Lacey Reah's Fireflies opens with the narrator, Linda, walking through Central Park, captivated by the fireflies that come out at night. There she is willingly seduced and transformed by a vampire-like creature known as a nymphomite.The book gets off to a quick start, and from the Central Park scene jumps right into Linda's new life as a nyphomite. These creatures drink blood from their victims, but can only properly feed if the victim is in the throes of an orgasm at the moment of feeding.
Linda holds no grudge against the creature that changed her; she doesn't, in fact, hold onto any kind of nostalgia for her life as a human, and goes through a nightly routine of hunting, seducing, and feeding, and she is, if not happy, at least occupied.
This changes when she meets, and transforms, a woman named Jesse, who subsequently lashes out at her, condemning her for turning her into a nyphomite, instead of simply killing her. For the first time since being changed, Linda feels something human within her, and is forced to contemplate what she left behind in her first life.
Reah keeps the action moving along at a fast pace, while exploring the various moods and emotions Linda struggles with in her new form. It's about halfway into the 95-page book that Linda is confronted with Jesse and what she's done to her. Soon, the complacent but active character we've been with for the first fifty pages transforms, and what we have is a wounded, suddenly regretful vampire, who even takes a shot at going home, knowing there's no future for her there.
It isn't easy to make a sympathetic character out of someone who happily sucks the blood out of anybody who looks like easy prey, but Reah pulls it off pretty well. Linda is pretty much doomed from the beginning, and by the second half of the story, you wish there was some way out for her, despite her easy adoption of her new bloody appetite.
Fireflies is available in paperback and e-book formats, and can be purchased at the folowing links. The Lacey Reah/Fireflies myspace address is listed below.
http://www.amazon.com/Fireflies-Lacey-Reah/dp/145028163X
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Fireflies/Lacey-Reah/e/9781450281638/?itm=1&USRI=lacey+reah+fireflies
http://www.myspace.com/lindafireflies
Posts
