This book was...odd. On the one hand, it is a coming-of-age story of a fifteen year old sheltered boy leaving his over-religious mother ending up in New York. This subject was very interesting in its own way, especially the detailed description of the Punk scene in New York, with all the ugliness of the rough and dirty town, but also the variety and deep loyalty going on in the scene. It all felt very real and it was obvious that the author spoke from his own experience instead of making up some colorful background for his story. While there was a certain level of repetitiveness and sometimes too much detail surprisingly it never became boring reading about it.

The only thing that really got on my nerves were the many different names listed every time our main character went somewhere and met up with people. Most of them didn't have any meaning for the story anyway, so it would have sufficed if he just met a 'group' or 'bunch' of people instead of giving yet another list of irrelevant names. But that's just peanuts compared to the otherwise mysteriously compelling story.

But wait, this book was also supposed to be about vampires, wasn't it? While the appearances of the vampire creature were relatively sparse, they were impressive and with enough bloodshed to sate my demands. Also, the origin and history were described sufficiently to create a believable and original background.

The writing was fluent and skillful with only a few negligible errors and quite impressive for a debut novel which was a lot of fun to read.

(I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)