This Side of the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

 

DANGER WAITS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE GRAVE

Half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her vampire husband Bones have fought for their lives, as well as for their relationship. But just when they’ve triumphed over the latest battle, Cat’s new and unexpected abilities threaten to upset a long-standing balance . . .

 

With the mysterious disappearance of vampires, rumors abound that a species war is brewing. A zealot is inciting tensions between the vampires and ghouls, and if these two powerful groups clash, innocent mortals could become collateral damage. Now Cat and Bones are forced to seek help from a dangerous “ally”—the ghoul queen of New Orleans herself. But the price of her assistance may prove more treacherous than even the threat of a supernatural war . . . to say nothing of the repercussions Cat never imagined.

 

This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, book five) by Jeaniene Frost

Start date: September 26, 2021

End date: October 4, 2021

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Trigger warning: offensive language, eating disorder

For a book supposedly revolving around the simmering war between vampires and ghouls spurred on by Apollyon, there’s very little action. Most of the book is Cat and the gang trying to learn where Apollyon is and Cat worrying about her new restricted diet. Apollyon is trying to instigate a war between ghouls and vampires by accusing Cat of trying to cause a war between the two species partly because of her half-vampire status (even though Cat is now a full vampire). It’s stated that he did the same thing with Joan of Arc, who it turns out was the only other half-vampire in existence. The vampires back then offered to turn her into a full vampire or be burned at the stake. She chose the burning. I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot about Joan of Arc, but I understood her as a Christian martyr, so this twist on her story feels blasphemous even to me.

Bones let out a derisive noise. “The day your kind stops killing each other over skin color or which god someone prays to, I might believe that.” (Frost 86)

There are some fundamentally wrong opinions shared by Bones while discussing this situation. In this book series, vampires are solely created by draining the blood of a human and replacing it with vampire blood. There are no natural born vampires except for Cat. Vampires and humans are not two different species as is implied by the “your kind” phrase Bones uses. It’s ridiculous to think that vampires wouldn’t have similar prejudices as humans do. Bigoted humans that turned into vampires would still be bigots—unless all the bigotry leaves their body when they lose their human blood. There’s absolutely everything wrong with ascribing modern ideas of acceptance to vampires that are thousands of years old.

Cat argues with him that humans don’t have a monopoly on bigotry, and Bones dismisses it by saying that vampires haven’t had internal skirmishes in 600 years. Conveniently, that’s when the only other half-vampire lived…because only humans cause that kind of drama according to Bones. Bones alleges that vampires’ prejudice against humans is only because humans are so prejudiced. I’ll leave you with that contradictory train of thought.

To hedge their bets in the coming war, Bones and Cat decide to appeal for Majestic’s help. This is reminiscent of when they did the exact same thing in Destined for an Early Grave, and Cat calls this fact out like readers wouldn’t be aware.

Figures I’d be seeing her again under the same circumstances that we’d first met—me trying to find out if she’d back an asshole in his claims against me. (Frost 142)

In classic Cat fashion, she comes off as rude and racist when talking to Majestic.

“I won’t join your cause against Apollyon. Last year, my sire could have ordered me to, but with Gregor dead, my loyalty is to my people alone.”

Anger rose in me. “Even at the expense of countless thousands dying over reasons as stupid as who has fangs versus flat teeth?” I gave her café-latte skin a pointed look. “I would think you’d be smarter than to side with a senseless bigot.” (Frost 150)

Cat, a white vampire, is shaming Majestic, a black ghoul, to get Majestic to support her cause. Instead of sticking to a vampire versus ghoul argument, Cat draws parallels to racism and implies that Majestic should know better because of the color of her skin. Majestic can’t win this argument. Either she sides with her people (the ghouls) and chooses the side of bigotry—according to Cat—or she chooses Cat’s side and betrays her people. Cat isn’t really trying to convince Majestic to join her; Cat’s simply shaming Majestic if she chooses not to join Cat.

“Majestic did not know our intent,” he said, calling Marie by the ostentatious name she preferred. (Frost 130)

Here’s a problem I have with this series. Someone will say what they would like to be called and then it’s just ignored. Cat does this with Tim by calling him Timmie. She doesn’t even try to call him Tim when he tells her that’s what he goes by now. Regrettably, he calls her Cathy after she tells him what her real name is. I believe that’s mostly because that’s the name she called herself by when they met. Neither of them tries very hard to call each other by the correct name, though. Then there are characters like Tick-Tock and Band-Aid who get called by their stupid names correctly. In general, there’s a distinct lack of respect for calling people by the names they wish to go by. Don’t do that. It’s rude.

“My poor cat’s going to hate me for disappearing on him again,” I remarked just to break the tension. We’d left Helsing back in Ohio since it would be animal cruelty to try and tote him at a nice pet resort, but oddly enough, Ed and Scratch insisted on watching him. (Frost 140)

It has taken five books (seven if you count the two spin-off books) for Cat’s pet cat to get a name, and it’s Helsing. For those who don’t know, Van Helsing is the monster-hunting, titular character of the 2004 movie who is himself named after the vampire hunter in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. It’s cliche for the pet of a half-vampire-turned-full-vampire (who used to hunt vampires) to be named after a vampire hunter. It’s unimaginative and boring.

“Okay, so I have kind of an eating disorder . . .” I began before laying out the details of my unusual diet and its subsequent side effects. (Frost 56)

Cat’s new diet is more of a personal preference than an actual eating disorder. She prefers to drink vampire blood, specifically Bones’s blood. What’s more interesting here are the implied ramifications and unknowns about her exclusively drinking vampire blood, such as what powers she is going to develop and how long they last for. For Cat to describe her diet as such improperly characterizes it and minimizes eating disorders.

I couldn’t resist a quick, longing glance at the car before I gave myself a mental slap. Mind out of the gutter, Trampzilla! People to see, bad ghouls to stop, remember? (Frost 66)

“You know, in addition to your mind-reading abilities, I may have absorbed some sluttiness from your blood,” I said, giving my head a shake. Had to be. I normally wouldn’t think of getting it on in a parking lot when we had a reporter to snag inside and two undead friends just a few dozen feet away. (Frost 66)

Cat has an impediment with slut shaming, going so far as to slut shame herself for being attracted to her husband, which is a completely normal reaction to have. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of purity culture where Cat feels compelled to shame the sexy thoughts she thinks so it doesn’t make her seem like a “slut,” thus lowering her social standing in her own eyes. Regardless of the reasons, it gets tiresome to continually read men and women getting slut shamed in these books.

My teeth ground together while I reminded myself that mesmerizing her into believing her ass had just grown by five sizes was not a mature thing to do. (Frost 106)

In this scene, Cat encounters a “rich” couple at a Ritz-Carlton and thinks mean things about them after the couple imply she’s riff-raff—as rich people clearly often do in real life. Then Bones, who can read minds now that he has joined Mencheres’s line, comes out of nowhere and tells the husband that the wife is cheating on him with the plumber. The couple start fighting. Cat feels good about herself because the snooty people have been put in their place and then Bones tells Cat that the husband is cheating on the wife as well with his lawyer. Cat then pats herself on the back for not using her mind powers to make the rich woman think her butt is fat. Congratulations for not doing something you shouldn’t do. It’s a cheap, tired joke about how rich people cheat on each other with “the help” that serves to give the characters (and the reader) justice boners from watching the rich people get what they deserve. It’s unnecessary to even add to the story, which was a mess anyway.

His brows drew together in a frown. Then comprehension dawned and Nitro laughed. “Red hair, beautiful, and badass. You must be the Reaper.”

I grinned. “You can call me Cat.” (Frost 76)

Cat challenges another vampire to an arm-wrestling contest for no reason. It made no sense, and, of course, she won because she’s so strong. And then the vampire recognized her because of her hair color, beauty, and badass-ness. There were often scenes added that felt more like padding to get the book to a certain desired length. At one point, Cat and Bones show up unexpectedly at Mencheres’s house, and he’s having sex with Kira loudly enough that they can hear it. Cat and Bones decide to come back in an hour to give them time to finish up and then they had sex to kill the time. It was completely unimportant to add as it didn’t progress the plot nor serve as characterization.

I’m writing this review nearly three months after having read the book because of how little I cared for it. My assessment is this is the weakest of the books in the series so far. Frost has run out of ideas while stretching the original premise to its limit, yet there are somehow still books being written in this universe.

 

Works Cited

Frost, Jeaniene. This Side of the Grave. Avon, 2011.