Blue Bloods: Volume 1 by Melissa de la Cruz

I just finished Blue Bloods. I decided to write a review because I was excited at the author’s idea of a completely new vampire mythology. I ‘ve read Ann Rice, Twilight, and even the original Bram Stoker novel, but this book poses a completely new idea. The big idea is that everyone is basically some kind of vampire. All of us are just the red bloods, while they, the vampires, are the blue bloods. A kind of angelic, form of creature, possessed of supernatural powers but unlike what we might expect the vampire to be.

This sense of the unexpected is what initially drew me to Anne Rice. Her vampires, had an intense sense of humanity that I don’t think anyone had thought to give to vampires before, you felt more for the vampires than you did for the human in her novels. You felt their their thirst, the anxiety, their fear at taking another life.

That being said Blue Bloods didn’t give me an eerie feelings, it is really a completely different kind of vampire novel. What it did share with Anne Rice was the desire to reinvent the vampire novel, to make it feel new again and fascinating to the reader.

She does this by setting vampires amidst New York City’s fashionable and elite. She takes the vampire out of the dreary chateau and plantation and puts them amidst bright city lights and real people. I happen to be obsessed with the vampire angle, so I will the remainder of the books content to other reviewers. Blue Bloods is definitely about creating a newer and more fun kind of vampire!

That doesn’t mean that she entirely excludes a sense of history. The blue bloods themselves are described as having come to America aboard a fictionalized version of the Mayflower. I don’t really understand why anyone would want to analyze the historical correctness of this, but let’s just remind ourselves here that we are reading fiction!! The history isn’t really the essence of the book, but I did enjoy the cool script in these sections. I think its more of a way to ground these new vampires in some greater context.

I also thought that the historical section might be more of a reference to the original Bram Stoker novel than anything. Some if not all of Dracula is actually told in the form of letters, journal’s and phonograph recordings. If this is a reference to the original vampire novel, I find it a nice touch. The letters and journals actually made the nineteenth century novel seem almost contemporary as it were some kind of reality drama in which we see only real life glimpses of some drama that has unfolded. We read letters, find diaries, I actually think that there are phonograph recordings in there! Dracula begins with an entry from Jonathan Harker’s journal that reminded of the entry Catherine Carver’s Diary that begins Blue Bloods. I am curious if there are any other references.

It seems almost as if the author has taken the element of the vampire and mythology and split them out in these different creatures. I can only speculate that she some other sort of vampire planned, but I am not sure how the terminology will work, the blue blood, red blood, silver blood trio seem logical for now, but it might be interesting if were ever expanded in some other book or tie in of some type.

I enjoyed the ending, but I must warn that it is a cliffhanger which has led me to think that hopefully there will be another book to tie up the issues from the first. This is what led me to think that there may be other kinds of vampires of than the blue, red and silver that are already mentioned.

Blue Bloods is really about taking this incredible sense of fun and adventure and bringing it to the vampire mythology. It felt really new and fresh to me like discovering a great new song on the radio that maybe sounds a little like something that you have heard, but feels entirely new at the same time.

Blue Bloods; Cruz, Melissa de la; Atom Original; Hachette Book Group; Rs. 299