Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #771044 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

It's only Rock n' Roll (But I like it), The Rolling Stones
Wicked Game is a well thought out and engaging story. Ciara Griffin is a recovering con artist, trying to make a go of it in the straight world. Her childhood was one big con after another and now Ciara is trying to get through college and make it on her own. She applies for an internship at a local radio station and learns that there are more beings on the earth than humans. The DJ's are Vampires who (like all vampires in this series) are stuck in the era that they died. By playing the music from their respective eras and adding the modern day news and weather reports the vampires have found a way to co-exist in the modern day and age and still have a link with the past. Without the radio station to help them they would fade and die. Sky wave (a huge media outlet) wants to buy WVMP and turn it a generic hit playing radio station. The only way that the Ciara can think of to save the station is for the vampires to come out of their coffins, hiding in plain site. Letting the world believe that the vampires of WVMP are a marketing gimmick to help raise funds to keep the radio station afloat. Vampires, pretending to be humans, pretending to be vampires.

I thought this book is a good first book in the WVMP Radio series and have ordered the second book in the series Bad to the Bone, which apparently has a vampire dog in it. Cujo eat your heart out. I have also ordered Aspect of the Crow, the first book in another series by the same author. I am hoping that it is as good as Wicked Games.

Unusual and great addition to the urban fantasy/Vampire genre
In this book the heroine Ciara is more than flawed, she actually teeters on the edge of criminality the whole time due to her upbringing scamming people at religious revivals. Neither are the vamps any better, and certianly are not brooding studs of alpha male-ness as in much of the paranormal romance genre. There IS a romance between Ciara and a vamp, Shane, but it starts disastrously and while the undead Shane is a great musician he retains his personality flaws from life. One of the many intriguing aspects of this novel is that the vampires are all obsesive-compulsives all literally living in the past, as at the time of their death. These aren't vamps that live for hundreds of years, but about 80 before they go mad because they cannot fit in with modern life. Thus the story here, that these vamps are kept sane by working for a radio station and specialising in a particular kind of music (whatever was chart-topping whenever they died) works excellently. The scam, of advertising the radio station by telling everyone that they are vampires also works brilliantly, as it instantly creates a new audience, none of whom believe the truth. I don't think this is a series, but it would be great to see more of this type of very dark urban fantasy. I'm impressed.