As ironic as it seems, I’m always a little wary when it comes to anything directly relating to vampires. I become even warier (is that a word?) when it comes to teenage vampires, as they tend to carry around enough angst to fill a 55 gallon drum. However, after reading the member reviews about the quality of work that was being done over at Dead End Streets, I decided to wander over there and take a peek.

I had a few minor beefs which I’ll cover later. My first impression of the site was essentially a shrug of the shoulders, noting the semi-standard whiteish text on a black background inherent in most serials that deal with creatures of the night. I know . . . not something that I can knock as I follow the same style on my site. Otherwise, there was nothing that jumped out at me, but the site was easily navigable to the first post.

I had intended to follow Ms. Nitschke’s style and read the first 5 segments and then write my review based on that. What I actually ended up doing however was reading up to segment 29 before realizing that it was time for me to leave work and go home.

I found that this story was quite endearing, with multiple references to Grand Master Whedon bringing more than a few smiles to my face. The prose is well written and most of the characters feel like real people and are easy to relate to. There are a few characters that I see as nothing more than poseable mannequins that occasionally speak but that’s going to happen with a good majority of serials out there.

The use of "hot-button" topics that I’ve seen come up in some of the member reviews (Abuse, Racism, Rape, etc.) are very well used in the writing, often helping flesh out a character that I had previously viewed as one of the aforementioned mannequins.

Before I start in on what I didn’t like, I need to say that I know I’m leaving something out about the other things I like about this serial, but for the life of me I can’t remember where I put my notes and will have to find them.

Now for my beefs, minor though they may be, I still feel the need to point them out.

As the author apparently releases segments "on the fly" the story is subject to some minor grammatical errors that are usually easy to overlook. I also take issue with a few of the characters and their motivations, which I won’t get into here as most of my issues would constitute spoilers and I hate putting warning labels on my reviews.

I think the thing that annoys me the most would have to be the sometimes large variation in word count from segment to segment. Now don’t get me wrong, as an "on the fly" author I know how difficult it is to keep a consistent a word count, but there are times when I feel that the segment is so short that the author would have been better off tacking it on to either the end of the previous segment or the beginning of the next.

Which brings me to another point; I’m not a huge fan of repeated scene interrupts or "fast forwards" that the author employs. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part they work well, it’s mostly a personal preference of mine.

All in all, it was a story that I easily found myself engaged in and will be resting neatly in my RSS reader once I finish catching up on the archives.

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