Half the Blood of Brooklyn Paperback – Illustrated, 26 December 2007

I've read all the books in the Joe Pitt series (this is the latest one; the other two are Already Dead: A Novel and No Dominion: A Novel, both of which are excellent), and this is the best so far.Before reading this one, you really ought to read the other two. Please don't start with this one, as you will lose much of the background that has led Joe Pitt to where he is.Joe Pitt is a vampire, but not the kind you're probably used to reading about. He doesn't do sunlight, but other than that, he's different in some really basic ways. He doesn't walk around crazed with bloodlust. He doesn't attack everyone he meets and then sink his fangs into neck after neck after neck. No, he and the other vampires in this book basically walk around like you and I do, except for the aforementioned "allergy to sunlight."If you've not read a Joe Pitt novel before, you should know that all of the books are brutal. There's bloodshed on almost every page. Joe is not a nice guy. Even when he does the "right" thing, he's obnoxious and maybe selfish and homicidal. He kills fairly easily. He jokes even when he's near death. He loves his girlfriend, but not enough to tell her the truth about who he is or to give her a choice to save herself by becoming a vampire like him (that girlfriend is dying from AIDS; Joe's blood, infected as it is with the Vyrus, which could save her or kill her, as there's no guarantee her body will be able to handle it). He has allegiances to people, but they're all driven by his own fight to survive,The novels are done in first person, so we always get Joe's viewpoint, which is often critical of his own inadequacies, but which is also often determinedly blase. You don't see Joe get worked up about much; I guess it's tough to get worked up when you come from an abusive household, were beaten fairly regularly as a kid, were beaten almost to death by the vamp who left you to die, are constantly threatened with the possibility of spending your last moments in the sun's warm, virulent-cancer-causing embrace.The dialogue is quick and very realistic. People speak in fragments. They stutter. Huston has a knack for making each character speak clearly in his/her own voice. Terry, the hippie vamp, speaks like a quintessential hippie (you'll feel like you're listening to someone stuck in the 60's at times); "the girl" speaks like a teenager, complete with heavy emphasis on strategically-chosen words (you can tell which by the italics); Lydia stammers and steams, and her dialogue is sometimes filled with fragments, with single words that punctuate her disgust or her contempt.In this book, Joe is challenged by the decline of his girlfriend's health, by a lifestyle he doesn't like (he's working for Terry, basically aligned with Terry's group of vamps, and he hates being part of a group), by the awareness that someone else (Daniel) thinks he's a good choice to lead another vamp group (Joe's no leader; were it up to him, he'd hermit out somewhere, or maybe just take Evie with him, but that'd be it).Again--bloodshed deluxe, lots of Joe-getting-beaten scenes, a healthy dose of mystery, more insight into Joe's history, and an ending that leaves you wanting the next book RIGHT NOW.Love it!

Well, kids, the gloves are off. Sure, ALREADY DEAD and NO DOMINION were pretty tough books - lots of heartless jockeying for power, lots of bones breaking, a few corpses at the end of it all - but by the end of HALF THE BLOOD IN BROOKLYN those were the good old days.First of all, Joe's taken a job with the Society. It's the safe way to go, but Joe just isn't cut out for that kind of teamwork. His pride has suffered - and so have his morals. He's back to being a hired gun, and for the first time we see him killing indiscriminately. The bodies pile up fast.Second of all, Evie is dying. She's physically a wreck, and she's not all there mentally, either. The crisis we've seen coming for the past couple of books has arrived: Joe has to let her die, or try to save her by making her a vampire. Naturally, things don't go as planned.Meanwhile, Joe's sent across the river to Brooklyn. The Society is reaching out to the boroughs for allies and they've found a rag-tag band of carnival freaks who need support. They find out why soon enough: a clan of conservative Jewish vampires is well on its way to owning Brooklyn, and the circus freaks are getting in the way. Sounds simple enough - but when the Coalition and the Society are both involved, everything is complicated. Wheels within wheels.I read with my heart in my throat for most of the book - too anxious about what would happen next to put it down for even a minute. The ending is definitely a cliffhanger - and I look forward to finding out what happens next.

Comparisons and superlatives be damned; there simply isn't a more talented writer of American fiction today than the hip, irreverent, and ever-so-clever Charlie Huston. This guy could write the recipe for a tuna casserole and make it a page-turner.Always one to shun convention and propriety, Huston rips another scorcher free of distracting quotation marks or chapters. Back is vampyre leg-breaker Joe Pitt in this third installment of Huston's nightmare fantasy of the undead of Manhattan, another literary feast of enough blood and gore to prove the title an understatement. If you're not familiar with Huston's brilliantly twisted twist on tired and familiar vampire lore, welcome to present day New York, where Joe Pitt and his ilk are the victims of an AIDS-like "vyrus", condemning it's hosts to near-eternal life out-of-the sun and with an insatiable demand for human blood. Huston's vampires, who walk undetected among us, have divided into clans along traditional societal lines, each with their own approach and philosophies to their affliction. Forget capes and bats and castles on crags: "Half the Blood of Brooklyn" and its prequels are 100% urban, urbane, and contemporary, more Sam Spade than Count Dracula, and so-nearly believable that you'll often forget the, um, "diet" of Pitt and his buddies.Out hero and former rogue hit man Pitt has joined up with his old buddy, Terry Bird, hippie leader of the progressive "Society" clan of lower Manhattan. But there's trouble in the boroughs, as someone or something is driving the renegade clans across the bridges onto the island, threatening to drain an already dwindling supply of blood. And when the "Candy Man" winds up carved into a dozen pieces in the basement of his Greenwich Village shop, Terry sends Pitt, distracted by his "civilian" girlfriend's losing battle with cancer, to Coney Island as part of an elaborate alliance scheme. There he encounters rival gangs bizarre by even Houston's whacked standards - a "Middle Earth meets "Rings-of-Hell" concoction that Tolkien or Dante would have killed to conjure.Huston's fiction can stand in a league of its own solely on this fresh and creative approach to an old storyline. But what sets Huston so far above the pack of clones and wannabes is the easy brilliance with which he skewers and parodies, in one fell swoop, popular crime drama, horror, political correctness, and in this outing, even Orthodox Jews! Yet his attacks are subtle and playful, the dark humor and delicious cynicism shining through the blood, guts, gore, grit, and filth that fits so neatly in Huston's unique brand of prose.If you haven't discovered Charlie Huston or Joe Pitt yet (or for that matter, Hank Thompson of the "Caught Stealing", "Six Bad Things", and "A Dangerous Man" trilogy), don't succumb to the "I don't read vampire crap" trap, and yourself a favor: Huston is the real deal - you've got to give him a try.

Half the Blood of Brooklyn is the third novel of Charlie Huston's with Joe Pitt. New readers, start elsewhere.As before, the action takes place in New York and deals with vampyres infected with the "vyrus". As you start reading, you'll see some maps that divide Manhattan up into the different gang regions. New to this novel is of course, Brooklyn.I have to say that I really did enjoy reading the first two novels. This one just felt a little flat to me. As with any Charlie Huston novel, there are no chapters, simply continuations in the story line. That takes a little bit of getting used to as you have to pick your place to stop for the night. Not a big deal. What is a big deal to me is that this book felt more disjointed. There were several times where I had to stop, back up and figure out which character was speaking. And this book also felt a little bit short with the main character. I never really got a sense of who Joe Pitt is. He's a vampire, check. He wants to be independent, check. What else does he want? Well, I didn't feel that there was much more than that. Maybe there was but it's very subtle and I was looking for a bit more.To me, it's good, not great.

Huston does it again! Very fun tale, very well done! Enjoyed it a lot, and recommend if you like the noir style tale (read the other vampyre books first!).