Of Monsters and Men: Lynn Viehl's "If Angels Burn"

If Angels Burn begins in Chicago, where, despite years of success, reconstructive surgeon Alexandra Keller is still trying to deal with her childhood on the streets and her brother's retreat into the priesthood, abandoning her. It doesn't help that her clients are mostly victims of crime and abuse and too poor to afford treatment, and it certainly doesn't help that she has to turn down a stream of letters from Michael Cyprien, offering her millions for plastic surgery, but only if she'll make a house call - to New Orleans.

Things start to go wrong when he gets tired of hearing no. He has Alex kidnapped, forces her to reconstruct his face, and he repays her by infecting her and making her a vrykolakas , a vampire forced to survive on the blood of uninfected humans. Not only that, she's the first human to turn in centuries, drawing the attention of the other vrykolakes - and their enemies, who will stop at nothing to gain any edge. Throw in a little romance, and it seems like a typical vampire novel, right?

Author Lynn Viehl stirs the recipe up, though, adding spice by mixing in the Brethren (a secret society of priests who defy the Vatican in order to wipe out the "demons"), hints of a centuries-old religious conspiracy that seems to channel Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code , a twisted vampire king who thinks Alex is the key to turning more humans, a vrykolakas assassin with delusions of grandeur and a chip on his shoulders, and a family of torture victims, one of whom has gone dangerously and loudly mad. Viehl also asks a philosophical question: What is the line between human and monster? Alexandra's struggles to accept herself as a vrykolakas and redefine her own humanity drive the novel's theme. However, her brother John, haunted by mistakes of his past and disillusioned with the Church, is more compelling in his quest to rediscover his calling and redeem himself. This question echoes throughout every character's motivations.

While If Angels Burn contains many familiar and clichéd elements of the vampire genre - the quasi-feudal political system of the vrykolakes , for example, or the mesmerizing abilities that seems to come standard with all vamps - it isn't simply another Laurell K. Hamilton clone. Lynn Viehl effortlessly weaves suspense, fantasy, and romance into a novel that is entirely satisfying. She has managed to write both the quintessential vampire novel and something wholly original that challenges the current cookie-cutter nature of the genre, and managed it all in one book.