Review of “Blood Relations” by Glenn Stevens

Score: 88/100 (8.8 out of 10)

Blood Relations is an erotic vampire-romance novel by Glenn Stevens.

It doubles as a sort of sci-fi/medical-thriller story about finding a panacea and the figurative fountain of youth. Philosophically, it also covers many of the moral and ethical dilemmas of pursuing this technological “good” by any means possible, sacrificing lives and health for the supposed benefit of humanity.

This book is like Twilight meets E.T. with a little bit of Frankenstein and Trigun mixed in there.

We thought we'd encountered some strange books this season including Machine Divine by Derek Paul and Macleish Sq. by Dennis Must, but this one comes very close to taking the cake. This book is rather bizarre, for better or for worse.

What's incredible is that, despite the fact that we disliked the first third (200 pages) of this book, it really grew on us over time. Part of the problem with the first third is that, like Sinful Duty by Philip Burbank Pallette, it bombards you with sex and sexual activities before you're really ready for it—or before it feels earned. These things in a story should feel earned. There should be a progression. That's why you get the analogy about first base, second base, third base, and home plate. Instead, the book and the characters just seem to pounce on each other constantly. Many times when Eros (the main protagonist) meets a woman, he just gets turned on by their throat and goes at them. It's usually only after a feeding or two that he gets to know them on a more personal level. It just seems like it skips a step. Wouldn't you want to get personal before you get intimate? This isn't a brothel. These aren't prostitutes.... right?

However, this book does come across as like a harem story, sort of like a dating sim. Women are constantly throwing themselves at Eros, sometimes in machine-gun fashion.

Let's talk a bit about the plot while we're at it, since it kinda ties into all of that. So, the title of the book (Blood Relations) is actually a clever pun for how this book goes. This isn't a book about family relations or anything like that. This book follows Eros, a vampire, throughout his various relationships with women over the centuries including Camillia, Jessica, Linda, Christine, and Laurie.

Eros has lived a long and storied life. Like Linda tells him, “I don't believe Florida has always been your home.”

Eros is not just a vampire, he's some sort of alien vampire whose bite/venom has a rare gift: the ability to heal those who are inflicted by it. The problem is that, well, they have to be inflicted by it.

In his relationship with Camillia in Medieval Romania, both Eros and Camillia suffer from the superstitions of the time. In fact, Camillia is treated brutally and even scourged when Eros's bite causes her to have visions and hear voices akin to demonic possession.

That's right, not only does Eros's bite heal wounds, it also gives you precognition and telepathic/psychic powers. It even allows you to astral project at times. Now, this kinda falls apart when you realize that—if Eros really had these powers the whole time—he wouldn't have been surprised by the things that Linda, for example, decides. He wouldn't have been surprised by anything that happens. However, he is. He's constantly surprised the actions and decisions of people. He's constantly confused.

It's also a little strange that a person who has been around for centuries doesn't seem much wiser or any more sophisticated than a 22-year-old college student. In fact, there are times when he's a bit dopey and even immature. Like, you have to be kidding that a guy who has this much relationship experience would be this heartbroken over a breakup this late in his life.

Linda, despite being a “best friend” and partner to Eros for a large portion of this book, is arguably the main villain of this book. You could make the argument that she's more of an anti-hero or anti-villain. Linda isn't evil, but like Dr. Frankenstein, she is carried away with her research. She views Eros and his venom as a sort of panacea, potentially able to cure cancers, regrow limbs, keep you from gaining weight (wait a minute... what?), and never get sick. She looks to create “super healing blood” from mixing his venom with the blood of hosts to accomplish these things.

It's literally MAD SCIENCE!

As you might expect, her research and experiments come with an enormous amount of risk. For instance, it turns out that—surprise, surprise—Eros's bite can not only kill someone by draining their blood, but it can also turn someone into a vampire... and also gay.

Seriously, we're not kidding! This book is either unintentionally or intentionally funny. We were spinning in our chairs laughing about this stuff.

We get lines like:

“I think it's the venom. I think it turned me into a lesbian...”

“...the minute I bite her I turn her into a lesbian”

“More Oxytocin means more lesbian, right?”

“Some of the women turn more lesbian.”

Bruuuuh! We don't think that's how that works at all.

The book takes the approach that women have higher levels of the hormone Oxytocin which attracts Eros to want to bite them... that and when they hang upside down and the blood rushes to their faces and turns them red.

Ok... No kink shaming.

However, this Oxytocin also interacts with Eros's venom, causing women to supposedly become gay. It is incredibly, unbelievably strange, though admittedly very funny.

Let's get back to some of the sexual stuff because it's also very over-the-top and funny. You know like when there's a scene in a movie and it's very obvious that it's only there as fan service? Well 80-90% of this book is fan service.

It's so blatant and over-the-top.

There is constant talk about “mind sex,” how “each orgasm is many times more explosive as the one before it,” how you can have “[d]ozens of orgasms at the same time,” and how valuable sex juices are harvested via “intense virtual reality sex.”

Probably the funniest line in the book is:

“...the woman screams so loud during orgasm the entire floor claps when it's over.”

Anyone who has had an obnoxiously-loud, sexually-active neighbor can relate.

Now, Eros as a character is constantly painted as being some sort of angel. He's even referred to as an “angel” from time to time. However, he's actually quite sinister. He literally has blood on his hands and he lies about it all the time. For example, he claims that he doesn't kill and that it isn't in his nature. However, we know that he drank Camillia's mother to death and murdered Jessica's husband out of revenge.

His drives and urges are constantly excused in one way or another. However, he verges into or crosses over the line of assault and even sexual assault. For example, after Linda has repeatedly told him to just stay friends, Eros constantly tries to force himself on her, even pinning her with his weight against a wall at one point.

The other thing that's worrisome about this book is that it seems to encourage a sort of Stockholm syndrome and sadomasochism. Most of the women that Eros bites (i.e. assaults) then become ravenous in their attraction to him and then become dependent on him for continued pleasure. The whole process of feeding is treated like an “ok” thing that the women like and enjoy. At least he tries to heal them afterward, right? Keep in mind: he's literally inflicting pain and drawing the blood of these women. It is, in essence, violence. Should we be encouraging women and girls to view violence toward them as a form of love and affection?

We constantly get in the minds of these women while they're being fed on, and at one time the woman feels like she's dying and desperately tries to ask Eros to stop, but can't. That scene and scenes like it have a very rapey vibe that doesn't quite sit well with us.

Though the writing is decent, the formatting could use some work. Case in point: there are no indentations at the start of paragraphs or lines of dialogue.

One last thing we didn't quite like about this book is that it's SO NEEDLESSLY LONG! It's over 600 pages long. Some books warrant being long. Those books involve epic, world-bending plots that involve multiple different character arcs and a long, involved story. This story and its characters just don't seem to justify the page length. It's similar to what we felt about Fifty-Three Tuesdays by GK Nakata. A romance doesn't need to take 600 pages to develop. Even near the end of the book, new problems kept being introduced when the book should've been winding down.

With all that said, this book made us laugh A LOT. It also had some interesting characters like Eros himself, Linda the mad scientist, the loving Laurie, and Christine (the lesbian who becomes “more lesbian” and runs for Governor of Florida because Eros told her to, yes that happened). We actually enjoyed this book in a sort of sick, twisted way.

Check it out on Amazon!