Review: To Serve the Count by Cassandra Pierce

Reviewed by Fehu
To Serve the Count (Proud to be a Vampire) by Cassandra Pierce
Less Than Press
Short Story
2.75 Pants Off

Blurb:
Cast out of his village when he is caught kissing another man, Rupert seeks refuge at the mysterious Castle Blutstark. But refuge means carrying out unusual duties for his new master, the enigmatic Count Kaspar, and he starts to wonder if Blutstark is a place of safety after all.




Review
Well written, but the characters were a bit too simplistic as was the plot.

The story was quite simple: a boy gets kicked out of his village and flees to a castle to find work. There is a vampire who takes notice of the boy and invites him to his bed and to be his blood donor. Said boy had a lover, who followed him, had known the lord to be a vampire, unlike the naive boy and who wants to take the vampires riches and kill him, by using the unsuspecting boy.

That is also what happened, very fast paced, no time left for a lot of explanations or normal human reactions. If you ever find out about vampires, would anyone, especially a boy from a backward village, be so blasé about it, in a historical time setting? I find that hard to believe!

Rupert, the boy or youth in question was generally acting a bit like a modern spoiled brat. He ran away from his home, the whole dialog with his father didn't have the historical feeling, his actions were too bold for a young character with his background and he could not have honestly expected anyone in a historical period after the French Revolution to be ok about gay tendencies, when people were hanged for such tendencies in the past!

I thought he took the whole vampires exist and why not just let the guy, you known a day drink your blood and have sex with him. There is fast and then there is swearing your love after a few days acquaintance, which happened here.

I liked the writing style, but the story and the characters just didn't have any depth and were very predictable.