We’ve all met the atypical brooding vampire.  Vampires with souls.  Vampires tormented by their bloodlust, striving to be better people.  Vampires in love with mortals and deathly afraid of killing them, or turning them.

James Damian is not that kind of vampire.

Winter’s Mercenary is good old supernatural fun, with snark, action, and charmingly twisted undead romance.  James has a job, and killing is its name.  He’s not ashamed of it, and yet, for all that he is the walking damned, I have to remind myself that he’s probably, technically, by most standards . . . the bad guy.

The plot centers on James’ current job, as hitman for Queen Mab, and the complications that arise when an agent of the mysterious Department 7 comes barging into his life.  I’m looking forward to finding out more about the fae aspect of the story as it progresses.

Looks into James’s backstory add more depth to his character, and hints about the story to come, without plunging him into full on emo angst.  Don’t get me wrong, I like me some full on emo angst, but I also find James’s insouciance refreshing and a strong point of the story.  The first person narration serves the character well. 

On a site design level, I like the layout—the Hemingway theme for WordPress is a great template for web serials, giving plenty of room for the text and not distracting from the story with busy sidebars.

I dislike white/gray text on a black background as a rule, though.  It just hurts my eyes in large doses.  Since I’m caught up and only read the story on a chapter by chapter basis, it’s not a problem, but I’m still glad I don’t have to catch up on the archives (which I invariably try to do in one sitting).

That said, whenever a color-scheme or layout presents too large of a problem, I can always just disable styles in my browser with a single click and read it as black on white—so it’s of secondary concern to an enjoyable story

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