Blood and Silver
James R. Tuck


ISBN-10:
0758271484
ISBN-13: 978-0758271488
Publisher: Kensington
Line:
Release Date: Aug 7, 2012
Pages: 352
Retail Price: 7.99




Genre:
Urban Fantasy
Heat Level: Mild
Rating:

Deacon Chalk normally has no trouble telling innocent victims from real monsters. So protecting an abused pregnant were-dog is a no-brainer...until a vicious lycanthrope leader and his brotherhood target Deacon, other shape-shifters, and any humans in their way. Suddenly, Deacon is outnumbered, outgunned, and unsure who - or what - to trust. The only edge he has left is a weapon hungry for his soul and his most savage impulses. And using it will exact a price even this hell-raising hunter fears to pay...

 

Review

Summary

Blood and Silverby James R. Tuck is a modern-day fantasy novel and is the second book in the Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter series.  It can be read as a stand-alone novel.

Blood and Silver is a modern-day fantasy novel, but reads more like a post-apocalyptic horror story where humans and electricity somehow magically survived.

Five years ago Deacon Chalk was a tattoo artist, supporting his wife and children and living his happily ever after.

Then his family was brutally murdered and Deacon became aware of the supernatural – and all its shapes, sizes, rules, regulations and exceptions.

Blood and Silvercontinues Deacon’s story at a street carnival and soon his rare good day turns into a lycanthrope invasion where he’s aiming his Colt .45 at seven bone-shifting faces determined to protect a pregnant were-dog. 

Mayhem ensues (well, more of it) and Deacon, his love interest Tiff and several other unstable and tragedy-stricken characters fight the universal battle of good versus evil.  Ultimately they fight to rid Atlanta, Georgia of human-killing monsters just one more time before something supernatural kills them all dead.

Review

This is not a romance novel.  There are some tender moments and a somewhat happy ending, but if you’re expecting the hero to be healed by his virginal heroine because she’s the only one destined to love him…this is not the book for you. 

Deacon is destined to be with his wife.  She’s dead. 

After reading Blood and Silver, everything you think you know about vampires, werewolves and shape shifters gets a whole lot creepier. 

Werewolves are actually lycanthropes and lycanthropes can shape-shift into their family animal.  Meaning there are were-wolves, were-dogs, were-spiders, rabbits, chickens and so forth. 

Rabbits??  Yea.  Rabbits.

There are also sadistic vampires who use humans as blood and sex slaves.  This topic isn’t glossed over.  There’s a strong supporting character who lived it (in the first novel) and it’s mentioned over and over again in this one.

The good guys aren’t much easier to read about, except that they’re good.  A were-spider has a lethal bite, but as long as she doesn’t aim her mouth in Deacon’s direction you find yourself rooting for her.  Still, to paraphrase Deacon’s thoughts: that’s one scary were.

Tuck’s writing is fantastic

His sentences are punchy.  His content is shocking - and the brevity makes the supernatural crazy town easy to understand.   I did not read his first novel, yet Tuck’s descriptions of backstories and events never left me in the dark and never had me rereading a section to understand the facts.

I just got it.  And his writing did that.

Blood and Silveris written in first person and this intensifies the blood and guts.

There’s a lot of blood of guts.  From child-eating polar bears and infant-feasting weres to breaking the bones of a comrade’s body to fit him in the trunk of a car, Blood and Silver shies from nothing.

There’s a guy on the cover of Blood and Silver and I’m sure it’s supposed to be Deacon Chalk.  But frankly, Tuck’s author picture is so darn scary that every time Deacon is mentioned I think of him.  If I see Tuck at a book signing I’m keeping my distance.  ‘Cause I know some creature with poisoned teeth is going to jump at him and Tuck’s gonna blow him away with his laser-pointed shotgun.

I thought shotguns sprayed a room and would hit anything.  Tuck writes that this is incorrect.  The man holds a shotgun on his website.  If he says it’s so, then it’s so.

To reiterate, Tuck can write.   

As mentioned above, there is some romance.  Deacon is fascinated with Tiff and she with him.  More than once their eyes linger and hands touch longer than needed.  It’s very sweet.  Especially when Deacon blasts that guy’s head off for threatening her.  That was so kind hearted of him.

Blood and Silveris an intense, crazy, video-game like, wild, bloody adventure.

Deacon’s friends and associates are enthralling and every page I prayed they would finally win.

Sadly, they do not all survive.

This is not a romance novel.

Reviewed by Musing Sallie


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