I was exited to start a perpetual challenge I had in mind for quite a while: Read through the Bram Stoker Award short-list and winners! (I want to do the same with the Man Booker Prize, though that's even more insane). Too bad I kind of started on the wrong foot. I got this book because it was short-listed for Best Novel so I assumed it must be just as great as the winner novel Misery by Stephen King (which tied with Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon which I haven't read yet). Unfortunately, it wasn't. Let's start with the good stuff! It's a decent vampire novel with evil, selfish bloodsuckers as opposed to all those romanticized, pale vegan-vampires we have in lots of vampire novels nowadays. I prefer the evil version a lot more! The two main vampires Shideh and Anya were sexy, dangerous and ruthless and I liked that they could walk in daylight (Garton even explained that well) and were not invulnerable. What would happen to a vampire if he/she drinks "poisoned" blood was a great touch and actually one of the most creepy parts. There was a lot of sex in the story, pretty explicit at times, but when you write about a vampire-run peep-show and nightclub, I think that's unavoidable. Some of it was a little bit disgusting though (biting male patrons penises or sucking the menstruation blood out of someone, yuck). Now for the part why I didn't enjoy the book much: the main character. The male lead Davey Owen (how can you name your main character DAVEY? It sound like he's 5 years old) was just so weak and annoying! Half of the book he was whining about his job, his ex-girlfriend and life in general, friendzoning the female lead who did her best to make him feel better. Then he gets bitten by a vampire prostitute and then he keeps emphasizing how weak he feels, every five pages someone thinks how pale and sick he looks and how thin he got... And how exactly didn't he notice that Anya was a vampire? She bit your little buddy! TWICE! She makes you bite her and drink her blood! She's really pale and cold! You found an album of newspaper clippings from her dating back to the 1920s! And she looks still the same! And you're still wondering what's happening to you? Come on... It got better with Davey in the second half of the book (he manned-up) but I still couldn't warm up to him. The female lead, Casey, was okay though I didn't like how she played the emotional rubbish bin for Davey and hoping that he would fall in love with her someday. Benedek was the most interesting character for me. His sister got killed by vampires and he seeks revenge for that which was a nice plot point. The ending finally catched up on the action part and was pretty cool, but the 250 pages before that weren't thrilling me at all. All in all, it wasn't a bad vampire novel, but it wasn't a good one either.