beauty and power at the expense of all else manifests in both major and minor characters in intriguing ways. For all the blood, the dance of predator and prey comes across as more sensual than violent, which only serves to amplify Black's implicit question of whether seduction and corruption are one and the same. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: Holly Black tackles the vampire genre by posing questions about the cost of beauty, power and eternal life.