Café de Nuit

Has anyone here read any of The Noble Dead series by Barb & J.C. Hendee?

They are horror-fantasy novels that were out most of the decade, but I didn't hear about until last year.

The very basic gist is: The main character is a dhampir who doesn't realize she's a dhampir. She has joined forces with a half-elf rogue, and they go from town to town, seeking villages that are facing hardships. She blames them on vampires, and claims to be a vampire hunter. The half-elf poses as a vampire, they "fight", she "kills" him, gets her payment, then - playing on their superstitions, says she has to take the body away from civilization to properly dispose of it.

The con goes awry once they stumble into a town plagued by a real vampire, which neither one believes is real, and who is convinced that she's after him.

I read the first six books last year (which constitute the first arc)...some very good stuff. Not quite Ravenloft dark, but some very fun fantasy fiction.

Couldn't help thinking of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, there
That trick to con villages is old.

But the twist when the true vampire shows up seems to be nice.

Heck, it's so old that it's probably what started the whole "dhampir" concept in the first place.

I've read the first series (second one is coming out soon, I think). The 'con-game' bit lasts for maybe the first twenty pages of the first book, so it's not particularly major to the plot.

On the whole, I'm fond of them, though the series has its ups and downs (when the books are focusing on exploration and investigation, they are very good, though the books do frequently veer off into explorations of the characters backstories which are too angsty for my tastes).

That said, characterization is probably their strong point, and they've got good character development going for all involved, particularly for the side-characters and antagonist-types like Welstiel and Chane.

I'd recommend taking them out of a library, certainly, though maybe not buying them unless you're fond of the vampire genre.